Encouragement of Scientific Research . [October, 
not educational, tuitional, but investigational. “ It is cer- 
tain that the present generation of Fellows, whether tutors 
or non-residents, are alike wrongful occupants of their com- 
fortable positions, and usurpers when tried at the bar of 
history.” 
Claiming, then, as we do, these positions for men capable 
of and devoted to research, we are assuredly not revolu- 
tionists, spoliators, and confiscators, but upholders of the 
rights of property and of the sacredness of bequests. Old 
precedent speaks not against us but for us. What we urge 
is not an innovation. “ Up to the close of the last century 
Oxford and Cambridge always took the lead of the nation 
in all intellectual matters. Their pre-eminence was due not 
to the efficiency of their instruction, but to the presence of 
the few industrious holders of sinecure appointments 
It is more to the purpose to draw attention to the negleCted 
faCt that even in the physical sciences have college fellow- 
ships proved themselves in the past to be not unkindly 
nurses. 
“It can hardly have escaped the attention of the reader that 
in the extracts from the statutes given above, Medicine, 
Natural Philosophy, and Astronomy hold a considerable 
place. It is indeed only a deplorable ignorance of history 
which induces people to regard the present revival of 
scientific studies at the Universities as an absolute innova- 
tion, characteristic of the latter part of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. William of Wykeham contemplated that two of his 
Fellows should apply themselves to Medicine and two to As- 
tronomy ; while William of Waynflete, his worthy imitator, 
named Natural Philosophy as one of the three chief objects 
of study at Magdalen. Nor has the aCtual fruit been 
altogether unworthy of these liberal designs. It was Thomas 
Linacre, a Fellow of All Souls, a man who combined to a 
rare degree classical taste with scientific erudition, that first 
raised the practice of medicine to an honourable status in 
this country, and induced Cardinal Wolsey to found the 
Royal College of Physicians in London at the commence- 
ment of the sixteenth century. Of that learned body 
Linacre was the first President. He was succeeded in the 
chair by Dr. Caius, himself a Fellow of Gonville Hall at 
Cambridge, which he subsequently ereCted into the College 
which bears his joint name. In later days Sydenham, the 
father of the scientific study of medicine, was a student of 
Christ Church, and testified to his intimate connection with 
that corporation by bequeathing to it his valuable library. 
It ought, also, never to be forgotten that it was among a 
