H 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 





^ 



AX ENGLISH UNIVEESITY. 



By IIEKHKKT STOTKSBURY. 



MOST milKl^ ill America, as in England, if they think about 

 the subject at all, impute to the two ancient centers of An- 

 glo-Saxon learning — Oxford and Cambridge — an unquestionable 

 supremacy. A halo of greatness surrounds these august institu- 

 tions, none the less real because to the American mind, at least, 

 it is vague. Half the books students at other institutions require 

 in their various courses have the names of eminent Cambridge or 

 Oxford inon n])on the fly leaf. Michael Foster's Physiology, Sidg- 



wick's Methods of Ethics, 

 and Bryce's American Com- 

 monwealth are recognized 

 text-books wherever the sub- 

 jects of which they treat 

 are studied; while Sir Gr. G. 

 Stokes, Jebb, Lord Acton, 

 Caird, Max Miiller, and Rav 

 \ I' \ Lankester are as well known 



^^ ^ "^^ to students of Leland Stan- 



^ Jjl^ Jt^^^k ford or Princeton as they 



are to Englishmen. One 

 can scarcely read a work on 

 English literature or open 

 an English novel Avhich does 

 not make some reference to 

 one or other of the great 

 universities or their col- 

 k'ges, inseparably associated 

 as they are Avith English 

 life and history, past and 

 present. Our oldest college 

 owes its existence to John 

 Harvard, of Emmanuel, Cambridge, and the name of the mother 

 university still clings to her transatlantic ofTsjiring. The English 

 institutions have become firmly associated in tlu^ vulgar mind with 

 all that is dignified, venerable, and thorough in learning, but, be- 

 yond a vague sentiment of admiration, little adequate knoAvledge on 

 the subject is abroad. .Vniciican or German universities are organi- 

 zations not very difficult to comjjndiend, and a vague knowledge of 

 them is perha])s sufficient. The und(M-standing, however, of those 

 complicated acndcinic coiiNminitics, Oxfoi'd and Cambridge, is a 



Michael Foster, K. C. B., M. A., F. U. S. 

 Trinity. Professor of Physi(jlogy. 



