I pass on to University life in Ireland, the question, I have said, most prominent at this time. Ireland had no Oxford or Cambridge in the Middle Ages; an attempt to establish a University in Dublin failed; science and literature could not grow up in a land distracted by feudal and tribal strife, and in which two Churches were continually at war with each other. Elizabeth founded Trinity College towards the close of her reign, on the site of a monastery that had been suppressed; it was the intention of the queen, and of her two first successors, that this seminary should expand into a University in the true sense, containing a number of colleges within its sphere, and probably open to all students whatever their race or their faith. This happy consummation, however, was made impossible during the long period of civil war and trouble, which only came to an end with that of the seventeenth century. Trinity College remained a single foundation; and, in the era of Protestant ascendency that ensued, when Catholic Ireland lay under the ban of the penal code, it necessarily became an exclusively Protestant place of learning, its dignities, its honours, nay, admission to it, being reserved to members of the Established Church. It had, however, been amply endowed; and, from an early period, it possessed many distinguished worthies, the names of Ussher, of King, of Browne, and of others, being still remembered. Trinity College, strange to say, was very High Church during the reigns of the two last Stuarts and of Anne; its leading divines preached the creed of passive obedience; and it was remarkable for its aversion to Presbyterian Ireland, as was clearly shown in the diatribes of Swift. The college, however, became Whiggish and Low Church during the reign of Walpole--its Provost was appointed by the Crown; and until nearly the close of the eighteenth century, its professorships, its fellowships, its scholarships, its degrees, even entrance to its walls, were strictly confined to the dominant communion of the Anglican Church. But a liberal spirit grew up, and gained strength within it; this appears in many of the admirable writings of Berkeley, breathing the ideas that afterwards inspired Grattan, and in the histories of Leland and Warner, on the whole just to the vanquished Catholic people; and after the almost National movement which produced the Revolution of 1782, Trinity College took a remarkable step, which proved that it was in advance of the politics of that age. In 1793, when the Irish Parliament passed a great measure of Catholic relief, the college made Catholics eligible for its degrees and its minor prizes; and, but that its statutes made this impossible, it would, perhaps, have allowed Catholics to become professors, fellows, and scholars--in short, to have a share in its dignities and its government. Nothing like this was done at Oxford and Cambridge until the nineteenth century had run far its course.