Oxford Unmasked, or an Attempt to Describe Some of the Abuses in That University, by a Graduate; To Which Is Added, a New Preface of Considerable Length (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1850 edition. Excerpt: ... containing notes of a lecture on divinity, given by an eminent (?) professor of that University. Mercy on us how the worthy gentleman stared, as he contemplated the nature of his son's studies. For dissipation he had been prepared, --he had heard of it. For expense, he had already suffered. For the absence of all study, he had had some reason to suspect it. But for This to find a young man, I who had distinguished himself in some degree by his literary efforts, previous to his entering into College life, employed in carefully penning down, without any exercise of intellect, imagination, or even of memory, a series of trivial facts, the least absurd of which would be unworthy of the mistress or pupil of a Sunday-school Poor man he almost raved. We will not take upon ourselves to say thatj he did not swear a round oath. If he did, we doubt not but that, like that of Sterne's hero, it will be excused and blotted out by the recording angel. 0 Religion whose proudest temple is in the hearts of those of an humble and contrite spirit, --who inhabitest Heaven, but despisest not the meanest cottage, --thou, who leadest us from nature up to nature's God, and who, in the sacred pages of Revelation, hast taught us "to visit the fatherless and widow in their affliction, and to%eep ourselves unspotted from the world," how is thy sacred name perverted and abused at Oxford What shall we say of the Classical Lectures, but that they are the most desultory, imperfect, and useless conceivable? We never, during our whole experience as an undergraduate, met with more than one instance to the contrary. Shall we tell of one man, who got through ten lines of Cicero's letters to Atticus in about as many weeks? How, then, was the thing kept up? Why, by a dropping fire, ...