the public, and the newspapers which commonly represent that more talkative portion, have evidently been inclined to interpret this movement of Cambridge as an indication of a most utilitarian system of education coming to supplant the old rules. They anticipate all sorts of civil engineering, butterfly-dissecting, light geology, and a whole Babel of modern languages, to be victoriously let loose on the home where for many a century Wisdom has sat with the scroll of Plato on her knee, and Science has unravelled the wizard lore of fluxion and equation. The senate of Cambridge is egregiously mistaken if it supposes that it will win over to its body the students of these popular branches of knowledge, by following the dictation of the popular taste. Those who want to be civil engineers will not come to a university to learn their art. They will follow Brunel and Stephenson, and see how the work is actually done in practice; and those who do so will soon prove themselves far superior, quoad civil engineering, to the Cambridge-bred theorist. In like manner, a month's flirtation in Paris, or a few games at écarté with a German baron, will teach the student of modern languages more French or German than all the philologists of Oxford, Cambridge, or Eton can impart in a year.

"Quam quisque nôrit artem, in hâc se exerceat."

If the public have mistaken the functions of the university, it is the more incumbent on her to assert them correctly. Nor is the outcry less groundless, that the universities have failed to furnish the best men in law and medicine. With regard to the law, certain gentlemen were even cited by name, in leading articles of newspapers, as types of the class of men who were now taking the lead at the bar, and representing an altogether different school from that trained at the universities. The fact of the university men being supplanted, or being likely to be supplanted, at the bar, may admit of considerable question. But it is not, after all, the question by which the universities are to be judged. They do not undertake to make men great lawyers or skilful physicians; this, where it does belong

to their functions, is a collateral duty, and not the main object of their training. That object is distinctly avowed in their own formularies. That noble clause in the "bidding prayer" will attach itself to the memories of most of those who have heard it :

"And that there never may be wanting a supply of persons duly qualified to serve God, both in Church and State, let us pray for a blessing on all seminaries of sound learning and religious education, particularly the universities of this realm."

A higher end to be attained, perhaps, than that of merely qualifying the student to "get on in the world.' His university education is not so much to enable him to attain those eminent stations which are the prizes of ability and industry, as to fit him to adorn and fill worthily those stations when he has attained them. In truth, we think it is not desirable, any more than necessary, that a degree should be an essential opening to the bar, the profession of medicine, or even the Church. The university is injured by being too much regarded as a step to be got over with the view of reaching some ulterior end.

We dwell on this point with the more interest, because we are satisfied that a still greater responsibility rests with the universities, to guard the fountains of knowledge pure and unsullied, in those days of professed knowledge, than in the so-called dark ages. Our day is rich in the knowledge of facts; there were many truths influencing those men of the times we please to call dark, which we have ignored or forgotten. The general demand for information-for this knowledge of facts-has made it a marketable commodity, a subject of commercial speculation; consequently, a vast deal that is shallow and desultory, a vast deal, too, that is counterfeit and fraudulent, is abroad, made up for the market, and circulates among multitudes who are incapable of separating the grain from the chaff. It is therefore, we repeat, even more important that the sources of learning should be guarded from contamination, now that the antagonistic principles are the knowledge of truth and the subserviency to falsehood, than when, at the revival of literature, the struggle

was between knowledge and igno

rance.

We would have the universities remember that it is their best policy as corporations, as well as a duty they owe to those great medieval spirits who planted them where they stand, to own a better principle than that which would lead them to succumb to what is called popular opinion-in other words, the floating fallacy of the dayand aim at producing the shallow party leaders and favourite writers of the passing moment. They cannot control the frothy surface and the deep under-current at the same time. It would be a sacrifice to expediency which, after all, would not serve their turn. There are institutions which will do that work, and which will beat them in the race. Let all such take their own course.

"Let Gryll be Gryll, and have his hoggish kinde:" let Stinkomalee train the statesmen for the League and the jokers for Punch,-but Oxford and Cambridge have other rôles.

It is true, we are told there is a new aristocracy rising in England, and that the English universities are gaining no hold upon the coming generation of "chiefs of industry." It would be far better for our social condition that these same chiefs of industry should be educated men, and should pass through a training which might tend to neutralise the power of the mercantile iron in entering into their soul. But at present the race to be rich is so strong and hardly contested, that this class is hardly likely, in general, to devote their scions to academical studies of any description; and the merchant or manufacturer who came from the banks of Isis or Cam, at the age of twenty-one, to the Exchange or the Cloth-hall, would find himself starting under a most heavy disadvantage as compared with his neighbour of the same age, who had spent the last three or four years in a counting-house. The reason that this class is not commonly trained in the national seminaries, is to be sought in the habit and requirements of the class, and not in the nature of the education afforded them.

We have spoken chiefly of Cambridge, because Cambridge has put herself forward as the representative

of a system of so-called university reform of a certain movement in the direction of that principle which would accommodate the education of our higher classes to the caprice of a popular cry or cant phrase. We care not so much whether that movement in itself be advantageous or the reverse: it is against the principles supposed to be involved in it that we protest. The report goes, that changes of some kind or other are contemplated at Oxford also. If these changes be made, we trust that they will not be devised in deference to the noisier portion of the public, or to that fondness for short-cuts to knowledge, which fritters away the energies of the rising man in the collection of desultory facts, and the dependence upon shallow plausibilities. The Scottish universities, too, are likely to be put to the test in the same manner as their sisters of the Southern kingdom; and the questions raised cannot be uninteresting to them.

Nor, indeed, can the whole nation be otherwise than deeply concerned in this matter; and we are not surprised at the interest which has been excited by the recent alterations at Cambridge, though not measures in themselves of any great importance. While we have contended for a higher ground on the part of the universities than that of merely finding such knowledge as is required by the popular taste, and happens to be most current in the market, and have called upon them to lead the public mind in these matters, we need hardly say that we must not be understood as failing to see the necessity of those institutions closely observing the shifting relations of our social equilibrium, and adapting their policy by judicious change, if need be, to the circumstances in which they find themselves. We might perhaps adduce the altered position of the Church with respect to the nation at large, as an instance of these changes. We have before hinted that the universities have, as we think, in some degree aimed at being too exclusively the training-schools of the clergy; and this circumstance, in our judgment, so far as England is concerned, has both narrowed the operations of the Church and the influence of the universities. The

was between knowledge and igno

rance.

We would have the universities remember that it is their best policy as corporations, as well as a duty they owe to those great medieval spirits who planted them where they stand, to own a better principle than that which would lead them to succumb to what is called popular opinion-in other words, the floating fallacy of the dayand aim at producing the shallow party leaders and favourite writers of the passing moment. They cannot control the frothy surface and the deep under-current at the same time. It would be a sacrifice to expediency which, after all, would not serve their turn. There are institutions which will do that work, and which will beat them in the race. Let all such take their own course.

"Let Gryll be Gryll, and have his hoggish kinde:" let Stinkomalee train the statesmen for the League and the jokers for Punch,-but Oxford and Cambridge have other rôles.

It is true, we are told there is a new aristocracy rising in England, and that the English universities are gaining no hold upon the coming generation of "chiefs of industry." It would be far better for our social condition that these same chiefs of industry should be educated men, and should pass through a training which might tend to neutralise the power of the mercantile iron in entering into their soul. But at present the race to be rich is o strong and hardly contested, that his class is hardly likely, in general, 10 devote their scions to academical tudies of any description; and the nerchant or manufacturer who came from the banks of Isis or Cam, at the age of twenty-one, to the Exchange or the Cloth-hall, would find himself starting under a most heavy disadvantage as compared with his neighhour of the same age, who had spent the last three or four years in a counting-house. The reason that this class is not commonly trained in the national seminaries, is to be sought in the habit and requirements of the class, and not in the nature of the education afforded them.

We have spoken chiefly of Camridge, because Cambridge has put erself forward resentative

of a system of so-called university reform of a certain movement in the direction of that principle which would accommodate the education of our higher classes to the caprice of a popular cry or cant phrase. We care not so much whether that movement in itself be advantageous or the reverse: it is against the principles supposed to be involved in it that we protest. The report goes, that changes of some kind or other are contemplated at Oxford also. If these changes be made, we trust that they will not be devised in deference to the noisier portion of the public, or to that fondness for short-cuts to knowledge, which fritters away the energies of the rising man in the collection of desultory facts, and the dependence upon shallow plausibilities. The Scottish universities, too, are likely to be put to the test in the same manner as their sisters of the Southern kingdom; and the questions raised cannot be uninteresting to them.

Nor, indeed, can the whole nation be otherwise than deeply concerned in this matter; and we are not surprised at the interest which has been excited by the recent alterations at Cambridge, though not measures in themselves of any great importance. While we have contended for a higher ground on the part of the universities than that of merely finding such knowledge as is required by the popular taste, and happens to be most current in the market, and have called upon them to lead the public mind in these matters, we need hardly say that we must not be understood as failing to see the necessity of those institutions closely observing the shifting relations of our social equilibrium, and adapting their policy by judicious change, if need be, to the circumstances in which they find themselves. We might perhaps adduce the altered position of the Church with respect to the nation at large, as an instance of these changes. We have before hinted that the universities have, as we think, in some degree aimed at being too exclusively the training-schools of the clergy; and this circumstance, in our judgment, so far as England is concerned, has both narrowed the operations of the Church and the influence of the universities. The