io THE MODERN UNIVERSITY MOVEMENT 



acquired from some more or less independent examining 

 board. 1 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. 



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. 



