AN ENGLISH UNIVERSITY 



augmented from tlie university chest. The continual repairing 

 of the old laboratories and scientific apparatus, the salaries to lec- 

 turers, to proctors, bedells, and other ofiicers, cause a continual 

 drain on the exchequer, which, with the rapidly growing need for 

 larger laboratories and newer apparatus, has finally resulted in an 

 appeal to the country for the sum of half a million pounds. 



It has been seen that the drains on a student's pocket are very 

 considerable at Cambridge, owing to the number of perquisites 

 showered by the colleges on their Fellows, and it may appear that 

 this state of things is unjust and wrong. At present Oxford and 

 Cambridge are practically within the reach of only the moneyed 

 population. According, however, to a plausible and frequently 

 repeated theory, it is not the function of these universities to meet 

 the educational needs of the mediocre poor. The writer's critical 

 attitude toward the financial system in vogue at Cambridge is a 

 proper one, only on the assumption that a maximum of education 

 to all classes alike at a minimum of expense is the final cause and 

 desideratum of a university's existence. But if one assumes that 

 Oxford and Cambridge exist 

 for a different purpose, that 

 the chief end they propose 

 to themselves is individual 

 research, and the advance- 

 ment, not the promulgation, 

 of learning, it must be ad- 

 mitted that their system has 

 little that is reprehensible. 

 According to this standpoint 

 the students only exist by 

 courtesy of the dons (a 

 name for the Fellows), who 

 have a perfect right to im- 

 pose upon the students, in 

 return for the condescension 

 which is shown them, what 

 terms they see fit. And 

 they argue that this view is 

 the historic one. The col- 

 leges were originally en- 

 dowed solely for the bene- 

 fit of a certain limited number of Fellows and scholars. The 

 undergraduate body, as it at present exists, is a later growth, whose 

 eventual existence and the importance of which to the university 

 was probably not anticipated by the college founders. Starting 



Donald MacAlister, M. A., M. D., St. Johus. 

 Linacre Lecturer of Physics. 



