thought they saw, in the convulsions of 1848, a handwriting on the wall, sent them by God himself, testifying, “that, if either rank or wealth or knowledge is not held as a trust for men, if any one of these things is regarded as a possession of our own, it must perish.”  In a real desire, then, to “make their own little education of use to such persons as had less,” and, in so doing, to establish a vital and effective relation between themselves and the men of the working-classes below them, they looked round for opportunities to work in the education of men.  Anybody who remembers “Amyas Leigh” will remember how earnestly Charles Kingsley there presses the theory that most of what we learn as children should be left to be learned by men, as it was in the days of Queen Bess.  I suppose that Maurice’s “knot of parsons and such like” shared that view.  At all events, they lectured to Mechanics’ Institutes, and did other such wish-wash work, which is not good for much, except for the motive it shows; and having found that out, they were all the more willing to join in arrangements more definite and profitable.  According to Mr. Maurice, the formation of the People’s College in Sheffield started them on the plan of a college, and determined them, as far as they could, to give consistency to their dreams by carrying out the plan of an English college in their arrangements for working-men.

At this point I must beg the accomplished company of readers to recollect what an English college is.  In its organization, and in much of its consequent esprit du corps, it is as different from an American college as an Odd-Fellows’ lodge is from a country academy.  The difference is also of precisely the same sort.  The man or the boy who connects himself with an English college is, in theory, still the student of a thousand years ago, who came on foot to Oxford or Cambridge, because he had heard, in the wilds of Mercia or of Wessex, that there were some books at those places,—­and that some Alfred or Ethelred or Eldred had given some privileges to students coming there.  When he has arrived, he joins one or other of the societies of students whom he may find there, just as the Mercian Athelstan may have done.  From the moment that the established society has tested him,—­and the tests are very mild,—­he is admitted as a member of a fraternity, sharing the privileges of that fraternity, and, to a certain extent, its duties.  He is at first a junior member, it is true.  Among his duties, therefore, will be obedience to some of the senior members, and respect to all.  But none the less is he a neophyte member of a corporation which extends back hundreds of years perhaps,—­he is a co-proprietor of its honors and privileges, is responsible for their preservation, and is, from the first, inoculated with its esprit du corps.