Doubts about the Future.

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the colleges had always been of the same importance as now. It is only when practical reform is mentioned that they maintain the essential distinctness of the larger and smaller corporations.

Still, though we have no doubt about the legality of University regeneration, and as little about its abstract desirableness, we confess that we cannot share in the sanguine hope with which the reforming party appears to look forward to the future. The ablest among the residents are inclined to change, and the Government is just now disposed to second their wishes; but other conditions must concur before the result can be produced. Even such a sketch as we have been giving may teach us not to calculate too confidently on the prospects of the higher education in England, by reminding us that there was a time when the two Universities were all but depopulated, and would have fallen into utter ruin, if the Colleges had not saved them. It is not, however, from brooding over the past, but from looking abroad on the present, that we are inclined to speak despondently, where others, having the same sympathies and desires with ourselves, are indulging in cheerful anticipation. We feel that there is something ungracious in thus placing ourselves out of harmony with the mass of University reformers, especially at a moment like this, and damping the expectations which may seem to be so reasonably entertained. Yet this would be a poor reason for declining to express convictions which, if well grounded, are of the more importance the less generally they are received. It is not too much to ask our friends to join us in considering what, under all the circumstances, may be assumed to be the chances of the English Universities in the future.

It is perfectly true that the requirements of University education are far better understood than they have been for many hundred years-perhaps than they have ever been. It is true, too, that attempts are likely to be made to raise the practice of the Universities somewhat nearer to the level of this exalted theory; and that the feeling prevalent without, in the public press and among intelligent men, is rather in advance than in arrear of that within. These are, unquestionably, facts, and we should be loth to believe them wholly without prophetic significance. No one will be so unjust as to think of comparing Oxford and Cambridge with their former selves in the eighteenth century, or to underrate the advantage of having got rid of the reign of "prejudice and port," of superficial scholarship and unscientific theology. But there is one thing which the Universities of the eighteenth century had, and the modern Universities have not; and that, in our apprehension, counterbalances all the rest as a pledge of permanence. At the time when Oxford went mad after Sacheverell, and the "loyal body" of the sister insti

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tution "wanted learning," they were the real educators of the nation. They may have done their duty ill by the higher classes, and neglected the lower altogether; they may have chilled fervent piety, and discouraged adventurous thought; but they were, nevertheless, the resort of all those who expected to play a considerable part in the world, the exclusive and unquestioned dispensers of licenses to the barrister, the physician, and the clergyman. Positively, they were far inferior to that which they have since become; comparatively, they must be reckoned superior. It is not, we believe, from any fault in the Universities that they now appear to be unequal to the wants of the age, great as those faults have been, and many as are the deficiencies which have still to be remedied. It is not even that, while they have improved, the rest of England has advanced in a far greater proportion-though that is both true in itself, and important with reference to their present position; it is because the half century which is just drawing to an end has, as we are about to shew, developed tendencies wholly alien to them-tendencies which they not only have not mastered, but, from the nature of the case, are never likely to master.

The Commercial element of English life, which, a hundred years ago, or less, was but of comparatively small moment. politically and socially, is now becoming the chief power in the country; and in proportion as it rises, the old Universities, as it seems to us, are likely to decline. We must beg not to be misunderstood, as though we were echoing the vulgar aspersions which are frequently thrown on the supposed illiteracy of the mercantile and manufacturing classes. The ability which they display in Parliament is enough to vindicate them from any such wholesale charge, even if it did not, by its obvious one-sidedness, refute itself. Their zeal for education is seen not only in the provision frequently made for their operatives, but in the local institutions which they have originated for the benefit of their own order. Yet we cannot help feeling that the education which they are encouraging is anything but that distinctively known as University education. It may resemble it in certain outward particulars, such as in the prominence given to lectures, that being the most expeditious mode of communicating instruction, but the similarity will soon be lost in the difference. Knowledge picked up during the intervals of business, however miscellaneous, can never be compared to that which is acquired during a course of terms professedly devoted to learning, and to learning only. As the Greeks would say, they must follow it as a mapeрyov, not as an epyov-not at the Universities, but at their own homes, in their own manufacturing towns, when the labours of the day are over. In this respect, the same necessity

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presses on the master and on the workman. Neither can afford to spend the years from eighteen or nineteen to one or two and twenty in the mere acquisition of knowledge. It is a singular fatality that has fixed the usual time of entering the Universities so much later than it was three hundred years ago, when delay was of so much less consequence. A boy-bachelor, like Wolsey, might enter the office or the counting-house, without suffering in the least in his worldly prospects, except so far as the bent communicated to his mind might disqualify him for a purely practical employment. Experience, however, has decided, and wisely, that the higher parts of education are more favourably received when the mind is more matured. The lower and more rudimentary parts are allotted to school, which has a distinct province of its own, not to be confounded with the academic field. School is the only time that the young manufacturer, who is destined to add to the fruits of his father's industry, and not merely to enjoy them, will have for the undisturbed cultivation of learning; and even then he will probably be removed away at an earlier age than that at which his companions are removed to college. No reform which the Universities can carry, or their friends propose, will enable them to meet this. They may open their gates to all denominations, but they cannot receive many accessions from the middle class Dissenters, whose bread comes from the warehouse or the cotton-mill. They may stimulate their professorships of mechanics and chemistry into intenser life, and add to them others designed to teach the more practical sciences, but it will not avail them, even though they make a First Class in artibus utilioribus as honourable as one in polite letters is now considered. No increased facilities of learning will allure those who feel that learning for them is a waste of time, except so far as it comes through practical experience. In a word, men are not likely to avail themselves of any preparation, however complete, for a life which they have already begun some years before. But this is not all. We speak of the commercial interest and the commercial classes; yet after all that we can say of their importance to the country our expressions will still be inadequate. An interest or a class implies a section, possibly a large one, but still something separate and distinct; but the commercial spirit is not confined to any body of men, or any definite aggregate of callings. It really includes all to whom exertion is of consequence, all who, in whatever capacity, are engaged in the grand mélée of competition. In these days, when a position in society is so difficult to obtain, and an early start is of such inestimable consequence, any man to whom a competence is an immediate object, will do well to pause before he commits himself to a University course.

He

may be most keenly sensible of the blessings conferred by academical society and academical leisure, but, if he is rightminded, he will probably set a still higher value on the acquisition of an independence which, by giving him the means of fixing his roving affections, will enable him to fight the battle of life in good earnest and with a whole heart. The latter, to the majority of men, is morally a necessity-the former only a luxury. There may be cases where the balance is reversed, but these are but few in comparison, and it is dangerous to imagine them where they do not really exist. If a man is prevented from becoming a more refined intellectual being, he may console himself by thinking that the circumstance which necessitated the privation has made him better able to do his work in the world. Whatever may have been the case formerly, prudence will now hardly allow a person to spend any length of time in education, unless he sees in it a direct tendency to assist him in his worldly objects. Long ago Mephistopheles reminded Faust that all theory was grey and the golden tree of life green; and England is daily enforcing this truth with more tangible and practical sanctions than are dreamt of in German philosophy.

But it will be said there are still classes of men who find a University course directly to their account. Commercialism may be thinning the academical ranks, but they will still be recruited so long as the learned professions exist. We fear that this part of the prospect, attentively considered, will not be really more suggestive of comforting thoughts. The relation of the Universities to the Faculties in which they give lectures and confer degrees, appears to us to be a symbol of their original position rather than a guarantee for its continuance-a peculium to be retained as long as they are powerful rather than a rallying point from which they may maintain or recover power. The signs of the times leave no doubt that this relation is gradually becoming weaker. As we happen to be speaking of the two old Universities, it might be sufficient to note that other bodies have acquired the right of conferring degrees, a fact which, though it has hitherto been injurious rather to the dignity than to the real efficiency of Oxford and Cambridge, must in some sort be an index of the state of opinion which brought it about. But this would not convey our real impression of the nature of the case. Our apprehension is, as before, not that the University work is likely to be done elsewhere, by institutions similar in form but better adapted to circumstances, but that it is not likely to be done at all. We admit, of course, that professional preparation will probably always involve something nearer to academical training than is consistent with the exigencies of commercial life. The time, as we have said, is the great point: and those whose period of

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activity begins later will be able to spend more years in general culture. Still, unless we are mistaken, the industrial spirit is beginning to make itself felt even beyond the almost world-wide sphere which we have assigned to it. It operates on the professions, and that not merely by drawing away from them young men of ability but with small means, which is undeniably its effect, but by making the professions themselves more utilitarian in their character-less patient of education which does not bear immediately upon them. Even the feelings of the students themselves, in their most wayward expression, point to the same end. There are many whose consciousness bears out the hero of a recent work of fiction, in his complaint of the cruelty of bringing people up to be mere men and women.

The present tendency of society is thus to special and professional education, and such education cannot be gained at the old Universities, or indeed at any Universities possessing their advantages, so well as elsewhere. That Universities are places where the groundwork at least of universal education is communicated, is as true practically, as it is false etymologically. But there is another sort of universality equally repudiated by the name, and recognised by the fact; and that is, the reception of the same culture by all. This principle, whether realized by the assertion of Theology as the queen and mother of all sciences, or by making Latin and Greek synonymous with humanity, or by forbidding entrance to all unacquainted with geometry, is undoubtedly one of the things which have made Oxford and Cambridge what they are: and no one, so far as we know, even among the extreme advocates of new schools and new triposes, has proposed entirely to abandon it. Supposing it abandoned, the difficulty would still remain that provincial Universitytowns are not likely to have all the advantages that professional students desire. The London University will have greater inducements to offer than its elder sisters, and even it can succeed only in proportion as it forgets its unity and relies on departments which might as well exist separately. The very society for which University life is so justly lauded is inimical to professional interests. The deeper sense of responsibility to which the Oxford movement has given birth has frequently shown itself in lamentations over the secularity of University life, and in attempts to remedy it by providing education elsewhere for candidates for orders. Whether this will eventually lead to a general falling off of the clergy from the Universities, in spite of the manifold temptations which they at present afford, depends on a much larger question,-that of the future fortunes of the Church of England. We may safely affirm, however, that no religious body less compromised by its peculiar position would be