LIBRARY 215 



books, and for the additional expense entailed by the 

 Acton library. This annual income, if capitalized, 

 represents a sum of ;^ 126,700. 



Modern education is a costly thing ; and when, in 

 1904, the heads of departments in the University made 

 an estimate of the outlay necessary to place their 

 several provinces in a state of efficiency, their de- 

 liberate and responsible calculations showed tha,t a 

 sum of ;£"27o,ooo was required for building and equip- 

 ment, and an additional annual income of ;^38,ooo for 

 the increase of salaries on the very moderate scale 

 suggested, and for maintenance ; in all, say a capital 

 sum of a million and a half. Even this estimate takes 

 no account of the desirability of providing pensions 

 for professors who have reached the age of seventy. 

 As the published list of benefactions shows, Cam- 

 bridge has reason to be grateful to her recent 

 benefactors. But to raise an endowment comparable 

 to that of ;^i,4oo,ooo which the Johns Hopkins 

 University received from private munificence seems 

 in this country to be hardly within the bounds of 

 possibility. 



Had an appeal such as that issued by Cambridge 

 been made in the United States, there is little doubt 

 that it would have met with a prompt response. 

 There is in Montreal a University, officered largely 

 by Cambridge men, and equipped with a princely 

 magnificence of which Cambridge dares not even 

 dream. Dr. Ewing's comment is pertinent. ' It is 

 good,' said he, ' to see the colonial daughter sitting 

 down to so lavish a table ; but is it well that the alma 

 mater at home should be left looking wistfully at the 

 crumbs ?' Nearer home, Mr. Carnegie has shown 

 what a large-minded liberality can do for the Scottish 

 Universities. A great benefactor who would free the 

 University of Cambridge from a sordid struggle, in 



