489 
1876.] Encouragement of Scientific Research. 
select band of Oxford Fellows and their friends that the 
Royal Society first saw the light. In Astronomy, besides 
the peerless name of Newton, who was emphatically an 
academical recluse, the lists of eminent professors who were 
not teachers, both at Oxford and Cambridge, might be quoted, 
of whom Bradley is only one among many. These examples 
have not been discovered by means of any remote enquiry, 
but are merely jotted down as they suggest themselves to one 
who has no books of reference at hand. Their number might 
be indefinitely extended, but as it is they are more than 
sufficient to demonstrate that in every branch of knowledge 
Oxford and Cambridge have fairly held their own ; and that 
endowed sinecures did not turn out a failure till it was announced, 
with quasi -Parliamentary sanction, that the traditional duty of 
study was no longer to be expected from the Fellows .” 
We have merely, then, to restore the universities to some- 
thing of their old condition, though on the wider and deeper 
scale suitable to the modern position of science and learning. 
We must cast aside, on the one hand, the corruptions and 
negledfc of the eighteenth century, and on the other the 
pseudo-reforms of the nineteenth. All this can be done by 
the enactment of a new principle in the attainment of fellow- 
ships, and indeed of all high honours ; instead of election 
with its jobbery and favouritism and corruption, or competi- 
tive examination with its cram and quackery and superfi- 
ciality, and hostility to all true intellectual life, let us have 
research as the only test. One of the writers of the work 
before us gives it as his opinion— u Only when a man has 
finished his training and proved his competence by some 
published investigation should he be appointed to a fellow- 
ship.” Although speaking of theological research he thus 
advocates our scheme, since the principle is one and the 
same. We are far from claiming the whole of the fellow- 
ships for physical science. We are pleading the cause of 
investigation in philology, in history, in theology, as well as 
in biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, or geology. Let 
there be a fair division. Then let every candidate for a fel- 
lowship be bound to produce some piece of original research 
in the science or branch of erudition to which he intends to 
devote his life. Of course only students who have duly 
passed through their proper curriculum, and who have 
proved that they have reached a certain preliminary standard, 
will be allowed to submit to this new trial. It will, however, 
be much less of a competition than the present system, since 
a great number of minds— those, indeed, of the class who 
now often make the greatest figure— will find themselves at 
