The Universities were not now, as in the Middle Age, the home of all the culture that the time could boast. Medicine drew off to the great towns[1]; law found its home in the Inns of Court. The clerical element completely dominated both Oxford and Cambridge. But, while relatively strong, it was intrinsically, that is academically, weak. Lord Stanhope[2] has explained, I think with much felicity, one and perhaps the main cause of decadence of the clergy. They were entirely out of sympathy with the Hanoverian dynasty; and they could not be transformed into loyal subjects by force. The course pursued was to select Bishops with a regard to their political conformity, and to plant them among a clergy whom, except occasionally, they appear to have simply let alone. No attempt was made either to supply deficiencies, or to furnish a remedy for abuses. Privilege remained intact; for none would invade the hornets' nest. Indolence and greed had their unrestricted reign.
Huber, to whom we owe gratitude for the first attempt at a living reproduction of our academic life, and whose research gravitated, throughout his work, by preference towards Oxford, puts the Universities of the last century upon their trial, and finds for them a sort of acquittal. The substance of his contention is that, while they were far indeed from corresponding with any comprehensive or normal conception, they
- ↑ It may, however, be noticed that Dr. Freind and Dr. Meade, the two leading London practitioners of the era of Geo. I, were both educated at Oxford.
- ↑ Stanhope, History of England, ii. 370.
