the clergy were commissioned by Heaven to vindicate the rights of the
people, and to stand between them and the tyranny of Mammon. I did not
care to answer him that the "Catholic Church" had always been a Church of
slaves, and not of free men; that the clergy had in every age been the
enemies of light, of liberty; the oppressors of their flocks; and that to
exalt a sacerdotal caste over other aristocracies, whether of birth or
wealth, was merely to change our tyrants. When he told me that a clergyman
of the Established Church, if he took up the cause of the working classes,
might be the boldest and surest of all allies, just because, being
established, and certain of his income, he cared not one sixpence what he
said to any man alive, I did not care to answer him, as I might--And more
shame upon the clergy that, having the safe vantage-ground which you
describe, they dare not use it like men in a good cause, and speak their
minds, if forsooth no one can stop them from so doing. In fact, I was
distrustful, which I had a right to be, and envious also; but if I had a
right to be that, I was certainly not wise, nor is any man, in exercising
the said dangerous right as I did, and envying my cousin and every man in
Cambridge.

But that evening, understanding that a boating supper, or some jubilation
over my cousin's victory, was to take place in his rooms, I asked leave to
absent myself--and I do not think my cousin felt much regret at giving me
leave--and wandered up and down the King's Parade, watching the tall gables
of King's College Chapel, and the classic front of the Senate House, and
the stately tower of St. Mary's, as they stood, stern and silent, bathed in
the still glory of the moonlight, and contrasting bitterly the lot of those
who were educated under their shadow to the lot which had befallen me.
[Footnote: It must be remembered that these impressions of, and comments on
the universities, are not my own. They are simply what clever working men
thought about them from 1845 to 1850; a period at which I had the fullest