titles, be authorized by official robes, and solemnly installed
in the chairs of the elders. Just snatched from the cradle and
hastily weaned, they mouth the rules of Priscian and Donatus;
while still beardless boys they gabble with childish stammering
the Categorics and Peri Hermeneias, in the writing of which the
great Aristotle is said to have dipped his pen in his heart's
blood. Passing through these faculties with baneful haste and a
harmful diploma, they lay violent hands upon Moses, and
sprinkling about their faces dark waters and thick clouds of the
skies, they offer their heads, unhonoured by the snows of age,
for the mitre of the pontificate. This pest is greatly
encouraged, and they are helped to attain this fantastic
clericate with such nimble steps, by Papal provisions obtained by
insidious prayers, and also by the prayers, which may not be
rejected, of cardinals and great men, by the cupidity of friends
and relatives, who, building up Sion in blood, secure
ecclesiastical dignities for their nephews and pupils, before
they are seasoned by the course of nature or ripeness of
learning.

Alas! by the same disease which we are deploring, we see that the
Palladium of Paris has been carried off in these sad times of
ours, wherein the zeal of that noble university, whose rays once
shed light into every corner of the world, has grown lukewarm,
nay, is all but frozen. There the pen of every scribe is now at
rest, generations of books no longer succeed each other, and
there is none who begins to take place as a new author. They
wrap up their doctrines in unskilled discourse, and are losing
all propriety of logic, except that our English subtleties, which
they denounce in public, are the subject of their furtive vigils.