54 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of them have fallen. ... I appeal to any Oxonian whether with the 

 exception of the Latin and Greek languages and a fair proportion of 

 the corresponding history there is any one of these subjects for which 

 Oxford is even a third-rate school." He goes on to relate that, when 

 he himself was in Oxford, the candidate for the degree of Doctor of 

 Divinity implied no theological learning whatever ; " a candidate had 

 simply to read aloud an old composition lent him by the clerk it mat- 

 tered not what, so that it lasted an hour and this was his sufficient 

 scientific qualification." * Parliament has made various imbecile 

 attempts to improve the vast corruption which is in the universities the 

 fountain-head of the English Church, and the Salisbury government 

 have announced another. None of them has reached the seat of the 

 disease, which is the arbitrary bestowal of rewards and positions with- 

 out service rendered. Class interest has hitherto been too strong for 

 reform, just as it long was in upholding the practice of purchasing 

 commissions in the army ; and Oxford, with ludicrous pageant and 

 solemnity, continues to spend its income of above two million dollars 

 in repressing the progress and intellect of England. 



It might be expected that the great schools of England Eton, 

 Rugby, Harrow, Westminster, and others of that class would display 

 like characteristics ; and, indeed, evidence on this point is sufficiently 

 abundant. In 18G1 public clamor induced Parliament to appoint a 

 commission to investigate these institutions, and it unearthed a mass 

 of corruption and absurd practices such as staggers belief. Here the 

 facts can only be briefly summarized. It was found that the revenues 

 of the institution were absorbed by those in control. Head-masters 

 received from twenty to thirty-five thousand dollars annually, besides 

 the right of presentation to numerous church livings, and the Fellows 

 contrived to appropriate most of what the head-masters left. There 

 was found to be an astonishing dearth of general culture among the 

 students : few newspapers were read, Shakespeare and Milton were 

 hardly known, and even Scott and Thackeray were too heavy for the 

 " disciplined " brains of most of the students. Science was an unknown 

 field. Music, geography, history, and drawing were likewise conspicu- 

 ous by their absence. One of the schools introduced mathematics as 

 late as 1845, and one graduate was found who did not know that there 

 was such a thing as the multiplication-table ! The same thing ap- 

 pears everywhere. 



The quality of beer and mutton which supported the students in 

 their arduous intellectual labors was found to have been uniformly 

 bad through several generations ; the practice of giving bad beer and 

 bad mutton had ingrained itself into the noble British constitution, 

 and could not be changed. One of the provosts testified before the 

 committee that he objected to the teaching of science, " because it is 

 scarcely seventy years old." English literature and composition were 



* Introduction to Huber, pp. xxv-xxvii. 



