LONDON UNIVERSITY REFORM 



331 



" Faculties " of Medicine, Law, and Theology, and set up first- 

 class chairs in Literature, Art, Philosophy, and pure Science 

 — a sort of combination of Sorbonne (without Theology) and 

 College de France. 



Thank Heaven I have never been asked to say anything, 

 and my chimaeras remain in petto. They would be scouted. 



On the other hand, he was most anxious to keep the 

 School of Science at South Kensington entirely independ- 

 ent. He writes again on May 26 : — 



I trust Riicker and Thorpe are convinced by this time that I 

 knew what I was talking about when I told them, months ago, 

 that there would be an effort to hook us into the new University 

 hotch-potch. 



I am ready to oppose any such project tooth and nail. I 

 have not been striving these thirty years to get Science clear 

 of their schoolmastering sham-literary peddling to give up the 

 game without a fight. I hope my Lords will be staunch. 



I am glad my opinion is already on record. 



And similarly to Sir M. Foster on October 30 : — 



You will have to come to London and set up physiology at 

 the Royal College of Science. It is the only place in Great 

 Britain in which scientific teaching is trammelled neither by 

 parsons nor by litterateurs. I have always implored Donnelly 

 to keep us clear of any connection with a University of any- 

 kind, sort, or description, and I tried to instil the same lesson 

 into the doctors the other day. But the " liberal education " 

 cant is an obsession of too many of them. 



A further step was taken in June, when he was sent 

 a new draft of proposals, afterwards adopted by the above- 

 mentioned general meeting of the Association in March, 

 1893, sketching a constitution for a new university, and 

 asking for the appointment of a Statutory Commission to 

 carry it out. The University thus constituted was to be 

 governed by a Court, half of which should consist of uni- 

 versity professors * ; it was to include such faculties as 



* "As for a government by professors only" (he writes in the 

 Times of Dec. 6, 1892), "the fact of their being specialists is against 

 them. Most of them are broad-minded, practical men ; some are good 

 administrators. But, unfortunately, there is among them, as in other 



