Maynooth College

“ His first proposal was to increase and make permanent the provision for supporting Maynooth College, where students for the Catholic priesthood were penuriously and inadequately educated. This measure, which was received with applause in Ireland, and with a roar of disapprobation from the English Dissenters, after much resistance became law. The second proposal was of a still larger scope. It was a plan for establishing middle-class education in the Irish provinces. ”

“ MAYNOOTH, a small town of county Kildare, Ireland, on the Midland Great Western railway and the Royal Canal, 15 m. W. by N. of Dublin. Pop. (1901) , 948. The Royal Catholic College of Maynooth, founded by an Act of the Irish parliament in 1795, is the chief seminary for the education of the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland. The building is a fine Gothic structure by A. W. Pugin, erected by a parliamentary grant obtained in 1846. The chapel, with fine oak choir-stalls, mosaic pavements, marble altars and stained glass, and with adjoining cloisters, was dedicated in 1890. ”

“ It has been seen that when the troubled state into which the Continent was thrown by the French Revolution threw hinderances in the way of the Irish students designed for the Roman Catholic priesthood going to one of the great Continental colleges, such as St. Omer or Salamanca, for their education, Pitt established for them a college at Maynooth, for the endowment of which Parliament was annually asked for a grant of about £9000. ”

“ Besides Maynooth, which is amply endowed by the state, and contains 500 or 600 students, all designed for the priesthood, there is the College of All Hallows, at Drumcondra, in which 250 young men are being trained for the foreign mission. ”

“ Omer to try and recover the property of the English college of [83] which he had been the head until the Revolution, but he died there, without having continued his journey to Paris, on the 5th April 1802. A fellow prelate was Dr. Troy, President of Maynooth, and ultimately Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, who was anxious to obtain fuller restitution of the confiscated property of the Irish colleges in France and to re-open them, for Maynooth with its two hundred seminarists was insufficient. He went to Lord Cornwallis, who, however, was unable to help him. ”

“ The capacity for sustained work which distinguished him through life carried him with such success through his college course that at its close in 1857, when only twenty-three years old, he was appointed professor of theology at Maynooth. ”

“ In other countries, so far as my investigations have extended, the universities do guide economic thought and have a distinct though wholly unofficial function as a court of appeal upon questions relating to the material progress of the communities amongst which they are situated. Of such institutions there are in Ireland only two which could be expected to direct in any large way the thought of the country upon economic and other important national questions—Maynooth, and Trinity College, Dublin. ”

“ Nowhere is the system of combining the scientific with the philosophical formation of mind more thoroughly carried out at the present time than in the curriculum of the Philosophical Institute at the University of Louvain. In the College of Maynooth not only is the study of philosophy completed by a fuller course of Christian Theology,—both disciplines thus combining to give the student all the essential elements of a complete Philosophy of Life (ii.) ”

“ It costs very little to get an education at Maynooth. The fees are small,—$20 for matriculation, $25 for tuition, $150 a year for board, and other small fees for electric light, rent of furniture, etc., which brings the total up to about $225 a year. ”

“ I am quite aware of the value of a sound training in mental science if given in connection with a full university course, but I am equally convinced that the Maynooth education, on the whole, is no substitute for a university course, and that while its chief end of turning out a large number of trained priests has been fulfilled, it has not given, and could not be expected to have given, that broader and more humane culture which only a university, as distinguished from a professional school, can adequately provide. ”

“ Having resigned, however, he felt himself at liberty to support Peel's proposal, arguing that, as grants were made by parliament for other religious purposes not connected with the church of England, it was unjust to exclude the church of the majority in Ireland. The grant to Maynooth was part of Peel's general scheme for improving university education in Ireland. He also proposed the foundation of unsectarian institutions, which Sir Robert Inglis called the 'godless colleges.' These also Gladstone defended, on the grounds of justice to Ireland and the interests of higher education. ”

“ It was a curious thing to notice that those who had studied in Maynooth were very much in favor of a Continental education; and those who had been in foreign universities were rather inclined to give the verdict for Maynooth.
"You see," said one, "it is an education in itself to go abroad. It means expansion, and expansion is education. Then you have the immense advantage of being able to learn and master the foreign languages and literature, and nowadays a man that can't speak French at least is a very helpless creature." ”

“ MAYNARD, Sir JOHN (1602–1690) , judge, son of Alexander Maynard of Tavistock and the Middle Temple, barrister-at-law, by Honora, daughter of Arthur Arscott of Tetcott, Devonshire, was born at the Abbey House, Tavistock, in 1602. His name appears in the matriculation register of Exeter College, Oxford, under date 26 April 1621, which clashes unaccountably with the date of his admission to the degree of B.A., 25 April 1621, given in the ‘University Register of Degrees.’ In 1619 he entered the Middle Temple; he was called to the bar in November 1626, and was elected a bencher in 1648. ”

“ What parish priest would raise a memorial to any English victory in the twentieth century?
The greatest curse to the Irish nation has been Maynooth, because it has fostered the ordination of peasants' sons. These are uneducated men who have never been out of Ireland, whose sympathies are wholly with the class from which they have sprung, and who are given no training calculated to afford them a broader view than that of the narrowest class prejudice. ”

“ But this difficulty was probably removed by Henry Beaufort [q. v.] , bishop of Winchester, the visitor of New College, who had been bishop of Lincoln from 1398 to 1404, and might naturally exercise his dispensing power as visitor in favour of the son of a Lincolnshire family. In all his relations with Oxford in adult life Waynflete displayed for New College a regard which was unaccountable if he was himself a member of another society. In 1480 he nominated as president of his new foundation of Magdalen College Richard Mayew, fellow of New College. ”

“ In 1844, when Brantz Mayer was in the capital, the appropriation for the salaries of the professors in the university was $7,613. There was no appropriation for elementary schools. Of the colleges he says, "The students who live within the walls are expected to contribute for their education, while others, who only attend the lectures of the professors, are exempt from all costs and charges; so that about two-thirds of the pupils of every college receive their literary education gratuitously." Colleges appear to have been then as useless as the university ”

“ For while the individual must always vanish in his due time, the College must survive. One fact is certain—after one hundred years of struggle and of ultimate triumph, life still beats strongly in the veins of the University—more actively than in the days of its youth, and more hopefully than at any period in its history. There is a new spirit in McGill. To-day its pulsing life, under the guidance of its great Canadian leader, reaches through all grades and faculties and departments of its students as it has never done before. ”

“ That further inroads upon our young people's faith and life might be prevented, the Mennonite Board of Education became more alert, adopted more drastic measures, until the official roster and faculty of Goshen College was reformed to conform more nearly to the standards of the Church. ”

“ To make good subjects traitors, strain hard? It is to Maynard’s credit that he spent part of his fortune in founding a free school at Bere Alston, which he had represented in Parliament. Maynard and Courtenay are names still pleasantly associated in Tavistock with provision for the deserving poor, in convenient almshouses; whilst an exhibition to help some “Grammar scholar,” “of the best ingenuity and towardliness,” on his way to the University, is a lasting memorial of Sir John Glanvill. ”

“ Young Denis O'Shaughnessy was now pretty nearly finished at school, that is to say, almost fit for Maynooth; his studies, though higher, were less assiduous; his leisure was consequently greater; and it is well known, that a person of his character is never asked to work, except it be his own pleasure to labor a day or two, by way of amusement. ”

“ It is a period in university life which sees, as a rule, an undreamed of growth and development from small beginnings to unlimited influence, from scanty resources and great disappointments to a large if not always adequate endowment and equipment, from a merely local service to a national and even a world educational power. This is distinctly true of the century of McGill University's story. It began as a College, intended to minister to a very small community. It has grown in one hundred years to serve the world. ”

“ It was only to raise enough money to see Myles properly through college. Then he would go into business and soon be in a position to help them, said Mr. Manning. He also said there was nothing in the world like college for a young man. Besides the education that it gave him, he made friends in college that were friends for life and always ready to help one another. Every thing depended, though, upon the set he got into. It must be the very best in the college, to be worth any thing at all. ”

“ The Founder’s Tower Magdalen College
be taught Logic and Sophistry by the college lecturers, whilst three “Readers,” in Natural and Moral Philosophy and Theology, chosen out of the University, were to provide the higher teaching in Arts and Theology. And all this teaching, in Theology and Philosophy and also in Grammar, was to be given free to all comers at the expense of the college.
In 1481 Waynflete, full of pride in his new foundation, “the most noble and rich structure in the learned world,” persuaded Edward IV. to come over from Woodstock and see it. ”

“ The connection between the high school and the university still gives rise to troublesome problems, not alone in this country. The ideals of the older American university are often at variance with the systematic development of education below the university and the demands of the people. The state university has come nearer than any other to the solution. While Harvard and Yale met the growing demands of science by establishing separate schools, Michigan introduced the scientific course into the college, making it rank with the classical. ”

“ These smaller colleges fulfil a special mission, therefore, and they do their best when they do not try to seem more than they really are. There was the danger that the colleges would think themselves improved by introducing some fragments of research work into their curriculum, and so spoiling a good humanitarian college by offering a bad imitation of a university. ”

“ Students who have been trained abroad have their ideas widened and their manners polished, as is hardly possible in the case of those who leave their villages to be trained at Maynooth, whence they are sent to recommence village life as parish priests. ”

“ In middle life Mayne definitely abandoned poetry. In 1639 he accepted the college living of Cassington, near Woodstock, but during the civil war he was chiefly in Oxford, and often preached before the king. ”

“ And indeed it is quite certain that, unless this bill, or some similar bill, be passed, a new college will soon be founded and endowed with that munificence of which the history of the Free Church furnishes so many examples. From the day on which such an university arises, the old universities must decline. Now, they are practically national, and not sectarian, institutions. And yet, even now, the emoluments of a professorship are so much smaller than those which ability and industry can obtain in other ways, that it is difficult to find eminent men to fill the chairs. ”

“ I feel that in your straitened condition, having to make a new appeal for students and for friends to re-endow your College, you are entitled to every possible advantage in your arduous undertaking. A son of the College, I love her too well, and the church which has founded and supported her in the past, to stand in the way of any possible effort that may give prestige to your labors to put her once more on the high road to prosperity. ”

“ Miss Meiggs put her fork viciously into the neglected rarebit. In the uncomfortable pause, Mrs. Perkins flutteringly passed her the cayenne pepper, but Miss Meiggs ignored the courtesy. She turned to Pellams.
"Even a love-affair," she snapped, "would benefit you more than the substitute you have [Pg 142] chosen! You are a nice one to argue the refinement of the college girl! Are you refining yourself, your fraternity or your favorite side of the student-body by carousing at Mayfield and carrying the viciousness of that town to others where you may represent the University?" ”

“ To take up again the thread of my story, I pass from childhood to my youth. My winters, up to the age of about sixteen, were given to [26] school,—the common district-school,—and my summers, to assisting my father on the farm; after that, for a year or two, my whole time was devoted to preparing for college. For this purpose I went first, for one year, to a school taught in Sheffield by Mr. William H. Maynard, afterwards an eminent lawyer and senator in the State of New York. He came among us with the reputation of being a prodigy in knowledge; he was regarded as a kind of walking library ”