340 LIFE AND EXPERIENCES CHAP. 



and two Royal Commissions had reported on the 

 question ; the first of these, under the presidency of 

 Lord Chancellor Selborne, made its report in 1888, 

 The recommendations did not meet with general ap- 

 proval, and consequently a second Commission was 

 appointed in 1892, consisting of a larger number of 

 members, with the late Earl Cowper as its chairman. 

 This Commission reported two years afterwards. It 

 recommended that the existing University should be 

 reorganised, and that, while continuing to discharge 

 all its present functions as an examining body for 

 collegiate students in London and for non-collegiate 

 students in all parts of the Empire, it should also 

 establish closer relations with the great London 

 colleges and medical schools, give to the authorities 

 of those institutions a larger share in the government 

 of the University, and seek in other ways to co- 

 ordinate and control the higher education of London. 



In March, 1893, I na d put before Lord Cowper's 

 Commission suggestions for the establishment of a 

 Teaching University for London on lines which I 

 venture to think would, if they had been acted upon, 

 have created a machinery of a less cumbrous and 

 perhaps a more satisfactory character than that which 

 became law in 1898. The latter scheme was the 

 result of a compromise between the views of those 

 who held the function of the University as an ex- 

 amining body was the important factor, and of those 

 who believed that a higher aim of a University was 

 teaching rather than examining. 



Proposals were made by me when acting as vice- 

 president of an association, of which Professor Huxley 

 was president, for the promotion of a Professorial 

 (Teaching) University for London, supporting the 

 idea that both the branches under discussion are 



