622 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 



wishes to retain, the collegiate life of the ancient universities would be less 

 likely to lose its effective value. 



But when all is said, how great is the charm of the ancient English univer- 

 sities ! They are unique ; they exercise a lifelong spell upon pupils who have 

 spent three or four years within their ancient walls ; they foster, even if un- 

 consciously, a noble sense of patriotic duty ; they haunt the memory ; they are 

 fruitful in high and generous and sacred inspirations. 



What is the spirit of a university ? How is it born ? How does it 

 operate ? Why is Cambridge in a special sense the home of mathematics, and 

 Oxford of letters? Why is it that Oxford finds so many, and Cambridge so 

 few, representatives upon the public Press? Cambridge, it seems, has played 

 the greater part in the thought, and Oxford in the life, of the nation. But why 

 is it that Cambridge has given to the world sons more famous, it may be, than 

 any whose names belong to the sister university — Bacon. Newton, Cromwell, 

 Milton, and Darwin ? Why, above all, is Cambridge in so pre-eminent a degree 

 the university of the poets? Such names as Milton, Ben Jonson, Herrick, 

 Cowley, Dryden, Byron, Gray, Wordsworth, Tennyson belong to Cambridge 

 alone. Nothing can replace, nothing perhaps can greatly affect, the relation of 

 the ancient universities to the country whose ornaments they are. What is 

 needed, and will be more and more needed as democracy extends its powers, is 

 to enhance the strength of the influence which the universities exercise upon 

 the national life at large. 



So 1 bring this imperfect review of the educational problem in its present 

 aspects to a close by insisting in two or three final sentences upon the supreme 

 dignity of the teacher's profession. The man or woman who elects to become a 

 teacher chooses a great responsibility. It is well that teachers should be dis- 

 ciplined for their calling by a system of training in the educational art. The 

 theory of education as set forth in the writings of great educators like 

 Comenius, Froebel, Pestalozzi, Arnold, Thring, Fitch, and many others, should 

 be well known to them, even if the practical side of education is best learnt, 

 or can only be learnt, by practice. Education needs the best men and the best 

 women. It must, therefore, be set free from such bonds as have tied it to 

 the clerical profession ; nor can I think it is ever well to exact religious tests of 

 teachers, for tests are apt to affect tender consciences alone. If only teachers 

 are asked whether they wish to give definite religious instruction or not, and 

 are subjected to no drawback or disadvantage if they choose not to give it, I 

 think the teachers in all grades of schools may be trusted not to abuse their 

 sacred opportunity. They must teach their pupils to love learning and virtue, 

 and to love them for their own sakes. They must remember that it is the 

 personality of the teacher which is the chief source of his or her influence on 

 the pupils. They must ever be trying to make themselves more and more worthy 

 of their responsibility. 'Thou that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?' 

 must be the motto of their daily lives. But where the educational profession 

 is one in all its branches, where it is actuated by a due sense of responsibility, 

 where it aims in season and out of season at cultivating habits of self-respect, 

 self-sacrifice, patriotism, and religion in the children who will be the citizens 

 of the future, where it remembers that the supreme triumphs of educational 

 skill are good men and women, good fathers and mothers, good servants of the 

 State and of the Church, there is no ground of fear for the country or the 

 Empire. 



The following Report was then read : — ■ 



Report upon the Overlapping between Secondary Education avd that of 

 Universities and other places of Higher Education. — See Reports, p. 216. 



