bygone will more naturally be found to be a characteristic of the universities, than of other corporations. The spots which they occupy are holy ground, fraught with historic memories of the great and wise of former days. The genius loci is a mighty advocate in behalf of antiquity :"As the ghost of Homer clings Round Scamander's wasting springs; As divinest Shakspeare's might Fills Avon and the world with light;" -so we may not well pass unaffected by the congregation of priest, and poet, and sage, whose recollections consecrate the banks of our academic rivers. As we go beneath "Bacon's mansion," or about Milton's mulberry tree; as we kneel where Newton knelt, or dine in halls where the portraits of Erasmus, and Fisher, and Taylor, look down upon us,-these are not times and places for the dogmatism and arrogance of "the nineteenth century" for bragging of our advance and illumination, or sneering at "the good old times." This is in accordance with the law of our nature; but these recollections, and the lessons which they teach, are not, if rightly laid hold of, such as to induce a mere blind attachment to the skeletons of dead notions and practices. And although it may, perhaps must, happen that, at any given time, there may be found relics adhering to the system, whose vitality and meaning have been withdrawn by time, and left them dry and sapless, yet we will venture to assert that, if a dogged adherence to antiquated forms could fairly be charged on the universities, they could never have maintained their ground amidst the mighty historical transmutations that have passed overtheir heads. Civil wars and popular tumults have raged around them; the throne has yielded to violence and to intrigue; the Church has admitted modifications, both of her doctrine and her discipline; and, more than all, the still more important, though silent and gradual changes-changes to which the striking and salient events of history are but the indexes and visible signs-changes of thought and rule of action-have risen and sunk, and ebbed and flowed, and still these stable monuments of the piety and munificence of men whose names are almost unknown, remain unshorn of their ancient vigour, and intimately entwined with our social system. But it is time that we should come to particulars, and make known to our readers, as briefly as we can, the nature of the alterations recently introduced at Cambridge, which have called forth so much objurgatory commendation from quarters, which were commonly considered to entertain tolerably destructive views in regard to the universities. We say objurgatory commendation, because the faint praise of a "move in the right direction" was generally more or less coupled with vigorous denunciation of the antiquated obstinacy which had so long kept in the wrong. And here we must premise the statement of certain qualities of the age in which we live, which will have fallen under the notice of all observers. Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of our time is the principle which forms the life and soul of retail tradethe principle which sets men to busy themselves about small and immediate returns for outlay; which looks more to the gains across the counter, than to the advantage which is general, or distant, or future. In a word, practicality is the ruling passion of our day. As might have been expected, education, among other things, has been subjected to this huckstering test. People have asked, what is the market value of this or that branch of learning? Will it get a boy on in the world? Will it enable him to provide for himself soon? Will the returns for the expenditure I am going to make be quick and certain? Cowper represents the father of a son intended for the church as speculating on his young hopeful's prospects after the following fashion : "Let reverend churls his ignorance rebuke, Who starve upon a dog's-eared Pentateuch, The parson knows enough who knows a duke." In these days the acquaintance of a duke is not of the same relative value as it was when Cowper wrote; but this sort of worldly-wise calculation is more prevalent than ever, and the cry of the largest class of the public is-give us such knowledge as will pay. Those who took this commercial view of education derived no small encour course, did not substitute a work of some one of the logical or philosophical authors current in the English language, for the shallow and plausible book of Paley's above mentioned difficult to say whether it is worse chosen as a model of reasoning, or as a proof of Christian facts. agement from the circumstance that Prince Albert, the learned field-marshal, and warlike chancellor of Cambridge University, had interfered to promote the culture of modern languages in these venerable pre--with regard to which it would be cincts of Eton, where for many a year Henry's holy shade had watched the growth of an education of less obvious utility. How was young Thomas or William "the better off" for being able to con "the tale of Troy divine?" But teach him to mince a little French, simper a little Italian, snarl a little German, and there he is at once accomplished for an attaché, a correspondent, or a bagman-profitable walks of life all of them. And the same notions mounted still higher in the ascendant, when the senate of the University of Cambridge apparently evinced a desire to examine the requirements of that body by the same standard. The first step of this kind was taken about three years ago. Most of our readers are aware that, at Cambridge, those candidates for a degree who do not aspire to honours are said to go out in the poll; this being the abbreviated term to denote those who were classically designated of rooi. Now the qualifications required for attaining this poll degree consisted of an acquaintance with a part of Homer, a part of Virgil, a part of the Greek Testament, and Paley's Evidences of Christianity, over and above the mathematics, of which we shall speak presently. By what curious infelicity the recondite, and, in many particulars, inexplicable language of Homer has been so commonly selected for beginners in Greek at school, and, as in this case, for those who were not expected to appear as accomplished scholars we need not here stop to inquire. Suffice it to say that the university, in this initial reform, ousted Homer and Virgil from the course, and supplied their places with a Latin and Greek author, to be varied in each successive year. This was decidedly an improvement, at least as regards Homer, for the reason we have alluded to above. Perhaps a better innovation would have been to have followed the Oxford system, and allowed to the student a choice of his author. But it is a great misfortune that the university, in recasting this The mathematical portion of this course consisted of Euclid, algebra, and trigonometry, the student being thus trained in the model processes of pure mathematical reasoning left us by the first, and also brought acquainted with the elementary operations of analysis. As a matter of mental training, the most valuable portion of this curriculum was the knowledge acquired of the geometrical processes employed by Euclid, as familiarising the mind of the student with the severest forms of reasoning, and the steps whereby indubitable verity is attained. This portion, however, was most especially selected for curtailment by the reforms to which we are alluding. In the stead of the requirements thus displaced, a motley amount of elementary propositions in statics, dynamics, and hydrostatics, were substituted-useful information enough as instances of the simpler applications of the analytical machinery of mathematics, but comparatively worthless as an exercise of the mind. Country clergymen, whose forgotten mathematics loomed grandly on their minds through the mist of years, were confounded with disappointment at beholding their sons, in whom they expected to find philosophers, return to them with an examination paper, apparently rather calculated to unfold the mysteries of engineering, well-sinking, and carpentering. This object-the practicability and immediate utility of the studies pursued, in preference to the superiority of mental training derivable from them-seems to be simply that which has dictated the recent innovations of 1848. The principle which entered into both measures may easily be traced in the prevalent phases of literature and science throughout the public at large. A few years ago, every one fancied himself a philosopher. Little volumes, cabinet cyclopædias and the like, swarmed on the booksellers' shelves, containing a string of disjointed and bald scientific facts, involving no truth and expressive of no law, but more or less adroitly arranged under several heads, with a savant air. The man of business-the apprentice-the boardingschool miss-took it into their heads that a royal road was thus opened to all branches of useful and entertaining knowledge, that the acquirements of Bacon were "in this wonderful age" brought within the reach of every one who had an occasional hour or two in the day to spare from more mechanical employments; and that the progress from ignorance to philosophy was as much facilitated by these little-book contrivances, as the journey from London to Birmingham, by the rushing railway-train, was an advance upon the week's toil of our forefathers in • accomplishing the same space. Much of this mania for desultory knowledge has evaporated, but its influences are still distinctly to be traced among us. It is not surprising that those influences should in some measure have affected the universities. In accordance with the popular notions afloat, the Cambridge legislators followed up the alteration which we have been describing by the adoption of their recent measures, by which they effected an extension of their field of "honours" similar to that which they had already accomplished in the qualifications for the ordinary degree. To the old "triposes," or classes of honours in mathematics and classics, they have now added two morenamely, one in moral sciences and one in natural sciences. Before, however, we offer any conjectures as to the probable effect of these yet untried changes, we must remind our readers of a certain characteristic of the Cambridge system, which is important in estimating the internal relations of the late reforms. The academic life of Cambridge circulates through two concurrent systems, which we may term the university and the collegiate system. The university is one corporation, and each individual college is altogether another. The union between the two systems might be dissolved without difficulty. If the university were to abandon her ancient seat, and take up some new abode, as she did for a time at Northampton some centuries ago, the colleges might still remain as places of education, with but little modification of their present character. The older system-the university - has had its functions gradually absorbed in a great measure by the collegiate. The earliest form in which Cambridge appears, dimly seen in hoar antiquity, is that of a congregation of students, commonly living together for mutual convenience in hostels, governed by a code of statutes, and endowed with the privilege of granting degrees. Then came the founders of colleges, with their noble endowments, and reared edifices, in which societies of these students should live together under a common rule, and form distinct corporations by themselves, for purposes connected with, and auxiliary to, those of the university. The latter body has from time immemorial matriculated only those who were already members of some one or other of the colleges; but there probably was a time at which a student in the university was not necessarily a member of any college, until by degrees these foundations absorbed into their composition the whole of the academic population. By-and-by, the principal part of the functions of teaching also lapsed into the hands of the colleges. In the old times, the university discharged this duty by means of the public readings or lectures by the newly admitted masters of arts, (termed regents,) and by the keeping of acts and opponencies -being certain vivâ voce disputations -by the students. To this system, comprehending the main studies of the place, was superadded, by individual endowment or royal beneficence, the collateral information on special subjects given by the professors. The colleges were altogether subsidiary to this mode of instruction -the practice being that every student who enrolled himself in the ranks of a particular college, must do so under the charge of some one of the fellows of the college, who became a kind of private tutor to him. Hence arose college tutors; and as their lectures, given in each separate college, were found to be the most efficient aids in prosecuting the university studies, the readings of the masters of arts gradually fell altogether into disuse, and the vivâ voce exercises of the students have nearly done so. Possibly, along with the transfer of the functions of lecturing from the university regents to the college tutors, the professorial chairs may also have declined in importance as an element of the academic education. But, as we have before seen, these were never the main vehicle for the dispensation of knowledge on the part of the university. Nevertheless, we suspect that one object of the recently erected triposes is to revive the importance of the professors' lectures in the university course. For it is now required that every one who presents himself as a candidate for the ordinary or poll degree, shall have attended the lectures of some one of the professors at his individual choice; and these lectures will, moreover, be necessary guides in the studies required of those who aim at the honours of the new triposes. It seems clear, therefore, that the devisers of the scheme had it in contemplation, through the medium of their changes, to fill the class-rooms of the professors, and so far to assimilate the modern system to the ancient, by bringing the university instruction into more active play. We are disposed to question the wisdom of these proceedings. Until now, the university and the colleges had apportioned their several functions, by assigning to the latter the duty of imparting proficiency in the studies cultivated; to the former, that of testing proficiency attained. The two systems had thus harmonised, as we believe, in conformity with the requirements of the age by lapse of time; and if it was deemed desirable to disturb this arrangement, and restore the faculty of teaching to the university, this should rather have been done, we think, by reviving the system of vivâ voce disputations, now altogether disused except in the progress to a degree in law, physic, or divinity; but which would form, under proper regulations, an important adjunct to the ordinary course, by cultivating a decision, a readiness, and an ingenuity in reasoning, which are comparatively left dormant by a written examination. Again, it is, as we consider, altogether a mis take to suppose that the primary end of a professorial existence is to deliver lectures. The endowment of a professorship is rather, as we take it, to enable the holder of it to give up his time to the particular science to which he is devoted; and it is by no means necessary, especially in these days, when words are so easily winged by the printer's devil, that the results of his labours should be given forth by oral lectures. At the same time, when his subject, and his manner of treating it, were such as to command interest, he was at no loss for an audience. The professorships, however, being mostly established for the purpose of aiding the pursuit of the inductive sciences, side by side with the severer studies of the university, fell under the patronage of the spirit of the age. Whether the sciences, for the promotion of which they were founded, will be materially advanced by this sort of protection," " remains to be seen. It is likely enough, we think, that some confusion may arise from this revival of the lecturing powers of the university. This, however, will be easily obviated in practice, as the two systems have never, so far as we are aware, manifested anything like a mutual antagonism or jealousy of each other. A greater practical difficulty is one which appears to be left untouched by the new regime. We allude to the growing plan of instruction by private tutors-a calling which has sprung up, in the strictest principles of demand and supply, to meet the eagerness for external aid which has been induced by the great competition for university honours. The existence and increasing importance of the class of private tutors has been decried as an evil; and it, no doubt, enhances considerably the expenses attendant on a college education. But, after all, this is only part and parcel of the lot which has fallen to us in these latter days of merry England. There are so many of us, and we keep so constantly adding to our numbers, that we must not be surprised at more pushing and contrivance being required to realise a livelihood than heretofore; and as the end to be attained increases in its relative importance, the outlay attendant on its attainment will, in the ordinary course of things, be aug mented also. It is not our intention, however, to discuss at this time the merits or demerits of the private-tutor system; it suffices for our purpose to notice it as the reappearance, in another form, of the old functions of instruction, as lodged in the hands of the university regents. As the collegiate system gradually supplanted that pristine form, so the office of the private tutors is, to a certain extent, supplanting the collegiate system. These instructors are likely, as we before said, to occupy, under the new rules, much the same place as they held under the old; and indeed it appears that, whether desirable or not, it would be extremely difficult to get rid of them; at all events the colleges, being now trenched upon by the university professors on the one hand, and by the private tutors on the other, must exert themselves to ascertain their proper functions, and to fulfil them with zeal and energy. As for the new triposes themselves, it may be doubted whether the name given to them is not the most unfortunate part of them. The common name of Tripos looks like a confusion of ideas on the part of the university itself, and a want of discrimination between its old studies and its new. At first, probably, the recent triposes will be comparatively neglected, and on that ground alone it is both misjudging and unfair to include in the same category of "honours" and "tripos," classes which are respectively the subject of ardent competition and of none at all. But supposing that the new classes attracted their fair share of competitors, it would still be a grievous fault in the university to hold out to the world so false an estimate of the vehicle of mental training, as it would appear to do by placing on a par the new studies and the old-by assuming, or seeming to assume, that ratiocinative thought may be as well employed about the fallacies of Mr Ricardo, as the exact reasoning and indubitable verities of Euclid and Newton; or that the faculties of discrimination and speculation may be unfolded by the getting up" of botanical or chemical nomenclature, not less than by the new world of thought opened through the authors of Greece and VOL. LXV.-NO. CCCC. Rome. We must, however, confess that we are now taking the most unfavourable view of the matter. With respect, indeed, to the natural sciences' tripos, we cannot help being fully of opinion, that it should have been distinctly recognised as subsidiary to the main vehicles of education adopted at Cambridge. But the moral sciences' tripos furnishes, if properly constructed, an excellent means for training thought. It is a great misfortune that the study of Aristotle has been suffered at Cambridge to fall almost into desuetude: we speak of the philosophical study of his works in contradistinction to the philological. The former is maintained at Oxford with great success; thus combining, with Oxford scholarship, a training of the reasoning powers which is almost an equivalent for the mathematical studies of her sister university. Moreover, the literature of Great Britain boasts of a band of moral philosophers far greater than any other modern nation can produce. The works of Butler, Cudworth, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, and Stewart, with many others, form a group of authorities worthy of the groves of Academus. The metaphysics of Locke-we should rather say, the wall which Locke has built up between the English mind and the science of metaphysics-has too long prevented the moral reasoners of this country from duly availing themselves of the treasures at their command. Under the guidance of such lights as those we have enumerated, we may hope to see a school of metaphysical thinkers arise in England, whose exertions may dissipate the mist of half-thought in which Teutonic speculation has involved the science of its choice. If, however, the tap-root of our metaphysical thought is to be cut through by the study of the plausibilities of Locke and Paley, (no very unlikely issue, we should fear, at least under present circumstances,) then this moral sciences' tripos also is one of those things which had better never have been. We repeat that Cambridge has incurred great blame, if she has allowed herself to mislead, or to seem to mislead, the popular mind on these matters. The more talkative portion of Q |