Acknowledged without dissent to be the best applied quotation that ever was made within five miles of the Fitzwilliam Museum, it is unfortunately too strictly classical for reproduction in these pages.
We are more easily consoled for the loss of the eloquence which then flowed so full and free in the debates of the Cambridge Union.

In 1820 that Society was emerging from a period of tribulation and repression.
The authorities of the university, who, as old constituents of Mr.Pitt and warm supporters of Lord Liverpool, had never been very much inclined to countenance the practice of political discussion among the undergraduates, set their faces against it more than ever at an epoch when the temper of the time increased the tendency of young men to run into extremes of partisanship.

At length a compromise was extorted from the reluctant hands of the Vice-Chancellor, and the Club was allowed to take into consideration public affairs of a date anterior to the century.

It required less ingenuity than the leaders of the Union had at their command to hit upon a method of dealing with the present under the guise of the past.

Motions were framed that reflected upon the existing Government under cover of a censure on the Cabinets of the previous generation.