Datur Vacuum.

“No wonder that science, and learning profound,

In Oxford and Cambridge so greatly abound,

When so many take thither a little each day,

And we see very few who bring any away.”

I was once told by a fellow of a college, says Mr. Ireland, that he disliked Hogarth, because he had in this print ridiculed one of the Universities. I endeavoured to defend the artist, by suggesting that this was not intended as a picture of what Oxford is now, but of what it was in days long past: that it was that kind of general satire with which no one should be offended, &c. &c. His reply was too memorable to be forgotten. “Sir, the Theatre, the Bench, the College of Physicians, and the Foot Guards, are fair objects of satire; but those venerable characters who have devoted their whole lives to feeding the lamp of learning with hallowed oil, are too sacred to be the sport of an uneducated painter. Their unremitting industry embraced the whole circle of the sciences, and in their logical disputations they displayed an acuteness that their followers must contemplate with astonishment. The present state of Oxford it is not necessary for me to analyze, as you contend that the satire is not directed against that.”

In answer to this observation, which was uttered with becoming gravity, a gentleman present remarked, as follows. “For some of the ancient customs of this seminary of learning, I have much respect, but as to their dry treatises on logic, immaterial dissertations on materiality, and abstruse investigations of useless subjects, they are mere literary legerdemain. Their disputations being usually built on an undefinable chimera, are solved by a paradox. Instead of exercising their power of reason they exert their powers of sophistry, and divide and subdivide every subject with such casuistical minuteness, that those who are not convinced, are almost invariably confounded. This custom, it must be granted, is not quite so prevalent as it once was: a general spirit of reform is rapidly diffusing itself; and though I have heard cold-blooded declaimers assert, that these shades of science are become the retreats of ignorance, and the haunts of dissipation, I consider them as the great schools of urbanity, and favourite seats of the belles lettres. By the belles lettres, I mean history, biography, and poetry; that all these are universally cultivated, I can exemplify by the manner in which a highly accomplished young man, who is considered as a model by his fellow-collegians, divides his hours.

“At breakfast I found him studying the marvellous and eventful history of Baron Munchausen; a work whose periods are equally free from the long-winded obscurity of Tacitus, and the asthmatic terseness of Sallust. While his hair was dressing, he enlarged his imagination and improved his morals by studying Doctor what’s his name’s abridgement of Chesterfield’s Principles of Politeness. To furnish hi............