Page:Australian views of England.djvu/116

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104
AUSTRALIAN VIEWS
[Let.

the responsibility of coming to a decision, and Lord Palmerston's appeal was gladly responded to. My belief is that, if members had voted in accordance with their feelings, Mr. Lindsay's motion would have been carried by a large majority.

Among that numerous body of thinking Englishmen who are strangers to the Universities, and have had their intellectual struggles for the most part outside the ancient walks of learning, there is a feeling of something like awe in approaching for the first time the classic ground of Oxford or Cambridge. There are the halls from which have issued the philosophers and statesmen whose names illumine the brightest hopes of our national history. There still are being nurtured, with the accumulated lore of all ages, the young minds on which the country is to rest for its future glory. Who may say what giants shall arise from the ranks of those favoured sons of fortune who are there trying their strength of soul in the consecrated fields of science! It was with some such feeling as this that I visited Oxford on the 2nd of this month, to see what could be seen of the bearing of the aristocratic youth of England at the Commemoration, Perhaps I was attracted, too, by