10 THE MODERN UNIVERSITY MOVEMENT 
acquired from some more or less independent examining 
board.! It is true that this last step is a very imposing one; 
it has been taken with difficulty, it has aroused much interest, 
and its consequences are considerable. But it has not altered 
in any material way the aim or policy of the institutions con- 
cerned, which, in some cases, would have become independent 
universities much earlier, if certain predilections or prejudices 
had not been insuperable, Their right and their need to call 
themselves universities were challenged in high places and in 
low. . 4 
This will lead us to ask the inevitable question—what is 
a university? ‘The question may be answered in two ways; 
either by rhetoric, or by matter-of-fact illustration. For the 
present I will keep to matter of fact; later I may use some 
rhetoric, but it shall be borrowed, and from a good source, 
There are Oxford and Cambridge universities, Glasgow and 
Edinburgh, Paris and Berlin, Harvard and Jonas G. Clark, 
presenting among themselves many important and striking 
differences, But the English idea of a university has been 
based on Oxford and Cambridge. It is hardly possible to 
exaggerate the influence which this prepossession has had, and 
still has, on the attitude of Englishmen towards all university 
questions, 
To an Englishman, a university is something very old, very 
venerable, very picturesque, very large, very select, very 
detached, and, of course, very learned. Those who have had 
to fight the cause of the new universities have found them- 
selves between the upper and nether millstones which bound 
this conception of a university. The highly educated English- 
man, who as a rule has been at either Oxford or Cambridge, 
1 The Victoria University was founded in 1880 and its degrees were 
available for students of Owens College, from that date; for students of 
University College, Liverpool, after 1884; and for students of the York- 
shire College, Leeds, after 1887. 
