232 UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL vm 



contrary, the soil must have been carefully 

 prepared, and the Professor should find that the 

 operations of clod-crushing, draining, and weed- 

 ing, and even a good deal of planting, have been 

 done by the Schoolmaster. 



That is exactly what the Professor does not 

 find in any University in the tliree Kingdoms 

 that I can hear of — the reason of which state of 

 things lies in the extremely faulty organisation of 

 the majority of secondary schools. Students 

 come to the Universities ill-prepared in classics 

 and mathematics, not at all prepared in anything 

 else; and half their time is spent in learning that 

 which they ought to have known when they 

 came. 



I sometimes hear it said that the Scottish 

 Universities differ from the English, in being to 

 a much greater extent places of comparatively ele- 

 mentary education for a younger class of students. 

 But it would seem doubtful if any great dif- 

 ference of this kind really exists; for a high au- 

 thority, himself Head of an English College, has 

 solemnly affirmed that: "Elementary teaching 

 of youths under twenty is now the only func- 

 tion performed by the University; " and that 

 Colleges are " boarding schools in which the 

 elements of the learned languages are taught to 

 youths." * 



* Sur/gesfiovs for Acndemirnl Orf/anisnfinn, tnth Espe- 

 cial Reference to Oxford. By the Rector of Lincoln. 



