some paternal, and the general voice of the University has done me the honor to testify that I established some personal claim, to a more intimate union with her interests: but, happily for me, it was otherwise ordered; and I can therefore regard her with no other feelings, as far as I myself am concerned, than those of absolute indifference. Some useful knowlege, a few pleasing triumphs, and a large portion of affection and respect towards one or two individuals, are mixed up with my Oxonian recollections; but none, I fear, of those local attachments, on which the disinterested Champion, in his impartial rage for justice, seems to build with so much confidence of a favorable issue to his suit.

You, on the contrary, although not on the foundation of a College, have at least made Oxford very much your home, and may, consequently, fairly be presumed to be more inflamed with predilections in favor of the place, and more anxious to see the University triumphant in any contest that affects her character and credit. It is, then, to give the Champion all possible indulgence, that I call on you to divide with me the task of arbitration. While I write under this impression, the idea of your zeal must rectify my coldness; the Champion will meet with still more tenderness than he could hope from me in a single capacity, though I confess my usual bias towards the weaker party; and the judgment thus jointly pronounced, (for I shall take care to deliver none but that in which you must completely coincide,) will thoroughly satisfy the public at large, however widely it may differ from what the advocate of Oxford elections appears to expect.

In all other respects, except that which you are to supply, I will not disclaim the character of a competent judge. I have sufficient general knowlege of Oxonian matters for the purpose, and even some slight remembrance of the particular examinations, that form one point in the questions to be considered: I have a sincere desire that we should award the purest justice in the plainest terms, and shall take good care, though we must be oracular, not to be ambiguous. The gentleman of Oxford, whose sentence is selfsought, cannot of course have any plea for complaint, whatever it may be. And as for his antagonist, as he merrily styles the Reviewer, who will probably be somewhat amused at finding himself paired off with such an opponent, we may give him credit, for wishing nothing better than a fair discussion, and look from him also, for a silent acquiescence in the fiat of our balanced and authorised tribunal.

In the very first step of our proceedings, I feel grieved that we must direct our censure against the conduct of the Champion. Observe the striking difference between the modes in which he and the Reviewer have commenced their attacks.

The Reviewer, whose subject was to lead him to a violent condemnation of one part of the Oxford system, begins with a warm and rather an exaggerated eulogium on another. He tells the University that, with a few relics of imperfection and absurdity, which blindness alone could overlook, her plan of education seems better calculated than any hitherto known to attain the true end of the classical studies she encourages. He even enters with a sort of enthusiasm into the details of her public examinations, and calls upon his readers to consider and applaud with him the various merits of the separate parts that go to compose them. It is after he has thus roused and heated their minds into an admiration of Oxford, and filled and dazzled their eyes with all the fervors of his honest commendation, that he bids them turn with him a sorrowful glance upon a foul blot that tarnishes the picture. This is at least a generous and self-denying method of warfare. He invests the object of his confined and qualified strictures with all the armor she can claim to wear; sets her in a high and advantageous posture; and then comes forward, with a gallant and courageous bearing, to point out and probe the defects that still continue to weaken and degrade her. How different the tactics of the Champion! He begins with every attempt to stir up the feelings of his judges, not in favor of, but against his self-sought enemy. He would set us glowing with a partial warmth, and vibrating in unison with tones of indignation. He would arm all our prejudices in his cause, and fearful of a cool, deliberate enquiry, exclaims with the poet,

'Inde vaporata lector mihi ferveat aure !'

That he has fallen into the hands of arbiters, who will not be swayed by passion to injustice, is not his merit, and will scarcely turn out for his advantage. Even "his Master Aristotle" might have taught him that such tricks as these can take effect only on the minds of a depraved and self-conceited audience, and are worthy only of a pleader who is well aware that truth and equity are decidedly against him. If the Reviewer, by his method of proceeding, has gained the benefit of light and shade, and has heightened the colors of his picture by the power of contrast, he cannot be blamed for taking things as they fairly lay before him, and following the natural course in his descriptions. In this portion of the subject, then, our opinion, though I say it with pain, must be quite decided against the author of the pamphlet.

While considering preliminaries, we must also take this opportunity of reproving the Champion, once for all, for the numerous

1 Vide Rhetoricorum, LL. i. et iii.

puerilities, scattered over the beginning and other parts of his work. Not to mention the virulence and foul-mouthed language that sit so ill upon this advocate for "a calm address" and "a becoming demeanor," what else but derision can he expect to reward such assumptions as "unceremonious superiority,” “unwillingness to stoop," "sacrifice of fastidiousness," &c. &c. That he actually entertains the feelings thus indiscreetly arrogated we know to be impossible. Six months of patient toil are not bestowed by volunteers upon foes whom they think contemptible. The expressions are probably designed to be facetious, but Providence, that did not create this person for a wit, does not suffer its intentions to be counteracted with impunity. If the Reviewer be really the malignant being, that his assailant labors hard to represent him, we may conceive his secret satisfaction at the awkward and ungainly gambols into which the poor tutor has been stung. Holding, with Dr. Johnson, that abuse is the reaction upon satire, and marks its work to have been done, I acknowledge my surprise that the Champion should have so liberally indulged in it. And then, for a man of his confessedly small parts to rave about “punishment," and "fastidiousness," and "whips that are not to be wrapt in velvet," is almost too distressing to be ludicrous. No one knows exactly his own level in the scale of intellect, but surely the Champion might have perceived so broad and sensible an inferiority, as that in which he stands towards the writer whom he endeavors to annoy. The Reviewer, whatever his faults of style or temper, is at least brisk, rapid, and amusing: If he does nothing more, he always makes one laugh. The Champion is far more likely to make one sleep. Some heavy frisking that is meant to be smart, and one or two passages, that I more than half suspect to be intended for eloquence, had nearly lulled me into slumbers, which would have suited the judicial character thus unexpectedly thrust upon me.

Hoping that this reproof, which we have felt compelled to administer, will prepare the Champion for assuming a more modest tone in his next publication, let us proceed to the points at issue between the parties, or in the elegant language of the pamphleteer, to "the facts that he intends to prove disgracefully false; and the opinion he intends to prove ridiculously silly." Strong words these, Mr. Elmsley! and inconvenient for the party to whom we shall be forced finally to apply them! But inventors have always suffered in their own machines, and have never been pitied for it. As the close Fellow, after some embarrassment," allowable enough in a raw writer, has contrived to throw the question into three heads or counts for our investigation, it will save us time and trouble,

and I have not much of either to spare,-to fall into the order laid down for us. And firstly, for the first count:

Upon this, I must beg you, before we proceed further, to ob serve the dexterous perversion of meaning, by which the Champion has transformed what, in the Review, is an obvious truth, into a flat falsehood in the pamphlet. Place the position of the Reviewer, and the count in the pamphlet, side by side, and you will perceive the important difference between statements, which the Champion, of course with the most honest intentions, would represent as one and the same thing:

REVIEWER.

In many of the Colleges, fitness for election is restricted to some particular school, diocese, county, or kindred. Yet it is among the Fellows so chosen alone that we are to look for men who really deserve to have been eligible.

CLOSE FELLOW.

In Oxford men of distinguished talents and attainments are to be found only in those Colleges where the Elections are close.

The

The Champion would make the Reviewer assert that, which every one who has heard of the fame of Mr. Elmsley, and that he is not the holder of a close fellowship, must know to be false, viz. that there are no distinguished members of the University who are not holders of fellowships, and those fellowships close. Reviewer has asserted for himself that, which is certainly only matter of opinion, but is an opinion that we shall presently, I fear, be forced to back with the whole weight of our legal authority, viz. that in looking to the Fellows of the University, we shall find among the holders of close fellowships alone, such persons as he conceives worthy to enjoy these places of respectability and profit. The Champion, in short, would make the Reviewer set the members of the close Colleges in opposition to the whole University: the Reviewer, who probably knew his own meaning a little better than his gratuitous interpreter, simply, and in the plainest terms, set the members of the close Colleges in opposition to the members of the open Colleges, at the same time delivering the reasons, upon which he accounts for the superiority of the former. The misrepresentation, by the Champion, of the Reviewer's sentiments, is here too gross to be overlooked, and I adduce it as a sample of the candid spirit in which his whole pleading is conveyed.

Although, however, the Champion has thus perverted the words of the Reviewer at the very outset, he reasons upon this count of the indictment, with some glimpse at least of his adversary's meaning, and sets about instituting a comparison between the

respective members of the close and open Colleges. Had he conducted this comparison upon the proper grounds, and with a fair understanding of the opinion expressed in the Review, we should have been spared some chuckling, and a good deal of tedious detail. That the members of close Colleges have enjoyed during a given period a monopoly of University distinctions is nowhere stated by the Reviewer; could not have been intended to be stated by any man with his senses about him; and could not have been extracted from the words of the article without a most violent effort of dulness, or of something worse. The Reviewer says that we must search among the holders of the close fellowships alone for persons that really deserve to have obtained such situations, and this is the opinion, on the soundness or futility, or, if the Champion likes it better, on the truth or falsehood of which, our disagreeable office must lead us to decide.

The proposition is a very simple one, and to those acquainted with things and persons at Oxford is of very easy solution. It is, certainly, highly disagreeable to be forced, by the indiscretion of their Champion, to say any thing disparaging of a class of men, among whom there exist so many unobtrusive and innocuous individuals. But of course we protest, in the most explicit terms, against our words being construed into an impeachment of moral character, in any of the holders of open fellowships, upon whom we are invited to pass judgment. Under such restriction, I have no hesitation in proposing it, as our united opinion, that the Reviewer is borne out by fact in the truth of his allegation. I presume that when the Reviewer speaks of a person having deserved to be eligible to a place of some power and profit, he includes in his notion of desert the most distinguished intellectual abilities, the maintenance of high and independent principles, scholarship that has not been confined to the bare routine of University-reading, and that classic spirit and "enthusiasm" that is the uniform result of the study of the "glorious models of antiquity," wherever the seed has fallen on a good ground, and nothing has intervened to thwart its growth or to impair its vigor. This at least is the sense in which I understand and agree with the Reviewer; nor have I any doubt, from what is known of your character, that you will fully and heartily coincide with us both. Now, taking the test thus fairly understood, and applying it to the Colleges, which the Champion has spontaneously dragged into the conspicuous places of the field, to what conclusion must you and I be driven? Looking to Brasen-nose, as the Champion directs us, and giving up Mr. Milman and his nakedness,” since he will have it so, we could point out more than one individual, though the loss of its late most eminent and lamented head has diminished the number, whose abilities are brilliant, whose princi