there is an inferiority, it is in the persons, not in the places or
their constitution. And here I can not help confessing that a desire
to please the great, and bring them to the universities, causes a
compliance with fashionable manners, a relaxation of discipline, and
a connivance at ignorance and folly, which errors he confesses
occasioned the English universities to be in less repute than they
were formerly. The fashion of sending young men thither was even in
some degree abated among that class who at the present day would be
the most reluctant to omit it--the nobility. The useless and
frivolous exercises required for the attainment of academic honors,
and the relaxation of discipline, had by this time created a
widespread and deeply felt contempt for the whole system of which
they formed a part; and the indulgent but candid observer, who tries
to dilute his censure with the truism that he could not have been
placed anywhere in this sublunary world without discovering many
evils, informs us that in his seven years' residence at the
university he saw immorality, habitual drunkenness, idleness,
ignorance and vanity openly and boastfully obtruding themselves on
public view, and triumphing without control over the timidity of
modest merit.

It is under such conditions that the strong man of right intent
rebukes the sloth and hypocrisy of his time. Very seldom, if ever,
does he faintly guess the result of his protest. Jesus rebuked the
iniquities and follies of Jerusalem, pleading for simple honesty,
directness of speech and love of neighbors. In wrath the Pharisees
made the usual double charge against Him--heresy and treason--and He
was crucified.

Heresy and treason are invoked together; one is an offense against the