56 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS 



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. The}' have become 

 boarding schools in which the elements of the learned lan- 

 guages are taught to youths." 



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

 respect for his university, be insufficient to convince the out- 

 side world that language so severe is yet no more than just, 

 the authority of the Commissioners who reported on the 

 University of Oxford in 1850 is open to no challenge. Yet 

 they WTite: — 



"It is generally acknowledged that both Oxford and the 

 country at large suffer greatly from the absence of a body of 

 learned men devoting 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 char- 

 acter as a seat of learning, and consequently its hold on the 

 respect of the nation." 



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 learrned men are not more numerous in them than out 

 of them; that the advancement of knowledge is not the object 

 of fellows of colleges; that, in the philosopliic calm and 

 meditative stilln,ess of their greenswarded courts, philosophy 

 does not thrive, and meditation bears few fruits. 



It is my great good fortune to reckon amongst my friends 

 resident members of both universities, who are men of learn- 

 irtg and research, zealous cultivators of science, keeping 



