64 LIFE AND EXPERIENCES CHAP. 



no other than Leslie Stephen, who was staying at 

 Heidelberg to learn the language. Soon I made his 

 acquaintance, and this ripened into friendship which 

 endured to the end of his life. His was a noble 

 character, and it is a privilege, for which I am thankful, 

 to have known such a man. My last sight of him, 

 dying as he was by inches, was one never to be 

 forgotten. We talked of old Heidelberg times and of 

 our pleasant long-ago intercourse, and his eyes 

 brightened and his voice trembled as he recalled some 

 of its incidents. 



To return to the German student, I always think 

 that his foibles should be looked upon with an 

 indulgent eye, and should not be allowed to over- 

 shadow his excellent qualities. He is a real good 

 fellow and an intelligent. Quite as hard a worker as 

 our Oxford or Cambridge average man, with more 

 " Geist " and a far more thorough training. Whether 

 his nine years of strict " Gymnasium " discipline 

 have gone to make him a better man than our much 

 more lax public-school system does for our boys is a 

 matter about which much may be said. Of one thing 

 I am certain : the average Eton boy could not follow 

 as the German " Fuchs " (first year's man) does 

 the high-class lectures on every conceivable subject, 

 some of which he is bound to attend. This comes 

 of his " Vorbildung" and of his appreciation of 

 scientific method concerning which our undergraduate 

 is, as a rule, altogether his inferior. Then the 

 Germans with their " Lern- und Lehrfreiheit " are on 

 the true University lines, whilst we, hidebound by 

 examinations, are too apt to ignore, in our old system, 

 the essential aim of all University life the advance- 

 ment of learning. That brilliant exceptions exist 

 amongst us only proves the rule. It is in spite of, and 



