350 LIFE AND EXPERIENCES CHAP. 



London. To co-ordinate the forces in this direction 

 which made for progress, and for this purpose to place 

 the several colleges and institutions, which now worked 

 separately, under the same headship, was the problem 

 to be solved. This was the idea which lay at the 

 basis of Lord Cowper's Commission. The Lord 

 President of the Council writes to me expressing 

 the hope that those recommendations would be carried 

 out ; why should not the University do for London 

 what the Sorbonne did for Paris ? To bind hitherto 

 unconnected efforts into an organised whole, and to 

 place our University as the crowning point of this 

 system, was surely both to dignify it and to increase 

 its sphere of usefulness. We could surely satisfy the 

 necessities of both internal and external students, and 

 the much debated question as to whether two different 

 sets of examinations were to be established, or whether 

 all comers were to be treated alike, were problems 

 which admitted of more than one successful solution. 



From another point of view reforms would benefit 

 the University. We were a Government department, 

 but, unlike our continental compeers, we possessed 

 none of the advantages of State support, whilst lacking 

 the independence and self-control of the other British 

 Universities. This wholly anomalous condition should, 

 and indeed must, cease to exist when the proposed 

 reforms were carried out. But we had not yet suc- 

 ceeded in even inducing Government to give effect to 

 the frequent promises to supply urgent needs in the 

 way of laboratories for carrying on the increasing 

 demands of practical scientific examinations. We had 

 good grounds, however, for believing that provision 

 would before long be made for the erection of suitable 

 buildings on the South Kensington site. 



To speak the truth, our present condition as regards 



