NOTES 119 



teaching us by means of images instead of s^^llogisms ; but, under the rule 

 of the critics, art is becoming a voice crying in tlie wilderness — about nothing. 

 Another critic writes, " The strongest thing in our contemporary verse, 

 both English and American [is] its power to find poetry in the commonest 

 doings of ordinary life " ; and he praises — 



" Drowsily come the sheep. 

 And they pass through the sheepfold door : 



After one comes two, 



After one comes two. 

 Comes two and then three and four. 



First one, then two, by the paths of sleep. 



Drowsily come the sheep." 



Grammar also is of no consequence. Really, has the British Brain softened 

 altogether in a kind of second childhood ? 



I am glad, too, that Sir Reginald Blomfield, R.A., spoke to the same effect 

 before the British Academy on May 5th last regarding art critics, whom he 

 rightly accused of creating the Impressionist and Cubist humbugs. The 

 poets praised by the literary critics are precisely of the same order — literary 

 Impressionists and Cubists. The motive of both is to attract dull people 

 by novelty, regardless as to whether the novelty is associated with beauty 

 or ugliness ; and the critics praise them for the same reason. Mr. Frank 

 Swinnerton and Sir Henry Newbolt have also recently criticised critics. On 

 the whole, I wonder whether criticism has ever fallen to^a lower level than it 

 has reached now in England, 



The Proposed University of Science and Technology. 



We have received the following Note from the Imperial College Students' 

 Committee : 



A movement is on foot to secure for the Imperial College of Science 

 and Teclxnology the status of a university with the power to confer degrees 

 in its own subjects or faculties. The proposal has been the subject of a 

 Deputation to Mr. Balfour, as Lord President of the Council, and to Mr. 

 Fisher, as President of the Board of Education, from the Governing Body 

 of the College, and it has the unanimous support of the Rector and Pro- 

 fessors of the Imperial College. It is also supported, as far as can be ascer- 

 tained in any organised way, by the overwhelming, majority of the past and 

 present students of the Imperial College, and by a large and influential body 

 of leaders of industry, vitally interested in the welfare and development 

 of science and technology upon a national scale. 



The present position of the Imperial College is somewhat anomalous. 

 It was constituted, in 1907, of the existing Royal College of Science (itself 

 the successor of the Royal College of Chemistry founded in 1845), the Royal 

 School of Mines, and the City and Guilds (Engineering) College, all situated 

 within a stone's throw of each other at South Kensington. These three 

 institutions (while retaining certain autonomous powers) are the constituent 

 colleges of the Imperial College of Science and Technology. By the terms 

 of its charter the main purpose of the Imperial College is defined to be " to 

 give the highest specialised instruction and to provide the fullest equip- 

 ment for the most advanced training and research in various branches of 

 science, especially in its application to industry." It is important to bear 

 in mind these two features of the design, that the College was to be " imperial " 

 and to be based on science, " especially in its application to industry." But 



