145 



NATURAL SCIENCE: 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress. 



No 49. Vol. VIII. MARCH. 1896. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



The University for London. 



SLOWLY, slowly, but still sensibly, the lumbering movement for 

 the institution of a real University for London proceeds. All 

 the great bodies that are interested, even the existing London 

 University, have now intimated their acceptance of the broad 

 principles involved in the scheme of the most recent Commission. 

 The agitation in favour of the existing condition of things is now 

 confined to a flickering, though sometimes brilliant, series of attacks 

 by interested irreconcilables. So long as the great corporations 

 differed on questions of principle, not of detail, action could not be 

 expected from a Government which has to face trouble in all parts 

 of the world, and which has burdened its shoulders with a question 

 of elementary education that will raise the keenest conflict of opinion 

 and prejudice. Now, fearing no one that matters, the Cabinet may 

 place London in a position that is equal, say, to that of St. Andrews 

 or of Jena. 



It has been pointed out, by some who are timid and by others who 

 are designing, that the Commission did not arrange that an adult 

 University, equipped with every provision for research and graced by 

 the historic dignity of Oxford and Cambridge, should be born of their 

 labours. It should be unnecessary to say that such a prodigy is tO' 

 be expected from no Commission. What we want, and what can be 

 given us, is unity in place of distraction, a real University in the place 

 of an examining board. When we have got that, time will add all 

 other things to us. In the present University there is nothing to 

 attract the pious founder and the living benefactor. We believe that 

 the rich men of England are as ready to assist the highest purposes 

 of a University as are the rich men of Australia and America. But 

 there must be a body-corporate, representing by its teachers and 

 professors the best workers in all branches of knowledge, attracting 

 as its students — graduate and undergraduate — the most promising of 

 the youth of our empire. 



M 



