Gentlemen, if, as was lately said by a leading member of your Government, the function of a university be only to examine, it may indeed examine the whole mob of England in the midst of a dunghill; but it cannot teach the gentlemen of England in the midst of a dunghill; no, nor even the people of England. How many of her people it _ought_ to teach is a question. We think, now-a-days, our philosophy is to light every man that cometh into the world, and to light every man equally. Well, when indeed you give up all other commerce in this island, and, as in Bacon's "New Atlantis," only buy and sell to get God's first creature, which was light, there may be some equality of gain for us in that possession. But until then,--and we are very far from such a time--the light cannot be given to all men equally. Nay, it is becoming questionable whether, instead of being equally distributed to all, it may not be equally withdrawn from us all: whether the ideas of purity and justice,--of loveliness which is to sanctify our peace,--and of justice which is to sanctify our battle, are not vanishing from the purpose of our policy, and even from the conception of our education. The uses, and the desire, of seclusion, of meditation, of restraint, and of correction--are they not passing from us in the collision of worldly interests, and restless contests of mean hope, and meaner fear? What light, what health, what peace, or what security,--youths of England--do you come here now to seek? In what sense do you receive--with what sincerity do you adopt for yourselves--the ancient legend of your schools, "Dominus illuminatio mea, et salus mea; quem timebo"? 121. Remember that the ancient theory on which this university was founded,--not the theory of any one founder, observe, nor even the concluded or expressed issue of the wisdom of many; but the tacit feeling by which the work and hope of all were united and completed--was, that England should gather from among her children a certain number of purest and best, whom she might train to become, each in their day of strength, her teachers and patterns in religion, her declarers and doers of justice in law and her leaders in battle. Bred, it might be, by their parents, in the fond poverty of learning, or amidst the traditions and discipline of illustrious houses,--in either manner separate, from their youth up, to their glorious offices--they came here to be kindled into the lights that were to be set on the hills of England, brightest of the pious, the loyal, and the brave. Whatever corruption blighted, whatever worldliness buried, whatever sin polluted their endeavour, this conception of its meaning remained; and was indeed so fulfilled in faithfulness, that to the men whose passions were tempered, and whose hearts confirmed, in the calm of these holy places, you, now living, owe all that is left to you of hope in heaven, and all of safety or honour that you have to trust and defend on earth.