64 UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL. 



a proposal. If it be legitimate to spend great sums of 

 money on public Libraries and public collections of 

 Painting and Sculpture, in aid of the man of letters, or 

 the Artist, or for the mere sake of affording pleasure 

 to the general public, I apprehend that it cannot be 

 illegitimate to do as much for the promotion of scien- 

 tific investigation. To take the lowest ground as a 

 mere investment of money, the latter is likely to be 

 much more immediately profitable. To my mind, the 

 difficulty in the way of such schemes is not theoretical, 

 but practical. Given the laboratories, how are the in- 

 vestigators to be maintained? What career is open to 

 those who have been thus encouraged to leave bread- 

 winning pursuits ? If they are to be provided for by en- 

 dowment, we come back to the College Fellowship sys- 

 tem, the results of which, for Literature, have not been 

 so brilliant that one would wish to see it extended to 

 Science ; unless some much better securities, than at pres- 

 ent exist, can be taken that it will foster real work. You 

 know that among the Bees, it depends on the kind of 

 cell in which the egg is deposited, and the quantity 

 and quality of food which is supplied to the grub, 

 whether it shall turn out a busy little worker or a big 

 idle queen. And, in the human hive, the cells of the 

 endowed larvse are always tending to enlarge, and their 

 food to improve, until we get queens, beautiful to be- 

 hold, but which gather no honey and build no comb. 



I do not say that these difficulties may not be over- 

 come, but their gravity is not to be lightly estimated. 



