IL] UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL. 47 



and Physiological Laboratories, and a magnificent 

 Museum, arranged with an almost luxurious regard 

 for the needs of the student. Cambridge, less rich, 

 but aided by the munificence of her Chancellor, is 

 taking the same course ; and, in a few years, it will 

 be for no lack of the means and appliances of sound 

 teaching, if the mass of English University men re- 

 main in their present state of barbarous ignorance of 

 even the rudiments of scientific culture. 



Yet another step needs to be made before Science 

 can be said to have taken its proper place in the 

 Universities. That is its recognition as a Faculty, or 

 branch of study demanding recognition and special 

 organisation, on account of its bearing on the wants 

 of mankind. The Faculties of Theology, Law, and 

 Medicine, are technical schools, intended to equip 

 men who have received general culture, with the 

 special knowledge which is needed for the proper per- 

 formance of the duties of clergymen, lawyers, and 

 medical practitioners. 



When the material well-being of the country 

 depended upon rude pasture and agriculture, and still 

 ruder mining ; in the days when all the innumerable 

 applications of the principles of physical science to 

 practical purposes were non-existent even as dreams ; 

 days which men living may have heard their fathers 

 speak of; what little physical science could be seen 

 to bear directly upon human life, lay within the pro- 

 vince of Medicine. Medicine was the foster-mother 

 of Chemistry, because it has to do with the prepara- 

 tion of drugs and the detection of poisons ; of Botany, 



