The Express.
London, England, 1861-05-23 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY, MAY 23.

iMIIRIIm•E has had a festal day. Tuesday last
was set apart fur the work of conferring degrees of
honour on some of our most notable public men in
different walks in life. It is many years since such
an array of candidates for University favour has
been witnessed in this or any other country. Theo-
logy al id exact science, diplomacy, history, and travel,
alike had their representatives on Tuesday in
the Senate House of Cambridge. The special
claims of each personage were recognised in an
appropriate speech by the Public Orator of the
University ; and it is difficult to conceive
any species of acknowledgment at once so
genuine and so flattering to human effort, self-
sacrifice, and worth as that which was paid
on this occasion to the naturalist and the poli-
tician, the explorer of new regions and the
explorer of ancient archives, the newly made
Bishop of an Oriental diocese and the
veteran mathematician. Public praise, when
accorded in the usual way, is necessarily subject to
a serious drawback either of one kind or other;
and the stoutest self-love cannot be unconscious of
some misgivings as to its desert or its sincerity.
It is customarily paid either in the form of
anonymous tribute, in which case it is hard to be
always sure that the critic is the equal of the ob-
ject of his criticism, or it is rendered personally
and face to face ; and then who can tell how far
private friendship or affection, not to speak of
meaner motives, may contribute to what is always
liable to be called by the unbelieving open •
flattery T The impulse of natural admiration
while deeds of worth are recent is notoriously
untrustworthy ; and the tardy assertion of superi-
ority in a favourite author or personally endeared
master of science is equally liable to be caviled :
at, and not always without reason, as the expres-
sion
of individual preference, or even caprice. '
For the most part, moreover, men of
action and men of letters run their
respective races apart, and are crowned, when vic-
torious, in presence of their competitors only. It ,
is seldom that a place and a company can be
found alike suitable to the bestowal of the chaplet '
upon the victors in dissimilar fields ; still more
rare is the tribunal to whose competence and
authority men whose ways of life and work have
been wholly diverse will end rote bow. The ser-
vices of Lord Sraarroeu or Razscurrs have for
twenty years been discussed in all the bureaux
and salons of Europe, and those of Lord Euils
have been the theme of newspaper articles and
parliamentary debates for a considerable time ;
but it is something new to men of their stamp
to find an Academic Court assembled for
the purpose of pronouncing solemn judg-
ment on their merits, and to see
grave scholars and geometricians gathered
together for the purpose of admitting them by
grace especial into the confraternity of learning.
So in like manner the geologist and grammarian
are accustomed in youth to watch their laurels
growing, and at last to have them wreathed around
their brows, without ever dreaming of a day to
come in which they should stand side by aide with
claimants for the civic crown, and in which the
same hand should dispense to these and those their
appropriate due, in presence of the youth and age,
the wisdom and the beauty, the active ambition
and the beneficed scholarship of their country.
It is only institutions like our great Universities
that have the rare privilege of being able to confer
such rewanla, and to create such exquisite mo-
ments of gratification ; for it is only they whose
impartiality and comprehensiveness can be said to
be equal, and whose intellectual authority and
benevolence can bo said to be undisputed.
Few, we think, will be disposed to take excep-
tien to the distinguished persons whose mimes
are grouped together in this week's chronicles as
having been selected by Cambridge as the special
object' of its favour. The days are gone by when
honorary degrees were wont to be conferred ex-
clusively on men of particular opinions. The
names we published yesterday refute for ever,
were it necessary, all suspicion of the kind as re-
gards our second great seat of learning. The pre-
dominant tone and feeling in the governing body
there is well known ; but we who dissent from
that tone have all the more pleasure in testifying
to the generous freedom from intolerance by which
the Senate of Cambridge at the present day is
honourably characterized. Times are happily
changed sines the present Bishop of Sr. Dsvie's
was dismissed from his tutorship, without inquiry
or appeal, for having dared to sign a
petition in favour of the admission of dissenters
to equal privileges with churchmen, and thereby
driven, not unhappily for the world of letters,
but most disreputably for the character of univer-
sity government as then constituted, to devote less
of his ability to the personal instruction of youth
and more to the composition of works like the
History of Greece. To-day we have another and
still more outspoken investigator of the same
classic annals, Mr. Gam; sought nut by the Uni-
versity to be the recipient of its highest honorary
distinction, and presented spontaneously with the
academic title of LLD., along with ex-ambassa-
dors, theologians, and men of abstract science, in
pretence of the Heir to the Throne, and amid the
plaudits of a great assembly. It is not unworthy
of notice here, that notwithstanding all the
csnservative predilections of Cambridge, testified
not obscurely on this very occasion by the
ejaculations and cheers with which the Senate
House was made to ring on Tuesday
last, the two names which above all com-
parison were must warmly greeted were those
of Lord Euils and Mr. GUM. We also con-
gratulate sincerely those who value the privileges
of the republic of letters apart from those of na-

tinnal literature distinctively considered, that
amongst the honorary degrees conferred on the
present occasion we find that granted to the elo-
quent historian of the Dutch Republic, Mr.
Movir.v. It is a fortunate omen, that at a junc-
ture like the present, when America is rent by
internal conflict, the ancient University of Old
England should choose one of the most eminent
men New England has produced as an especial
object for literary ennoblement. We do not
further dwell on the personal claims of those
who were the recipients of the University ho-
nours during the last few days ; but we cordially
congratulate the men of science and of letters, the
men of action in the Church and in the State, the
men who undertake to chronicle the past, and the
men who essay to shape the future by word and
deed, upon the establishment of a common bro-
therhood of distinction and a common test of
honour.