THERE was a period, and that of no very remote antiquity, when the literature which issued from any one of our British Universities, in any given decade or so of years, would have afforded but a scanty text for an article. It is a fact that Oxford, after two abortive attempts at a Magazine like our own, gave up the rivalry; that Cambridge (so far as we know) never even entered the field; and that the united Oxford and Cambridge Review had even a shorter existence than that which the Times prophetically assigns to the Derby administration of 1858. If we turn from periodical literature to writing of a more permanent character and distinctive texture, the produce is equally scanty. Dublin seemed to have exhausted her fecundity in the giant birth of MAGA. Beyond a Horace, a Juvenal, or a Lucian with English notes; a majestic and polysyllabic Kennedy's Homer, and a few abstracts of logical and ethical writers, with awful examination papers appended, bristling with "quid dicit Brownius, quid Smithius," and such like interrogatories, it must be confessed that our own Alma Mater gave but little to the world. We can afford to make the confession now, when we can point to the eminent contributions to philosophy, theology, and sound learning of Bishop Fitzgerald, Dr. Lee, Professors Webb and Moeran, and a host of others. But, even in the comparatively silent years of which we speak, Oxford and Cambridge had but little superiority. Cambridge was sunk in an exclusively mathematical barbarism. Of Gray's fierce sarcasm in the previous century, that "mathematics was the only business of the place, and drinking the only amusement,' the former portion, at least, was true. Hopkins, Peacock, and Hinds alone broke the silence of the classic groves. Mr. Macmillan produced none of those beautiful volumes of cerulean hue. The genius of the ablest men of the place did not warble into poetry like the Lushingtons with their "Points of War," and "Nation Boutiquiere;" or rise into the difficult air of philoso

phy with Whewell, Amos, and Grote; or reconcile orthodox theology with the advance of thought and of Biblical exegesis, like Mill, Harold Browne, Hardwicke, Goodwin, and Wescott. Oxford literature was in about the same position. Translations into English prose of Aristophanes, Pindar, or Euripides "by a graduate of this university" represented her classics; Welchman on the Thirty-nine Articles, manuals of sects and heresies, persuasions addressed to dissenters on the subject of conformity; a few of dear good old Burton's sermons, urging Oxford to be "good rather than great," appealing to these "hallowed walls," and altogether in what Dr. Newman calls the "King George the Third and Protestant religion" style, pretty nearly exhausted her theology. And as for poetry and polite literature, a volume of verses by Mr. John Graham, author of a pretty Newdigate on Granada; "Oxford Night-caps, being a collection of receipts for making various beverages used in the University," to which add "Oxford Sausages;" redolent of an atmosphere of bad cigars, and worse port; are the chief representatives of the belles lettres. We speak roughly and generally of the years 1831 to 1841.

With the great church movement at Oxford literature began to revive, and the lethargic press quickened into unwonted activity. Mr. Parker no longer enjoyed a monopoly of publishing, humbly subdivided into a very small slice for Talboys, Wheeler, or Vincent. MacPherson, Graham, and Shrimpton became respectable bibliopoles. The issue at first was chiefly of works of standard divinity. Bull was edited by Burton; Waterland, by Van Mildert; and many other theological leaders of the English Church were exhumed to show an age of degenerate students that there were giants on the earth in those days." Indeed, a memorable article in the Quarterly Review, which bears all the impress of Mr. Sewell's peculiar genius, seemed to assert that this was the work of a university in the nineteenth century.

The best service to which a learned and devout academic could consecrate himself was to select his standard divine, to incubate over his pages with a loving reverence, to follow out all his quotations; and then, for recompense, he might hope to puzzle out typographical errors which for ages had stood like minute pimples on the venerable face of the work or even to leave among his papers a preface or introduction which the curators of the university press might possibly insert in a future edition of the Opus Magnum. Mr. Sewell, however, was fortunately inconsistent, or perhaps too humble to aspire to so glorious a destiny. He published a beautiful and thoughtful Introduction to the Dialogues of Plato, a pretty volume of poems, and several other works. But the exquisite sermons, the character pictures, of Mr. Newman were now thrown off, edition after edition. Apart from their really extraordinary merit, in a literary point of view, they had two local recommendations they afforded admirable illustrations of the Nicomechean ethics (thus the commencement of one of the university sermons on human responsibility, as independent of circumstances, is the most suggestive exposition we have ever met of Aristotle's doctrine of the voluntary and non-voluntary, in the Third Book of the Ethics)--and, besides this, they partly produced, and were partly themselves covered by, a strange sort of debateable light, between light and darkness, which was rising up from the middle ages, and creeping over the grand old place. Contemporaneously with these, Oxford was producing other sermons of veryunusual excellence. Mr. Manning's Discourses were indeed quite destitute of that unity of aim and leading of all lines to one point which is necessary to hearing a preacher with interest or remembering him with distinctness. He who heard one, had heard all. It is utterly impossible, in most cases, to say, such a sentence belongs to one of Manning's Sermons and not to another. There is no context. There are a vast number of beautiful sayings, lovely little isles of thought swimming in a dim sea of words. The sermons have no logical gristle, and, as Mr. Tapley expressively says

of Pecksniff, would " squeeze soft." They have few of those short, sharp, pithy, heavy-packed sentences which the Puritan jerks at the conscience of his audience, which are often laughed at, but sometimes stick, barbed into the conscience. They contain little direct exposition of Scripture, but their language has the softness and loveliness of poetry. They are sweet and affectionate beyond expression. They tell the experience of a lacerated heart in the accents of the most finished of gentlemen. They rather weep than speak. They are pervaded by a tone of deep-felt conviction. The sleep of the faithful departed, and the sermon on Mary Magdalene for a penitentiary, if not the best sermons, are among the most beautiful pieces of religious writing in the English tongue. Put beside these sermons, in theology, Dr. Pusey's discourses and letters, crushed under a weight of patristic learning, which they are unable to carry in political philosophy, Mr. Gladstone's celebrated essay in elegant literature, Mr. Adams' exquisite Allegories: in poetry, Mr. Williams' tortuous mediaval works-the Baptistery, and the restsometimes fine, often uncouth and perplexed; and Mr. Fabers' Cherwell Water-Lily, and other poems, smelling already of the incense, and coloured with the rich glitter of the Roman Ritual-we have the leading representatives of the literature of Oxford from 1840 to 1847.

The last eight or ten years have witnessed a wonderful revulsion, and produced a great expansion of intellectual life. With the Oxford literature of these years we are concerned at present. We shall first give a rapid summary and review of Oxford books of various kinds, and then draw our remarks to a point by some generalizations.

In such a review, science should occupy a foremost place. Science, however, is the weak point of Oxford men, although we believe that a considerable improvement has taken place. We shall only mention the celebrated names of Baden Powell and Phillips, and the respectable names of Price and Donkin. As a guarantee for the pains which we have taken, we append an accurate and complete list of all the writings