A LIBERAL EDUCATION 47 



"The colleges were, in their origin, endowments, not for the elements 

 of a general liberal education, but for the prolonged study of special 

 and professional faculties by men of riper age. The universities em- 

 braced both these objects. The colleges, while they incidentally aided 

 in elementary education, were especially devoted to the highest learn- 5 

 ing. . . . 



"This was the theory of the middle age university and the design 

 of collegiate foundations in their origins Time and circumstances have 

 brought about a total change. The colleges no longer promote the 

 researches of science, or direct professional study. Here and there 10 

 college walls may shelter an occasional student, but not in larger propor- 

 tions than may be found in private life. Elementary teaching of youths 

 under twenty is now the only function performed by the university 

 and almost the only object of college endowments. Colleges were homes 

 for the life study of the highest and most abstruse parts of knowledge. 15 

 They have become boarding schools in which the elements of the learned 

 languages are taught to youths." 



If Mr. Pattison's high position, and his obvious love and 

 respect for his university, be insufficient to convince the 

 outside world that language so severe is yet no more than just, 2 o 

 the authority of the Commissioners who reported on the Uni- 

 versity of Oxford in 1850, is open to no challenge. Yet they 

 write : 



"It is generally acknowledged that both Oxford and the country at 

 large suffer greatly from the absence of a body of learned men devoting 25 

 their lives to the cultivation of science, and to the direction of academical 

 education. 



"The fact that so few books of profound research emanate from the 

 University of Oxford, materially impairs its character as a seat of learn- 

 ing, and consequently its hold on the respect of the nation." 30 



Cambridge can claim no exemption from the reproaches 

 addressed to Oxford. And thus there seems no escape from 

 the admission that what we fondly call our great seats of 

 learning are simply "boarding schools" for bigger boys ; that 

 learned men are not more numerous in them than out of 3 5 

 them ; that the advancement of knowledge is not the object 

 of fellows of colleges; that in the philosophic calm and 



