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It may be said that the immense expansion of the University, as
distinct from a mere aggregate of colleges, dates from the beginning
of the eighteenth century. Up to that time the colleges had for four
hundred years been steadily growing into privileged corporations,
whose wealth and power had been too great for the Commonwealth, of
which they were in idea only members. With the Georgian era the new
movement began. When Bishop Moore's vast library was presented by
George II. to the _University,_ when the first stone of the
Senate House was laid in 1722, when the _University_ arranged
for the reception of Dr. Woodward's fossils in 1735--these events
marked the beginning of a new order of things. Whatever confusion may
have existed in the minds of our grandfathers, who had a vague
conviction that the University meant no more than the aggregate of
the colleges, and a suspicion that what the University was the
colleges made it--we, in our generation, have been assured that the
colleges owed their existence to the sufferance of universities; or,
if that be putting the case too strongly, that the colleges exist for
the sake of the University. The new view has at any rate gained the
approval of the Legislature; the University is in no danger of being
predominated over by the colleges in the immediate future; the danger
rather is lest the colleges should be starved or at least
impoverished for the glorification of the University, the college-
fellowships being shorn of their dignity and emoluments in order to
ensure that the University officials shall become the exclusive
holders of the richest prizes.
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