VIII UNIVERSITIES : ACTUAL AND IDEAL 233 



This is not the first time that I have quoted 

 those remarkable assertions. I should like to 

 engrave them in public view, for they have not 

 been refuted ; and I am convinced that if their 

 import is once clearly apprehended, they will play 

 no mean part when the question of University 

 reorganisation, with a view to practical measures, 

 comes on for discussion. You are not responsible 

 for this anomalous state of affairs now ; but, as 

 you pass into active life and acquire the political 

 influence to which your education and your 

 position should entitle you, you will become 

 responsible for it, unless each in his sphere does 

 his best to alter it, by insisting on the improve- 

 ment of secondary schools. 



Your present responsibility is of another, 

 though not less serious, kind. Institutions do 

 not make men, any more than organisation makes 

 life; and even the ideal University we have been 

 dreaming about will be but a superior piece of 

 mechanism, unless each student strive after the 

 ideal of the Scholar. And that ideal, it seems to 

 me, has never been better embodied than by the 

 great Poet, who, though lapped in luxury, the 

 favourite of a Court, and the idol of his country- 

 men, remained through all the length of his 

 honoured years a Scholar in Art, in Science, and 

 in Life. 



" Wouldst shape a noble life ? Then cast 

 No backward glances towards the past : 



