A Liberal Education 71 



ouverte aux talents, and every Bursch marches with a 

 professor's gown in his knapsack. Let him become a great 

 scholar, or man of science, and ministers will compete for 

 his services. In Germany, they do not leave the chance 

 of his holding the office he would render illustrious to the 5 

 tender mercies of a hot canvass, and the final wisdom of a 

 mob of country parsons. 



In short, in Germany, the universities are exactly what 

 the Rector of Lincoln and the Commissioners tell us the 

 English universities are not; that is to say, corporations 10 

 " of learned men devoting their lives to the cultivation 

 of science, and the direction of academical education." 

 They are not " boarding schools for youths," nor clerical 

 seminaries; but institutions for the higher culture of 

 men, in which the theological faculty is of no more im- 15 

 portance, or prominence, than the rest; and which are 

 truly " universities," since they strive to represent and 

 embody the totality of human knowledge, and to find 

 room for all forms of intellectual activity. 



May zealous and clear-headed reformers like Mr. Pat- 20 

 tison succeed in their noble endeavors to shape our 

 universities towards some such ideal as this, without los- 

 ing what is valuable and distinctive in their social tone! 

 But until they have succeeded, a liberal education will 

 be no more obtainable in our Oxford and Cambridge 25 

 Universities than in our public schools. 



V 



If I am justified in my conception of the ideal of a 

 liberal education; and if what I have said about the 

 existing educational institutions of the country is also 

 true, it is clear that the two have no sort of relation 30 

 to one another; that the best of our schools and the most 

 complete of our university trainings give but a narrow, 

 one-sided, and essentially illiberal education while the 



