The life of Edward Gibbon Author:Edward Gibbon Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Enters a Gentleman Commoner at Magdalen College, Oxford.—Remarks on that University.—Some Account of Magdalen College.—Character of Dr. Waldegrav... more »e, Mr. Gibbon's first Tutor.—The Author determines to write an History; its Subject.— Solution of a Chronological Difficulty.—Mr. Gibbon is converted to the Roman Catholic Religion; cites the Examples of Chillingworth andBayle; their Characters. —Mr. Gibbon obliged to leave Oxford.—Father Remarks on the University. A Traveller, who visits Oxford or Cambridge, ig surprised and edified by the apparent order and tranquillity that prevail in the seats of the English muses. In the most celebrated universities of Holland, Germany, and Italy, the students, who swarm from different countries, are loosely dispersed in private lodgings at the houses of the burghers : they dress according to their fancy and fortune; and in the intemperate quarrels of youth and wine, their swords, though less frequently than of old, are sometimes stained with each other's blood. The use of arms is banished from our English universities ; the uniform habit of the academies, the square cap, and black gown, is adapted to the civil and even clerical profession; and from the doctor in divinity to the undergraduate, the degrees of learning and age are externally distinguished. Instead of being scattered in a town, the students of Oxford and Cambridge are united in colleges ; their maintenance is provided at their own expense, or that of the founders; and the stated hours of the hall and chapel represent the discipline of a regular, and, as it were, a religious community. The eyes of the traveller are attracted by the size or beauty of the public edifices : and the principal colleges appear to be so many palaces, which a liberal nation has erected and end...« less