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[Aetat. 16-18 ] J O Y C E v1898-I9OOYou were bred, fed, fostered and fattened from holy childhood up in thistwo easter island . . . and now, forsooth, a nogger among the blankardsof this dastard century, you have become of twosome twiminds forenenstgods, hidden and discovered, nay, condemned fool, anarch, egoarch, hiresiarch,you have reared your disunited kingdom on the vacuum of yourown most intensely doubtful soul.—Finnegans Wake (188)University College, Dublin, when Joyce attended it, was struggling fordistinction. The early years of the college, 1which John Henry Newmanfounded as the Catholic University in 1853, were halting and tentative.Newman himself was unable to continue his work with it; he went backto England in 1857, and resigned the rectorship a year later. For the nextfifteen years the university languished because it had neither private endowmentnor governmental support. It occupied a diminishing part ofsome magnificent houses on Stephen's Green, and the faded splendor ofBuck Whaley's Mansion at No. 88—the principal college building—seemed an index of the college's decline. A new rector devised grandioseplans for building a great university on the outskirts of Dublin, in thestyle of Oxford or Cambridge, but nothing came of them.The university's chief hope lay in Parliament. After many delays, andlargely because of the proddings of Irish members, a rather inadequateUniversities bill was passed in 1879. The government was willing to providefor higher education in Ireland, and recognized that Trinity Collegewas too small and Protestant to serve the many Catholic students. But itwished to insure that higher education be as secular as possible. The billtherefore provided ingeniously for support of University College (a newname for Catholic University), but as a part of the Royal University, notas an autonomous unit. The Royal University would be the examiningbody for constituent colleges in Dublin, Cork, Galway, and Belfast. Examinationswould be in secular subjects, so that if students were obliged57