1815.] Wainewright on Education at Cambridge. 295 
Though this little work was intended by its author as a full account 
of the mode of education followed at Cambridge, and though we 
have no doubt that it is written with as much candour as is con- 
sistent with the character of a professed eulogist, we regret that 
several circumstances are omitted which would have been requisite 
to convey to us, who are quite unacquainted with the forms of Eng- 
lish Universities, an adequate idea of the value of the information 
which is communicated to the young men by the tutors. In the 
Universities of Scotland, and we believe in all those on the conti- 
nent of Europe, every science taught is confined to a particular in- 
dividual, who is called the Professor of that.science, and whose 
business it is to collect a correct outline of the whole department of 
knowledge committed to his charge, and to lay the best arranged 
and most luminous view of it, which he can, before his pupils, But 
in the English Universities the case is very different. In every 
college a certain person is appointed under the name of ¢wéor, under 
~whose care the students at that college are placed, and to whom they 
are indebted for all the academical information which they receive, 
Now in order to form a judgment of the way in which these tutors 
are likely to discharge their duty (on which every thing depends), it 
would be requisite to know whether one tutor teaches all the 
sciences, or whether a particular tutor be appointed for each parti- 
cular science ; whether the tutor receives any fees from his pupils, 
and whether his emoluments depend chiefiy at least upon the 
number of students that enter his particular college. Now upon 
these very material points no information whatever is communicated 
by Mr. Wainewright. 
If every college is restricted to only one tutor, the probability, or 
almost the certainty, is, that he will have a stronger bias to one de- 
partment of knowledge than to the others. The three great depart- 
ments which constitute the range of a Cambridge education are, 
1. Latin and Greek, including Belles Lettres. 2. Mathematics, 
and the Mathematical Sciences. 38. Metaphysics, Morals, and 
Theology. Now it is very unlikely that a thorough Greek and Latin 
scholar, or a professed poet or critic, should at the same time be a 
good mathematician and a profound metaphysician. Who ever 
heard of a poetic mathematician? Unless Halley and Boscovich 
are to be considered as examples. Now to whatever science the 
tutor has particularly attached himself, there is every reason to 
suppose that to it he will naturally turn the chief attention of his 
pupils, and that the information which he has to communicate on 
the other branches of knowledge will be comparatively of little 
value. Hence the probability is, that whatever branch of know- 
ledge has become fashionable in the University, to that branch the 
attention of the students will be generally directed. I conceive this 
to be the reason why Greek and Latin constitute the chief objects 
of study at Oxford, and mathematics at Cambridge. I once met 
with an Oxford student in a stage-coach, a very young man, who 
