550 



NA TUBE 



[Oci. 19 1876 



that the income of the professors and teachers shall be inde- 

 pendent of the number of students whom they can attract. 

 In this way you provide against the danger, patent else- 

 where, of finding attempts at improvement obstructed by 

 vested interests ; and in the department of medical edu- 

 cation especially, you are free of the temptation to set 

 loose upon the world men utterly incompetent to perform 

 the serious and responsible duties of their profession. 



It is a delicate matter for a stranger to the practical 

 working of your institutions, like myself, to pretend to give 

 an opinion as to the organisation of your governing power. 

 I can conceive nothing better than that it should 

 remain as it is, if you can secure a succession of wise, 

 liberal, honest, and conscientious men to fill the vacancies 

 that occur among you. I do not greatly believe in the 

 efficacy of any kind of machinery for securing such a 

 result, but I would venture to suggest that the exclusive 

 adoption of the method of co-optation for filling the 

 vacancies which must occur in your body appears to me 

 to be somewhat like a tempting of Providence. Doubt- 

 less there are grave practical objections to the appoint- 

 ment of persons outside of your body and not directly 

 interested in the welfare of the university ; but might it 

 not be well if there were an understanding that your 

 academic staff should be officially represented on the 

 board, perhaps even the heads of one or two independent 

 learned bodies, so that academic opinion and the views 

 of the outside world might have a certain influence in 

 that most important matter, the appointment of your pro- 

 fessors ? I throw out these suggestions, as I have said, 

 in ignorance of the practical difficulties that may be in 

 the way of carrying them into effect, on the general 

 ground that personal and local influences are very subtle, 

 and often unconscious, while the future greatness and 

 efficiency of the noble institution which now commences 

 its work must largely depend upon its freedom from 

 them. 



I constantly hear Americans speak of the charm which 

 our old mother country has for them, of the delight with 

 which they wander through the streets of ancient tov-ins, 

 or climb the battlements of mediaeval strongholds, the 

 names of which are indissolubly associated with the 

 great epochs of that noble literature which is our common 

 inheritance ; or with the blood-stained steps of that 

 secular progress, by which the descendants of the savage 

 Britons and of the wild pirates of the North Sea have 

 become converted into warriors of order and champions 

 of peaceful freedom, exhausting what still remains of the 

 old Berserk spirit in subduing nature, and turning the 

 wilderness into a garden. But anticipation has no less 

 charm than retrospect, and to an Englishmen landing 

 upon your shores for the first time, travelling for hundreds 

 of miles through strings of great and well-ordered cities, 

 seeing your enormous actual, and almost infinite potential, 

 wealth in all commodities, and in the energy and ability 

 which turn wealth to account, there is something sublime 

 in the vista of the future. Do not suppose that I am 

 pandering to what is commonly understood by national 

 pride. I cannot say that I am in the slightest degree im- 

 pressed by your bigness, or your material resources, as 

 such. Size is not grandeui-, and territory does not make 

 a nation. The great issue, about which hangs a true 

 sublimity, and the terror of overhanging fate, is what are 

 you going to do with all these things ? What is to be the 

 end to which these are to be the means ? You are making 

 a novel experiment in politics on the greatest scale which 

 the world has yet seen. Forty millions at your first cen- 

 tenary, it is reasonably to be expected that, at the second, 

 these states will be occupied by two hundred millions of 

 Engliih-speaking people, spread over an area as large as 

 that of Europe, and with climates and interests as diverse 

 as those of Spain and Scandinavia, England and Russia. 

 You and your descendants have to ascertain whether this 

 great mass will hold together under the forms of a re- 



public, and the despotic reality of universal suffrage ; 

 whether state rights will hold out against centralisation 

 without separation ; whether centralisation will get the 

 better without actual or disguised monarchy ; whether 

 shifting corruption is better than a permanent bureaucracy ; 

 and as population thickens in your great cities, and the 

 pressure of want is felt, the gaunt spectre of pauperism 

 will stalk among you, and communism and socialism will 

 claim to be heard. Truly America has a great future 

 before her ; great in toil, in care, and in responsibility ; 

 great in true glory if she be guided in wisdom and 

 righteousness ; great in shame if she fail. I cannot 

 understand why other nations should envy you, or be 

 blind to the fact that it is for the highest interest of man- 

 kind that you should succeed ; but the one condition of 

 success, your sole safeguard, is the moral worth and in- 

 tellectual clearness of the individual citizen. Education 

 cannot give these, but it can cherish them and bring 

 them to the front in whatever station of society they are to 

 be found ; and the universities ought to be and may be 

 the fortresses of the higher life of the nation. 



May the university which commences its practical 

 activity to-morrow abundantly fulfil its high purpose ; may 

 its renown as a seat of true learning, a centre of free 

 inquiry, a focus of intellectual light, increase year by 

 year, until men wander hither from all parts of the earth, 

 as of old they sought Bologna, or Paris, or Oxford. 



And it is pleasant to me to fancy that among the 

 English students who are drawn to you at that time 

 there may linger a dim tradition that a countryman of 

 theirs was permitted to address you as he has done to- 

 day, and to feel as if your hopes were his hopes and your 

 success his joy. 



REV. MARK PATTISON ON UNIVERSITY 

 REFORM 



ONE of the most valuable addresses at the Social 

 Science Congress at Liverpool was that by the 

 Rev, Mark Pattison, last Friday, on the subject of 

 Education. He confined his remarks mainly to Lord 

 Sandon's Bill and the Oxford and Cambridge Bills. In 

 passing, however, he spoke in the strongest terms of 

 the miserable state of the middle-class schools, " the 

 wretched destitution of all intellectual nourishment in 

 which the middle classes of England grow up." With 

 regard to the Education Bill, Mr. Pattison showed that 

 eleuientary education was in anything but a satisfactory 

 condition, that as yet we have only the beginning of a 

 school system. He then spoke at considerable length on 

 the Oxford and Cambridge Bills, which our readers will 

 remember were withdrawn last session on the distinct 

 understanding that they should be introduced next ses- 

 sion. Mr. Pattison referred to the scheme for endowing 

 the University at the expense of the Colleges, and to Lord 

 Salisbury's declaration that one purpose of the measure 

 was " to promote science and learning." Mr. Pattison 

 went on to say :— " When the Oxford Bill got down into 

 the Commons the member of the Cabinet who had the 

 charge of it there hastened to disavow any such inten- 

 tions on the part of his Government. Lord Salisbur3''s 

 declaration had been made in the House of Lords, and 

 in the Upper House it did not seem altogether absurd to 

 speak of science and learning in connection with a Uni- 

 versity. But such flimsy and unpractical notions are not 

 for the atmosphere of the Lower House. Members of the 

 Government in the Lower House vied with each other in 

 eagerly repudiating any intention of making the Uni- 

 versity a seat of learning and science. This had been an 

 unauthorised escapade of their impulsive colleague in the 

 Lords. This disavowal was well received in the House. 

 Antagonism was half disarmed. The member of the 

 learned University of Oxford received the congratu- 

 lations of the member of the learned University of Lon- 



