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readiness. ' The progress of science will thus be promoted, and this 

 country will gradually attain even a higher place in European science 

 than that which it at present holds. There is a new quarter, however, 

 to which science may I think look hopefully, and that is the Univer- 

 sity of Oxford. Last session an act was passed for effecting certain 

 improvements in the University of Oxford. Under that act a com- 

 mission was appointed, consisting of men of learning and high 

 station, to advise and cooperate with the governing body, and so 

 effect such changes as might be useful. At present it can scarcely 

 be said that science at Oxford receives any substantial encourage- 

 ment. The fellowships are for the most part close, and therefore 

 are not necessarily the rewards of learning; and where they are open, 

 the success of the candidate depends upon his proficiency in the an- 

 cient languages and literature. Honours are indeed awarded to the 

 mathematical and physical sciences, but they carry with them no 

 emoluments ; and without any knowledge of the mathematical 

 sciences except the elements of plane geometry, and without any 

 knowledge whatever of the physical sciences, the highest University 

 honours may be obtained. A man therefore, after having very cre- 

 ditably passed a public school, and having taken his degree with a 

 first class in literis humanioribus, may find that he knows no more 

 than was known 1 800 years ago. He may be ignorant of physics 

 in its most elementary form, and may therefore be incapable of com- 

 prehending the first principles of machinery and manufactures, or of 

 forming a just and enlarged conception of the resources of this great 

 country. That the legislation of last session should long continue 

 unfruitful, I think, is improbable, and the time seems to be at hand 

 when the cultivation of the physical sciences will receive a new im- 

 pulse at our universities, and when the great resources of Oxford 

 will, in part, be applied as the rewards of scientific eminence. 



You are all, Gentlemen, no doubt aware, that in 1823 your 

 Council, at the request of the Lords of the Treasury, appointed a 

 Committee to report upon Mr. Babbage's plan for the construction 

 of a Calculating Machine, which he called a Difference Engine. The 

 Committee, I need hardly say, was composed of men eminent for 

 their theoretical and practical acquaintance with such subjects : that 

 Committee recommended the Lords of the Treasury to assist 

 Mr. Babbage in carrying out his undertaking. The Lords of the 



