)xx REPORT — 1856. 



That power of minute observation — those habits of method and arrange- 

 ment — that aptitude for patient and laborious inquiry — that tact and sagacity 

 in deducing inferences from evidence short of demonstiation, which the 

 Natural Sciences more particularly promote, are the fruits of early education, 

 and acquired with difficulty at a later period. 



It is during childhood, also, that the memory is most fresh and retentive ; 

 and that the nomenclature of the sciences, which, from its crabbedness and 

 technicality, often repels us at a more advanced age, is acquired almost 

 without an effort. 



Although, therefore, it can hardly be expected, that the great schools in 

 the country will assign to the Natural Sciences any important place in their 

 systems of instruction, until the Universities for which they are tlie seminaries 

 set them the example, yet 1 cannot doubt, but that the signal once given, both 

 masters and scholars will eagerly embrace a change so Ci^ngenia! to the tastes 

 of youth, and so favourable to the development of tiieir intellectual faculties. 



And has not, it may be asked, the signal been given by the admission of 

 the Physical Sciences into the curriculum of our academical education ? 



I trust that this question may be answered in the affirmative, if we are 

 entitled to assume, that the recognition of them which has already taken 

 place will be consistently followed up, by according to them some such sub- 

 stantial encouragement, as that which has been afforded hitherto almost 

 exclusivelj^ to classical literature. 



Our ability to accomplish this, with the means and appliances at our com- 

 mand, does not, I think, admit of dispute. 



Happily for this country, the conservative feeling which has ever prevailed 

 amongst us, and the immunity we have enjoyed from such political con- 

 vulsions as have affected most other European nations, maintain in their 

 integrity those Academical Establishments, which, as Monsieur Montalembert 

 has remarked, are, like our Government and our other Institutions, a magni- 

 ficent specimen of the social condition of the middle ages, as it at one time 

 existed throughout the whole of Western Europe. 



They are Institutions, indeed, which foreigners may well look upon with 

 envy, but which when once destroyed, it is hopeless to expect that Govern- 

 ments, engrossed as they are with the interests and politics of the day, will 

 ever think of restoring. 



Thanks to their existence, it rarely happens, that a student, in Oxford at 

 least, who has distinguished himself in his classical examinations, fails to obtain 

 some reward for his past exertions, and. if he require it, some assistance to 

 enable him to continue them in future. 



And this, too, be it observed, has been the case, even whilst the natural, 

 although perhaps mistaken partiality of our founders, for their native counties, 

 for the parishes in which their estates lay, or for their own collateral descend- 

 ants, greatly curtailed the number of fellowships which could be bestowed 

 on merit. 



All, therefore, that seems wanted, now that local preferences seem on the 

 point of being removed, is, on the one hand, a more equal distribution of the 

 existing emoluments between the several professions, and, on the other, the 

 admission of the claims of the sciences received into our educational system, 

 to share in the emoluments which, up to this time, have been monopolized 

 by the Classics. 



And as it is far from my wish to curtail the older studies of the University 

 of their proper share of support — for who that has passed through a 

 course of them can be insensible of the advantages he has derived from 

 that early discipline of the mind which flows from their cultivation? — I 



