In its beginnings the thing we call a University ran ahead of its idea of itself. It grew, not unintelligently, but with little, if any, reflection on itself. Subsequently, and especially in the last hundred years, there has been much speculation about what a University should be; and there have been many experiments in erecting theory into fact. The palm for the best theory unquestionably goes to John Henry Newman, and so to the Catholics of England, whom he claimed, and is now allowed, to represent. No theory, anywhere, remains more remote from fact than this remains in England.

This may be blameworthy, but there is some excuse for it. The English are not idealists, their genius is practical. They do not proceed from ideas to action : they act first and think afterwards, with a tendency, stronger in each generation, to think that what they have done or left undone was rightly done or left undone because ‘twas they themselves that did it or did it not. On this general ground, and on the ground of its particular application to education, especially University education, the claim of English Catholics to be truly English cannot be denied. In this characteristic the Irish amongst them are thoroughly anglicized. As a body Catholics in this country are not at all dissatisfied with what they have done or not done for themselves in education these last hundred years. Their dissatisfaction is almost wholly with what others have done or not done for them. Exceptions there are: mostly converts like Newman himself, and idealists like him. Like him they love the life of the mind, and follow it even to its own surrender in faith; and like him, until they are safely dead, they become generally suspect of not being quite English. All this, though irritating, is excusable in England. Even the Universal Church finds it, though vexatious, tolerable.