474 MERTON COLLEGE AND CANADA. 



" In my own mind I confess," he says to liis father, " I am much of 

 opinion that college is pnt off in general till too late ; and the gaining 

 of honours, therefore, becomes too severe to be iiseful to men who are 

 to enter into professions. It was certainly originally intended that 

 the degrees which require only a knowledge of the classics should be 

 taken at an earlier age, in order to admit of a residence after they 

 were taken, during which the student might devote himself to science 

 or composition, and those habits of reflection by which the mind 

 might be formed, and a practical advantage drawn from the stores of 

 knowledge already acquired. By putting them off to so late an age, 

 the consequence has been, that it has been necessary proportionably 

 to increase the difficulty of their attainment, and to mix up in college 

 examinations (which are supposed to depend upon stiidy alone) essays 

 in many cases of a nature that demands the most prolonged and deep 

 reflection. The effect of this is evident. Those who, from circum- 

 stances, have neither opportunity nor leisure thus to reflect, must, in 

 order to secure their success, acquire that kind of superficial infor- 

 mation wliich may enable them to draw- sufiiciently plausible conclu- 

 sions, upon very slight grounds ; and of many who have this form 

 of knowledge, most will eventually be proved (if this system is 

 carried to an excess) to have but little of the substance of it." 



The real educational results, that is, to the nation, would be greater 

 and better, if the merely preparatory studies of young men could be 

 made to end earlier, and the time thus gained be converted into an 

 interval calmly and seriously devoted to philosophic inquiry in various 

 directions, by those intended for the professions and others having a 

 genuine love of learning, irrespective of emolument. This is a thought 

 which opens u)3 a noble view of v/hat a University might be. 



At the Michaelmas examination of 1832, Lord Elgin was placed 

 in the first class in classics, and common report spoke of him as " the 

 best first of his year." And not long afterwards he was elected a 

 Fellow of Merton. 



In Walrond's Memoir, few letters of Lord Elgin are given of a 

 very early date. But we ai-e told that after leaving college, he kept 

 up a regular correspondence on abstruse questions with his brother 

 Frederick, still at Oxford. Some of these letters should have been 

 given for the benefit of students. 



Before his appointment to the Governor-Generalship of Canada,. 

 Lord Elgin had in Jamaica, where he was Governor in 1842, a fiel(i 



