NATURE 



549 



THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 18S5 



A SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITY 

 "PNGLAND is but just beginning to feel the wave of 



progress in the question of University organisation 

 that has been sweeping over the rest of the world. Uni- 

 versity reform as understood in England means a rather 

 fitful movement from within to lift the teaching and 

 methods of the older Universities a little out of the 

 medievalism that has been settling down upon them. 

 The true University reform has meantime been going on 

 outside in the spread of scientific teaching far away from 

 the quiet collegiate quadrangles, in the establishment of 

 new Universities and University Colleges in the centres 

 of provincial life. It is very hard to make an Englishman 

 believe that there is any subject in which he is not lead- 

 ing the progress of the world. Yet let him look at 

 Germany, at France, at America, and consider what is 

 being done abroad, before he passes his complacent com- 

 ment on the feeble reforms at home. Let him look at 

 the City of Berlin with its 1,123,000 inhabitants, its teach- 

 ing University with 6000 students ; and then turn to the 

 City of London with its 4,000,000 inhabitants, without a 

 teaching University at all, and having some 2000 students 

 in all under training at its two best educational establish- 

 ments. The contrast does not stop here, as any person 

 acquainted with the University systems of Europe knows 

 only too well. The fact is that England is wofully behind 

 the rest of the world in the organisation of the higher 

 scientific education. Its Government is absolutely indif- 

 ferent to the most crying needs in this direction. What 

 does the British Government do for the higher scientific 

 teaching, or for the promotion of the reorganisation of 

 our existing Universities on the modern scientific basis ? 

 An annual grant of a few thousands to the South Kens- 

 ington Normal School, a subsidy of about 25,000/. a year 

 to the Scottish Universities, and one of about 12,500/. a 

 year to the Welsh University Colleges, whereof perhaps 

 one-half goes to the promotion of science, represent the 

 net result. True a Government some fifty years ago 

 founded the Examining Board, miscalled the University 

 of London, and another- Government, some fifteen years 

 ago, gave 90,000/. to help the University of Glasgow 

 to complete its buildings. But for the University 

 movement throughout England, such as it is to-day, 

 England owes nothing to one single statesman or 

 Government ; it is due to individual and local effort, 

 aided it is true, but on the most minute scale, by 

 the action of one or two of the more liberal corpor- 

 ate bodies. It is well, then, that Englishmen should 

 have the opportunity of reading, as they may do in 

 the present number of Nature, what has been done in 

 a single small province of Europe, in a city of only 

 104,000 inhabitants, in the equipment of a great Univer- 

 sity on modern lines. The completeness of the equip- 

 ment, and the magnificence of the buildings of the new 

 University of Strasburg are truly startling. It is to the 

 divine right of learning knowledge, not to the divine right 

 of ruling wrong that these modern palaces are erected. 

 The Zeit Geist has indeed wrought revenges in the 

 honour thus rendered to science and to philosophy, to 



Vol. xxxi.— No. 807 



literature and to art. Imperial Germany unites with her 

 own province of Alsace-Lorraine to bestow 640,000/ upon 

 the new University buildings, and to increase its existing 

 endowments by a sum of 42,000/ per annum. Nor is this 

 a solitary fact. During the last nine years France has 

 spent nearly 1,000,000/ per annum on increasing and re- 

 organising her University institutions. What has England 

 to show against this? The Imperial Government has 

 with the exception of the little Scotch and Welsh grants 

 named above, done literally nothing. All else that has 

 been done has been done mainly by a few individuals 

 with great difficulty, on a very limited scale, in the teeth 

 of all sorts of unintelligent opposition. Oxford Convoca- 

 tion consents, amid fierce debate, to spend 10,000/ on a 

 physiological laboratory. Strasburg, in the meantime, 

 has quietly spent 13,500/ for the same purpose ; and this 

 (Fig. 15, p. 561) is the smallest of the splendid group of 

 institutes and laboratories in the new University. The 

 Corporation of Nottingham — the only Corporation that 

 has shown public spirit in this direction — has spent some 

 70,000/. upon an institution which includes a Natural 

 History Museum and a Public Library, and a University 

 College. Nottingham, has a population of 186,000 souls. 

 At Strasburg, with a population of 104,000, a sum equal 

 to this has been spent on institutes of chemistry and 

 anatomy alone (Figs. 5 and 9, pp. 559-60), and nine 

 times as much on the rest of the University buildings and 

 fittings. The Corporation of Liverpool very generously 

 contrived to accommodate its new University College in 

 a disused lunatic asylum. But the whole of the buildings 

 of Liverpool University College would go twice over into 

 the Strasburg Institute of Chemistry (Fig. 5, p. 559). 

 At Cardiff, the Town Council, after an attempt 

 to thrust its University College into a still less 

 suitable site, agreed to rent to it an old infirmary 

 for its various scientific laboratories and lecture- 

 rooms ; but the Strasburg University possesses twelve 

 buildings, every one of which is as large as the 

 Cardiff building, and infinitely better adapted to the 

 purpose. Owens College, the Mason College, the Firth 

 College, owe nothing to corporate help : they are sus- 

 tained by private benefactions. The Yorkshire College 

 is also innocent of any municipal support. At Bristol, 

 with a population of about 200,000 souls — nearly double 

 Strasburg — funds privately subscribed to about 11,000/ 

 have resulted in a ragged fragment of ill-assorted rooms to 

 accommodate the local University College ; the entire 

 buildings for literature, science, and medicine being less 

 than half the size of the Institute of Physics (Fig. 6, p. 559) 

 at Strasburg. Lastly, the city of Newcastle-on-Tyne, 

 with a population of 150,000, relegates its Science College 

 to the cellars of a Mining Institution, where it is 

 effectually buried from public notice. There is nothing 

 at Strasburg comparable to this. 



Englishmen will awake some day to the astounding 

 neglect and apathy that have prevailed and still prevail ; 

 and then perhaps some statesman will think it worth his 

 while to turn from endless party squabbles to useful 

 national work. To reorganise the higher education of 

 this country on a scale commensurate with that of other 

 European countries, and o co-ordinate it with the rest 

 of our educational system, and to equip it with buildings 

 and appliances adequate o the needs of the time would 



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