72 UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL. 



Your present responsibility is of another, though" 

 not less serious, kind. Institutions do not make men, 

 any more than organisation makes life; and even the 

 ideal University we have been dreaming about will be 

 but a superior piece of mechanism, unless each student 

 strive after the ideal of the Scholar. And that ideal, 

 it seems to me, has never been better embodied than 

 by the great Poet, who, though lapped in luxury, the 

 favourite of a Court, and the idol of his countrymen, 

 remained through all the length of his honoured years 

 a Scholar in Art, in Science, and in Life. 



" Would'st shape a noble life ? Then cast 

 No backward glances towards the past : 

 And though somewhat be lost and gone, 

 Yet do thou act as one new-born. 

 "What each day needs, that shalt thou ask ; 

 Each day will set its proper task. 

 Give other's work just share of praise; 

 Not of thine own the merits raise. 

 Beware no fellow man thou hate : 

 And so in God's hands leave thy fate." * 



* Goethe, Zahme Xenien, Vierte AWidlung. I should be glad to take 

 credit for the close and vigorous English version ; but it is my wife's, and 

 not mine. 



