12 REPORT— 1885. 
with the sword and shield of an ancient gladiator.’ In a scientific and 
keenly competitive age an exclusive education in the dead languages is 
a perplexing anomaly. The flowers of literature should be cultivated and 
gathered, though it is not wise to send men into onr fields of industry to 
gather the harvest when they have been taught only to cull the poppies 
and to push aside the wheat. 
IV. Science and the Universities. 
The State has always felt bound to alter and improve universities, 
even when their endowments are so Jarge as to render it unnecessary to 
support them by public funds. When universities are poor, Parliament 
gives aid to them from imperial taxation. In this country that aid kas 
been given with a very sparing hand. Thus the universities and colleges 
of Ireland have received about thirty thousand pounds annually, and the 
same sum has been granted to the four universities of Scotland. Com- 
pared with imperial aid to foreign universities such sums are small. A 
single German university like Strasburg or Leipsic receives above 
40,0001. annually, or 10,0007. more than the whole colleges of Ireland or 
of Scotland. Strasburg, for instance, has had her university and its 
library rebuilt at a cost of 711,000/., and receives an annual subscription 
of 43,000. In rebuilding the university of Strasburg eight laboratories 
have been provided, so as to equip it fully with the modern requirements 
for teaching and research.'! Prussia, the most economical nation in the 
world, spends 391,000/. yearly out of taxation on her universities. 
The recent action of France is still more remarkable. After the 
Franco-German War the Institute of France discussed the important 
question :-—‘ Pourquoi la France n’a pas trouvé d’hommes supérieurs au 
moment du péril ?’ The general answer was because France had allowed 
university education to sink toa low ebb. Before the great Revolution 
France had twenty-three autonomous universities in the provinces. 
Napoleon desired to found one great university at Paris, and he crushed 
out the others with the hand of a despot, and remodelled the last with the 
instincts of a drill-sergeant. The central university sank so low that in 
1868 it is said that only 8,0001. were spent for true academic purposes. 
Startled by the intellectual sterility shown in the war, France has made 
gigantic efforts to retrieve her position, and has rebuilt the provincial 
colleges at a cost of 3,280,000/., while her annual budget for their support 
now reaches half a million of pounds. In order to open these provincial 
colleges to the best talent of France, more than five hundred scholarships 
have been founded at an annual cost of 80,0001. France now recognises that 
it is not by the number of men under arms that she can compete with her 
great neighbour Germany, so she has determined to equal her in intellect. 
1 The cost of these laboratories has been as follows :—Chemical Institute, 35,0007. ; 
Physical Institute, 28,000/.; Botanical Institute, 26,000/.; Observatory, 25,0002. ; 
Anatomy, 42,0007.; Clinical Surgery, 26,0002.; Physiological Chemistry, 16,000Z. ; 
Physiological Institute, 13,9007, 
