Trinity College was founded in Dublin by Queen Elizabeth, in 1591, as a Protestant University, and for the purpose of giving to Irish Protestants a University Education, based on the doctrines and discipline of the Reformed Church of England. This infant University was fostered by the guiding hand of the great Lord Burghley, its interests were defended by the ill-fated Essex, and its Statutes were drafted by the highly gifted Bishop Bedell. Trinity College has been well described by her enemies as a "handful of Protestant Clergymen;" because her Fellows, with the exception of three, were required to take Holy Orders in the English Church; and at the present moment five only of her thirty-two Fellowships are permitted by Statute to be held by laymen. Trinity College is now nearly three centuries in existence, and may be regarded as the only English institution that ever succeeded in Ireland. The sons of the Alma Mater founded by Elizabeth may be excused if they point with pride to the names of Ussher, King, and Magee, among her theologians; to Berkeley, Brinkley, and Hamilton, among her thinkers and mathematicians; and to Swift, Goldsmith, Burke, and Plunket, amongst those whom she has given to literature, oratory, and politics, whose names shall live so long as religion, science, and letters attract the respect and claim the study of educated Englishmen. Trinity College has never been, and never was intended to be, a national institution; her emoluments, her Fellowships and Scholarships, are the property of the Irish members of the English Church; and the proposal to throw them open to the competition of Roman Catholics and Dissenters is a proposal for the confiscation, so far, of the property of Irish Protestants. Trinity College has well and faithfully discharged the part she was required to fill; she has maintained the pure doctrine of the English Church against all opponents; she has reared her Students as faithful children of that Church; she has given them an education that enables them to compete successfully with all rivals in the walks of literature and science; and it cannot be fairly alleged against her as a fault that she has not provided for the educational wants of Irish Catholics; she was never intended to do so. The lovers of the gorgeous Rose need not blush because she wants the colour and grace of the beautiful Lily; and I may well be pardoned for believing that no brighter or fairer flower blooms in the garden of the West, than the Tudor Rose planted in Dublin by the proud Elizabeth.