A LIBERAL EDUCATION 57 



before their minds a noble ideal of a university, and doing 

 their best to make that ideal a reality; and, to me, they would 

 necessarily typify the universities, did not the authoritative 

 statements I have quoted compel me to believe that they 

 are exceptional, and not representative men. Indeed, upon 

 calm consideration, several circumstances lead me to think 

 that the Rector of Lincoln College and the Commissioners 

 cannot be far wrong. 



I believe there can be no doubt that the foreigner who 

 should wish to become acquainted with the scientific, or 

 the literary, activity of modern England, would simply lose 

 his time and his pains if he visited our universities with that 

 object. 



And, as for works of profound research on any subject, 

 and, above all, in that classical lore for which the univer- 

 sities profess to sacrifice almost everything else, why, a 

 third-rate, poverty-stricken German university turns out 

 more produce of that kind in one year, than our vast and 

 wealthy foundations elaborate in ten. 



Ask the man who is investigating any question, profoundly 

 and thoroughly — be it historical, philosophical, philological, 

 physical, literary, or theological; who is trying to make him- 

 self master of any abstract subject (except, perhaps, polit- 

 ical economy and geology, both of which are intensely An- 

 glican sciences), whether he is not compelled to read half 

 a dozen times as many German as English books ?^ And 

 whether, of these English books, more than one in ten is the 

 work of a fellow of a college, or a professor of an English 

 university ? 



Is this from any lack of power in the English as compared 

 with the German mind? The countrymen of Grote and of 

 Mill, of Faraday, of Robert Brown, of Lyell, and of Darwin, 

 to go no farther back than the contemporaries of men of 



