excesses, even when they do not absolutely authorize them in their personal examples. Now, when such representations are made, to what standard of a just discipline is it that these writers would be understood as appealing? Is it to some ideal, or to some existing and known reality? Would they have England suppose that they are here comparing the actual Oxford with some possible hypothetic or imaginable Oxford,--with some ideal case, that is to say, about which great discussions would arise as to its feasibility,--or that they are comparing it with some known standard of discipline actually realized and sustained for generations, in Leipsic, suppose, or Edinburgh, or Leyden, or Salamanca? This is the question of questions, to which we may demand an answer; and, according to that answer, observe the dilemma into which these furciferous knaves must drop. If they are comparing Oxford simply with some ideal and better Oxford, in some ideal and better world, in that case all they have said--waiving its falsehoods of fact--is no more than a flourish of rhetoric, and the whole discussion may be referred to the shadowy combats of scholastic declamation-mongers--those mock gladiators, and _umbratiles doctores_. But if, on the other hand, they pretend to take their station upon the known basis of some existing institution,--if they will pretend that, in this impeachment of Oxford, they are proceeding upon a silent comparison with Edinburgh, Glasgow, Jena, Leipsic, Padua, &c.,--then are they self-exposed, as men not only without truth, but without shame. For now comes in, as a sudden revelation, and as a sort of _deus ex machina_, for the vindication of the truth, the simple answer to that question proposed above, Wherefore, and to what end, are the vast edifices of Oxford? A university, as universities are in general, needs not, I have shown, to be a visible body--a building raised with hands. Wherefore, then, is the _visible_ Oxford? To what _fifth_ end, refining upon the ordinary ends of such institutions, is the far-stretching system of Oxford _hospitia_, or monastic hotels, directed by their founders, or applied by their present possessors? Hearken, reader, to the answer: