NEWS OF THE WEEK.
VJR. GLADSTONE made his great statement on the Irish ill University question to a crowded House on Thursday night in a speech of great skill, and loaded with that lucid and impres- sive detail which, more than anything else, is Mr. Gladstone's 'oratorical secret. A British House of Commons finds pic- turesque detail even more impressive than argument or eloquence. It gives distinct shape to the new proposal, what- ever it may be, and when once a new scheme has taken really distinct shape in English minds, the battle is more than half won. _Mr. Gladstone showed very skilfully how little hold the Queen's Colleges and University had taken in Ireland, how the first great blow at them was struck when Sir Robert Inglis, speaking for the orthodoxy of Oxford, called them "Godless Colleges," and how impossible it was that the orthodoxy of Rome should profess itself content with what the orthodoxy of Oxford had by anticipation condemned. He traced the gradual decline of the demand for University education in Ireland during the last forty years, showing how the Queen's University and Dublin taken together now turn out fewer graduates than the Dublin University formerly did alone ; brought evidence that Trinity College, Dublin, was meant to be the " mother " of a University much more extensive than itself, which University at one time actually did include several Colleges ; and then proceeded to Sketch out his measure.
