Now, if this be the case with the British dominions generally, and with the British metropolis, where every species of talent has the means of being stimulated to the greatest exertion, and where every exertion meets with the most ample reward, much more must it be the case in the Athens, where there is not only no adequate remuneration for the labours of learning, but where there is a more honoured and rewarded pursuit, constantly soliciting the choice, not only of the Athenian, but of the Scottish talent generally, away from it. It cannot be hoped, that when a man of very ordinary talents can get a comfortable living and honourable distinction in society, by managing the estates of Scotch lairds, or the causes of Scotch litigants, men of superior ability will consent to starve in obscurity for the love of learning or of science. Mankind have become to the full as mercenary in their intellectual as in their civil marriages; and the Athenian muses, like the Athenian maidens, pine in unwooed neglect, because they have no dowry.
The Athenian University was long the boast of the Athens, not only as a school of philosophy, and a school of medicine, but as a general school of learning; and, with the exception, perhaps, of the latter, the titles were, in the case of a few illustrious men, well earned. Those times have, however, gone by, and the Athenian university, pressed down by the general circumstances of the Athens, and yet more by the peculiar circumstances of its own patronage, has sunk to rise no more.
Universities, indeed, have much of the general character of stars,--they shine brightest when all else is dark, and fade, if they do not disappear, when illumination becomes general. While the people, generally speaking, are ignorant, they are lights in the path of learning; but when the people become generally well informed, they are not much better than lumber. This would be their fate in general illumination, under any circumstances; but it is peculiarly so, in the circumstances under which--or rather, in spite of which, knowledge is at present spreading over the British dominions. The same cause which renders abstract studies unprofitable, must render the systems of universities unpopular, except in so far as the name of being there is necessary for professional purposes; and where the name is all that men actually need, they will not burden themselves with much of the thing named. If it were not that there are such things as fellowships, fat dinners, facilities for juvenile dissipation, church and other livings, a key to certain offices, and a general nominal eclât, which in so far serves as a substitute for real information, it is very possible that several halls in Oxford and Cambridge would be abandoned to bats and spiders,--that “the two eyes of England” would be left “for daws to peck at;” and it was pretty plain to me, from the general tenour of the Athenian feeling, as expressed in the Athenian speech, that, if the attendance of certain classes of her university were not required for those who plaster the consciences of Caledonian sinners, and who bring down the tone of the Caledonian pulse, or the Caledonian purse, her learned Thebans would be allowed to deliver their prelections to the stones in the wall, and the beam of the timber. In as far, therefore, as I could see and reason from circumstances, there is much, both in the feeling of the people in the Athens, and in the causes by which that feeling is produced, to render the decline of learning certain on the one hand, while there is little or nothing of a counteracting tendency on the other.