inter-relations to be defined, and conventional rules to be established,
in the process, by which the whole assemblage is moulded together, and
gains one tone and one character.

Let it be clearly understood, I repeat it, that I am not taking into
account moral or religious considerations; I am but saying that that
youthful community will constitute a whole, it will embody a specific
idea, it will represent a doctrine, it will administer a code of
conduct, and it will furnish principles of thought and action. It will
give birth to a living teaching, which in course of time will take the
shape of a self-perpetuating tradition, or a _genius loci_,[18] as it is
sometimes called; which haunts the home where it has been born, and
which imbues and forms more or less, and one by one, every individual
who is successively brought under its shadow. Thus it is that,
independent of direct instruction on the part of superiors, there is a
sort of self-education in the academic institutions of Protestant
England; a characteristic tone of thought, a recognised standard of
judgment is found in them, which, as developed in the individual who is
submitted to it, becomes a twofold source of strength to him, both from
the distinct stamp it impresses on his mind, and from the bond of union
which it creates between him and others,--effects which are shared by
the authorities of the place, for they themselves have been educated in
it, and at all times are exposed to the influence of its ethical
atmosphere. Here then is a real teaching, whatever be its standards and
principles, true or false; and it at least tends towards cultivation of
the intellect; it at least recognises that knowledge is something more
than a sort of passive reception of scraps and details; it is a
something, and it does a something, which never will issue from the most
strenuous efforts of a set of teachers with no mutual sympathies and no
intercommunion, of a set of examiners with no opinions which they dare