All over Europe, of late, we have been hearing a great deal of universities and students. The trencher-cap has claimed a right to take its part in the movements which make or mar the destinies of nations, by the side of plumed casque and priestly tiara. Whether it was the beer of the German burschen that "decocted their cold blood to such valiant heat," or whether their practice in make-believe duels had imparted a savage appetite for foeman's blood in some more genuine combat, or whether Fichte's metaphysics had fairly muddled their brains into delirium, certain it is that they have, wheresoever they could find an opportunity, been foremost in the cause of demolition and disorder, vied with and encouraged the lowest of the rabble in lawless aggressions, exulted in the glow of blazing houses, and cried havoc to rapine and murder.

It is curious that, while all this has been going on in Europe, the attention of the public should have been so much occupied by the condition of our English universities. Still more curious is it, perhaps, that so large a portion of the attention thus directed should have assumed an objurgatory tone, as if Oxford and Cambridge were not duly performing their functions, as if they were of a character suited only to bygone ages, as if, in short, they were doing nothing. True enough, in one sense, they were "doing nothing." There was no academical legion formed—none, at least, that we heard of—in Christchurch Meadows or Trinity Walks; no body of sympathising students marched to London, with the view of taking part in the democratic exhibitions of the 10th of April. If Cuffey is to be President of the British Republic, he must search for the body-guard of democracy elsewhere than on the banks of the Cam and the Isis. No doubt this excellent result is attributable, in a great measure, to the loyalty of the professional and middle classes, from which our university students principally spring. Their feelings will naturally be akin to those of their relations and friends. But when, in so many other instances, we see the academic population taking the lead in the work of revolution, beyond any spirit which exists among their kindred, and urged on by a democratic madness of purely academic growth, we cannot help holding that some credit on behalf of the loyalty of English students is due to the institutions by the influence of which they are surrounded.

We are inclined to think that the public have not been sufficiently alive to this not unimportant difference between Oxford and Heidelberg—Cambridge and Vienna. Certes, but little account was taken of the peaceful bearing of our academic population. On the contrary, much supercilious wordiness has been lavished, more or less to the discredit of cap and gown, by portions of the London press in the lead, and, as a necessary consequence, by provincial journalists ad libitum. This talk, current now for some years, was all concentrated and endued with new vigour by a movement of the University of Cambridge itself. The people who stop your way by talking of "progress," and deal out dark rhodomontade on the subject of "enlightenment," were all set agog by what they thought a symptom of capitulation in the strongholds of the Ancient. All our old imbecile friends, the cant phrases of twenty and thirty years ago, started up as fresh as paint, ready to go through all the handling they had before endured. We heard of, "keeping alive ancient prejudices," "cleaving pertinaciously to obsolete forms," "following a monastic rule," "forgetting the world outside their college walls," and multifarious twaddle of this sort, till the Pope fled from Rome, or some other little revolution occurred to withdraw the attention of the public from this set of phrases to another, no doubt not less forcible and original. Others, again, took a friendly tone and spoke apologetically: it was a great thing to get any move at all from the university: those who took the lead in her management were not men who mixed with the world at large, and allowance must be made if they did not altogether march with the times. "The world at large" is an expression of very doubtful import: "all think their little set mankind:" but when the resident fellows of colleges are charged with not duly mixing with the world at large, we cannot help thinking that those who use the phrase are ignoring the existence of the Didcot Junction and Eastern Counties Railway, and borrowing their ideas of academic life from the time when Hobson travelled "betwixt Cambridge and the Bull." As far as our observation goes, we should say that there is no class of persons who have better opportunities of taking an extended view of different phases of social being, or who are more disposed to take advantage of those opportunities. A fellow of a college is not engaged much more than half the year in university business; for four months, at the very least, he generally has it in his power to expatiate where he will, from May Fair to Mesopotamia; he has no household ties to detain him, and if he does not rub off the lexicographic rust, and the mathematical mouldiness, which he may have contracted during his labours of the term, he must be possessed of a local attachment almost vegetable: some few instances of which secluded existence still linger in quiet nooks of our halls and colleges, but which are no more the types of their class than Parson Trulliber is a representative of the country clergy, or the stage Diggory of the English yeoman. But the self-complacency of Cockneyism is the most unshaken thing in this revolutionary age. It is perfectly ready to lecture the parson on the teaching of Greek, or the Yorkshire farmer on the fattening of bullocks. All the distributive machinery in the world does not diminish, it would seem, the absorption of intelligence by the Ward of Cheap.

We are not, however, surprised that the conclusions, on which we have remarked, should be those arrived at by the large class of small observers whose phraseology we have quoted. The bustling man of business, who takes his day-ticket to Oxford or Cambridge, is of course struck by seeing a number of usages, for the original of which, if he inquire, he is referred back to hoar mediÆval times—times which his Cockney guides dispose of by some such phrase as crass ignorance, or feudal barbarism. He is naturally surprised at such things; he never saw anything like it before; they don't do so in Mincing Lane, or even in Gower Street. He can hardly be expected to view these matters in their relation to the system of which they form a part; he can hardly be expected to realise in them the symbols through which the genius loci finds an utterance and exerts an agency; and so he goes smiling home in his railway carriage, and perhaps buys a number of Punch by the way, and thinks that there is more practical wisdom in that periodical than is embodied in the great monuments of William of Wykeham or Lady Margaret.

Nevertheless, while we rebut these vague general charges of a blind impassibility to the influences of the time, we are far from denying that a tendency to cling to ancient ideas and observances is a characteristic of the universities. This tendency is a property of all corporate institutions, and is commonly the reason of their foundation. They are to perpetuate to a future time a feeling or design of the present; to form a nucleus, round which the thoughts and principles of one age congregate, and are thus handed down to another in a preserved and crystallised form. Changes of ideas pass upon them of necessity, through the individual liability of their constituent members to be affected by the current of the passing time; but these changes take place rather by a gradual fusion of the old into the new, than by those sudden transitions to which the popular and prevailing opinions are so often subjected. And it may fairly be supposed that, by means of this property, corporations are more likely to adopt and amalgamate into their framework that which is most permanent and genuine, out of all that the ever-changing tide of time casts upon the shore.

Perhaps, too, this tenacity of the bygone will more naturally be found to be a characteristic of the universities, than of other corporations. The spots which they occupy are holy ground, fraught with historic memories of the great and wise of former days. The genius loci is a mighty advocate in behalf of antiquity:—

—so we may not well pass unaffected by the congregation of priest, and poet, and sage, whose recollections consecrate the banks of our academic rivers. As we go beneath "Bacon's mansion," or about Milton's mulberry tree; as we kneel where Newton knelt, or dine in halls where the portraits of Erasmus, and Fisher, and Taylor, look down upon us,—these are not times and places for the dogmatism and arrogance of "the nineteenth century"—for bragging of our advance and illumination, or sneering at "the good old times." This is in accordance with the law of our nature; but these recollections, and the lessons which they teach, are not, if rightly laid hold of, such as to induce a mere blind attachment to the skeletons of dead notions and practices. And although it may, perhaps must, happen that, at any given time, there may be found relics adhering to the system, whose vitality and meaning have been withdrawn by time, and left them dry and sapless, yet we will venture to assert that, if a dogged adherence to antiquated forms could fairly be charged on the universities, they could never have maintained their ground amidst the mighty historical transmutations that have passed over their heads. Civil wars and popular tumults have raged around them; the throne has yielded to violence and to intrigue; the Church has admitted modifications, both of her doctrine and her discipline; and, more than all, the still more important, though silent and gradual changes—changes to which the striking and salient events of history are but the indexes and visible signs—changes of thought and rule of action—have risen and sunk, and ebbed and flowed, and still these stable monuments of the piety and munificence of men whose names are almost unknown, remain unshorn of their ancient vigour, and intimately entwined with our social system.

But it is time that we should come to particulars, and make known to our readers, as briefly as we can, the nature of the alterations recently introduced at Cambridge, which have called forth so much objurgatory commendation from quarters, which were commonly considered to entertain tolerably destructive views in regard to the universities. We say objurgatory commendation, because the faint praise of a "move in the right direction" was generally more or less coupled with vigorous denunciation of the antiquated obstinacy which had so long kept in the wrong. And here we must premise the statement of certain qualities of the age in which we live, which will have fallen under the notice of all observers. Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of our time is the principle which forms the life and soul of retail trade—the principle which sets men to busy themselves about small and immediate returns for outlay; which looks more to the gains across the counter, than to the advantage which is general, or distant, or future. In a word, practicality is the ruling passion of our day. As might have been expected, education, among other things, has been subjected to this huckstering test. People have asked, what is the market value of this or that branch of learning? Will it get a boy on in the world? Will it enable him to provide for himself soon? Will the returns for the expenditure I am going to make be quick and certain? Cowper represents the father of a son intended for the church as speculating on his young hopeful's prospects after the following fashion:—

In these days the acquaintance of a duke is not of the same relative value as it was when Cowper wrote; but this sort of worldly-wise calculation is more prevalent than ever, and the cry of the largest class of the public is—give us such knowledge as will pay. Those who took this commercial view of education derived no small encouragement from the circumstance that Prince Albert, the learned field-marshal, and warlike chancellor of Cambridge University, had interfered to promote the culture of modern languages in these venerable precincts of Eton, where for many a year Henry's holy shade had watched the growth of an education of less obvious utility. How was young Thomas or William "the better off" for being able to con "the tale of Troy divine?" But teach him to mince a little French, simper a little Italian, snarl a little German, and there he is at once accomplished for an attachÉ, a correspondent, or a bagman—profitable walks of life all of them. And the same notions mounted still higher in the ascendant, when the senate of the University of Cambridge apparently evinced a desire to examine the requirements of that body by the same standard.

The first step of this kind was taken about three years ago. Most of our readers are aware that, at Cambridge, those candidates for a degree who do not aspire to honours are said to go out in the poll; this being the abbreviated term to denote those who were classically designated ?? p?????. Now the qualifications required for attaining this poll degree consisted of an acquaintance with a part of Homer, a part of Virgil, a part of the Greek Testament, and Paley's Evidences of Christianity, over and above the mathematics, of which we shall speak presently. By what curious infelicity the recondite, and, in many particulars, inexplicable language of Homer has been so commonly selected for beginners in Greek at school, and, as in this case, for those who were not expected to appear as accomplished scholars—we need not here stop to inquire. Suffice it to say that the university, in this initial reform, ousted Homer and Virgil from the course, and supplied their places with a Latin and Greek author, to be varied in each successive year. This was decidedly an improvement, at least as regards Homer, for the reason we have alluded to above. Perhaps a better innovation would have been to have followed the Oxford system, and allowed to the student a choice of his author. But it is a great misfortune that the university, in recasting this course, did not substitute a work of some one of the logical or philosophical authors current in the English language, for the shallow and plausible book of Paley's above mentioned—with regard to which it would be difficult to say whether it is worse chosen as a model of reasoning, or as a proof of Christian facts.

The mathematical portion of this course consisted of Euclid, algebra, and trigonometry, the student being thus trained in the model processes of pure mathematical reasoning left us by the first, and also brought acquainted with the elementary operations of analysis. As a matter of mental training, the most valuable portion of this curriculum was the knowledge acquired of the geometrical processes employed by Euclid, as familiarising the mind of the student with the severest forms of reasoning, and the steps whereby indubitable verity is attained. This portion, however, was most especially selected for curtailment by the reforms to which we are alluding. In the stead of the requirements thus displaced, a motley amount of elementary propositions in statics, dynamics, and hydrostatics, were substituted—useful information enough as instances of the simpler applications of the analytical machinery of mathematics, but comparatively worthless as an exercise of the mind. Country clergymen, whose forgotten mathematics loomed grandly on their minds through the mist of years, were confounded with disappointment at beholding their sons, in whom they expected to find philosophers, return to them with an examination paper, apparently rather calculated to unfold the mysteries of engineering, well-sinking, and carpentering.

This object—the practicability and immediate utility of the studies pursued, in preference to the superiority of mental training derivable from them—seems to be simply that which has dictated the recent innovations of 1848. The principle which entered into both measures may easily be traced in the prevalent phases of literature and science throughout the public at large. A few years ago, every one fancied himself a philosopher. Little volumes, cabinet cyclopÆdias and the like, swarmed on the booksellers' shelves, containing a string of disjointed and bald scientific facts, involving no truth and expressive of no law, but more or less adroitly arranged under several heads, with a savant air. The man of business—the apprentice—the boarding-school miss—took it into their heads that a royal road was thus opened to all branches of useful and entertaining knowledge,—that the acquirements of Bacon were "in this wonderful age" brought within the reach of every one who had an occasional hour or two in the day to spare from more mechanical employments; and that the progress from ignorance to philosophy was as much facilitated by these little-book contrivances, as the journey from London to Birmingham, by the rushing railway-train, was an advance upon the week's toil of our forefathers in accomplishing the same space. Much of this mania for desultory knowledge has evaporated, but its influences are still distinctly to be traced among us. It is not surprising that those influences should in some measure have affected the universities. In accordance with the popular notions afloat, the Cambridge legislators followed up the alteration which we have been describing by the adoption of their recent measures, by which they effected an extension of their field of "honours" similar to that which they had already accomplished in the qualifications for the ordinary degree. To the old "triposes," or classes of honours in mathematics and classics, they have now added two more—namely, one in moral sciences and one in natural sciences.

Before, however, we offer any conjectures as to the probable effect of these yet untried changes, we must remind our readers of a certain characteristic of the Cambridge system, which is important in estimating the internal relations of the late reforms. The academic life of Cambridge circulates through two concurrent systems, which we may term the university and the collegiate system. The university is one corporation, and each individual college is altogether another. The union between the two systems might be dissolved without difficulty. If the university were to abandon her ancient seat, and take up some new abode, as she did for a time at Northampton some centuries ago, the colleges might still remain as places of education, with but little modification of their present character. The older system—the university—has had its functions gradually absorbed in a great measure by the collegiate. The earliest form in which Cambridge appears, dimly seen in hoar antiquity, is that of a congregation of students, commonly living together for mutual convenience in hostels, governed by a code of statutes, and endowed with the privilege of granting degrees. Then came the founders of colleges, with their noble endowments, and reared edifices, in which societies of these students should live together under a common rule, and form distinct corporations by themselves, for purposes connected with, and auxiliary to, those of the university. The latter body has from time immemorial matriculated only those who were already members of some one or other of the colleges; but there probably was a time at which a student in the university was not necessarily a member of any college, until by degrees these foundations absorbed into their composition the whole of the academic population. By-and-by, the principal part of the functions of teaching also lapsed into the hands of the colleges. In the old times, the university discharged this duty by means of the public readings or lectures by the newly admitted masters of arts, (termed regents,) and by the keeping of acts and opponencies—being certain viv voce disputations—by the students. To this system, comprehending the main studies of the place, was superadded, by individual endowment or royal beneficence, the collateral information on special subjects given by the professors. The colleges were altogether subsidiary to this mode of instruction—the practice being that every student who enrolled himself in the ranks of a particular college, must do so under the charge of some one of the fellows of the college, who became a kind of private tutor to him. Hence arose college tutors; and as their lectures, given in each separate college, were found to be the most efficient aids in prosecuting the university studies, the readings of the masters of arts gradually fell altogether into disuse, and the viv voce exercises of the students have nearly done so.

Possibly, along with the transfer of the functions of lecturing from the university regents to the college tutors, the professorial chairs may also have declined in importance as an element of the academic education. But, as we have before seen, these were never the main vehicle for the dispensation of knowledge on the part of the university. Nevertheless, we suspect that one object of the recently erected triposes is to revive the importance of the professors' lectures in the university course. For it is now required that every one who presents himself as a candidate for the ordinary or poll degree, shall have attended the lectures of some one of the professors at his individual choice; and these lectures will, moreover, be necessary guides in the studies required of those who aim at the honours of the new triposes. It seems clear, therefore, that the devisers of the scheme had it in contemplation, through the medium of their changes, to fill the class-rooms of the professors, and so far to assimilate the modern system to the ancient, by bringing the university instruction into more active play. We are disposed to question the wisdom of these proceedings. Until now, the university and the colleges had apportioned their several functions, by assigning to the latter the duty of imparting proficiency in the studies cultivated; to the former, that of testing proficiency attained. The two systems had thus harmonised, as we believe, in conformity with the requirements of the age by lapse of time; and if it was deemed desirable to disturb this arrangement, and restore the faculty of teaching to the university, this should rather have been done, we think, by reviving the system of viv voce disputations, now altogether disused except in the progress to a degree in law, physic, or divinity; but which would form, under proper regulations, an important adjunct to the ordinary course, by cultivating a decision, a readiness, and an ingenuity in reasoning, which are comparatively left dormant by a written examination. Again, it is, as we consider, altogether a mistake to suppose that the primary end of a professorial existence is to deliver lectures. The endowment of a professorship is rather, as we take it, to enable the holder of it to give up his time to the particular science to which he is devoted; and it is by no means necessary, especially in these days, when words are so easily winged by the printer's devil, that the results of his labours should be given forth by oral lectures. At the same time, when his subject, and his manner of treating it, were such as to command interest, he was at no loss for an audience. The professorships, however, being mostly established for the purpose of aiding the pursuit of the inductive sciences, side by side with the severer studies of the university, fell under the patronage of the spirit of the age. Whether the sciences, for the promotion of which they were founded, will be materially advanced by this sort of "protection," remains to be seen.

It is likely enough, we think, that some confusion may arise from this revival of the lecturing powers of the university. This, however, will be easily obviated in practice, as the two systems have never, so far as we are aware, manifested anything like a mutual antagonism or jealousy of each other. A greater practical difficulty is one which appears to be left untouched by the new regime. We allude to the growing plan of instruction by private tutors—a calling which has sprang up, in the strictest principles of demand and supply, to meet the eagerness for external aid which has been induced by the great competition for university honours. The existence and increasing importance of the class of private tutors has been decried as an evil; and it, no doubt, enhances considerably the expenses attendant on a college education. But, after all, this is only part and parcel of the lot which has fallen to us in these latter days of merry England. There are so many of us, and we keep so constantly adding to our numbers, that we must not be surprised at more pushing and contrivance being required to realise a livelihood than heretofore; and as the end to be attained increases in its relative importance, the outlay attendant on its attainment will, in the ordinary course of things, be augmented also. It is not our intention, however, to discuss at this time the merits or demerits of the private-tutor system; it suffices for our purpose to notice it as the reappearance, in another form, of the old functions of instruction, as lodged in the hands of the university regents. As the collegiate system gradually supplanted that pristine form, so the office of the private tutors is, to a certain extent, supplanting the collegiate system. These instructors are likely, as we before said, to occupy, under the new rules, much the same place as they held under the old; and indeed it appears that, whether desirable or not, it would be extremely difficult to get rid of them; at all events the colleges, being now trenched upon by the university professors on the one hand, and by the private tutors on the other, must exert themselves to ascertain their proper functions, and to fulfil them with zeal and energy.

As for the new triposes themselves, it may be doubted whether the name given to them is not the most unfortunate part of them. The common name of Tripos looks like a confusion of ideas on the part of the university itself, and a want of discrimination between its old studies and its new. At first, probably, the recent triposes will be comparatively neglected, and on that ground alone it is both misjudging and unfair to include in the same category of "honours" and "tripos," classes which are respectively the subject of ardent competition and of none at all. But supposing that the new classes attracted their fair share of competitors, it would still be a grievous fault in the university to hold out to the world so false an estimate of the vehicle of mental training, as it would appear to do by placing on a par the new studies and the old—by assuming, or seeming to assume, that ratiocinative thought may be as well employed about the fallacies of Mr Ricardo, as the exact reasoning and indubitable verities of Euclid and Newton; or that the faculties of discrimination and speculation may be unfolded by the "getting up" of botanical or chemical nomenclature, not less than by the new world of thought opened through the authors of Greece and Rome. We must, however, confess that we are now taking the most unfavourable view of the matter. With respect, indeed, to the natural sciences' tripos, we cannot help being fully of opinion, that it should have been distinctly recognised as subsidiary to the main vehicles of education adopted at Cambridge. But the moral sciences' tripos furnishes, if properly constructed, an excellent means for training thought. It is a great misfortune that the study of Aristotle has been suffered at Cambridge to fall almost into desuetude: we speak of the philosophical study of his works in contradistinction to the philological. The former is maintained at Oxford with great success; thus combining, with Oxford scholarship, a training of the reasoning powers which is almost an equivalent for the mathematical studies of her sister university. Moreover, the literature of Great Britain boasts of a band of moral philosophers far greater than any other modern nation can produce. The works of Butler, Cudworth, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, and Stewart, with many others, form a group of authorities worthy of the groves of Academus. The metaphysics of Locke—we should rather say, the wall which Locke has built up between the English mind and the science of metaphysics—has too long prevented the moral reasoners of this country from duly availing themselves of the treasures at their command. Under the guidance of such lights as those we have enumerated, we may hope to see a school of metaphysical thinkers arise in England, whose exertions may dissipate the mist of half-thought in which Teutonic speculation has involved the science of its choice. If, however, the tap-root of our metaphysical thought is to be cut through by the study of the plausibilities of Locke and Paley, (no very unlikely issue, we should fear, at least under present circumstances,) then this moral sciences' tripos also is one of those things which had better never have been.

We repeat that Cambridge has incurred great blame, if she has allowed herself to mislead, or to seem to mislead, the popular mind on these matters. The more talkative portion of the public, and the newspapers which commonly represent that more talkative portion, have evidently been inclined to interpret this movement of Cambridge as an indication of a most utilitarian system of education coming to supplant the old rules. They anticipate all sorts of civil engineering, butterfly-dissecting, light geology, and a whole Babel of modern languages, to be victoriously let loose on the home where for many a century Wisdom has sat with the scroll of Plato on her knee, and Science has unravelled the wizard lore of fluxion and equation. The senate of Cambridge is egregiously mistaken if it supposes that it will win over to its body the students of these popular branches of knowledge, by following the dictation of the popular taste. Those who want to be civil engineers will not come to a university to learn their art. They will follow Brunel and Stephenson, and see how the work is actually done in practice; and those who do so will soon prove themselves far superior, quoad civil engineering, to the Cambridge-bred theorist. In like manner, a month's flirtation in Paris, or a few games at ÉcartÉ with a German baron, will teach the student of modern languages more French or German than all the philologists of Oxford, Cambridge, or Eton can impart in a year.

"Quam quisque nÔrit artem, in hÂc se exerceat."

If the public have mistaken the functions of the university, it is the more incumbent on her to assert them correctly. Nor is the outcry less groundless, that the universities have failed to furnish the best men in law and medicine. With regard to the law, certain gentlemen were even cited by name, in leading articles of newspapers, as types of the class of men who were now taking the lead at the bar, and representing an altogether different school from that trained at the universities. The fact of the university men being supplanted, or being likely to be supplanted, at the bar, may admit of considerable question. But it is not, after all, the question by which the universities are to be judged. They do not undertake to make men great lawyers or skilful physicians; this, where it does belong to their functions, is a collateral duty, and not the main object of their training. That object is distinctly avowed in their own formularies. That noble clause in the "bidding prayer" will attach itself to the memories of most of those who have heard it:

"And that there never may be wanting a supply of persons duly qualified to serve God, both in Church and State, let us pray for a blessing on all seminaries of sound learning and religious education, particularly the universities of this realm."

A higher end to be attained, perhaps, than that of merely qualifying the student to "get on in the world." His university education is not so much to enable him to attain those eminent stations which are the prizes of ability and industry, as to fit him to adorn and fill worthily those stations when he has attained them. In truth, we think it is not desirable, any more than necessary, that a degree should be an essential opening to the bar, the profession of medicine, or even the Church. The university is injured by being too much regarded as a step to be got over with the view of reaching some ulterior end.

We dwell on this point with the more interest, because we are satisfied that a still greater responsibility rests with the universities, to guard the fountains of knowledge pure and unsullied, in those days of professed knowledge, than in the so-called dark ages. Our day is rich in the knowledge of facts; there were many truths influencing those men of the times we please to call dark, which we have ignored or forgotten. The general demand for information—for this knowledge of facts—has made it a marketable commodity, a subject of commercial speculation; consequently, a vast deal that is shallow and desultory, a vast deal, too, that is counterfeit and fraudulent, is abroad, made up for the market, and circulates among multitudes who are incapable of separating the grain from the chaff. It is therefore, we repeat, even more important that the sources of learning should be guarded from contamination, now that the antagonistic principles are the knowledge of truth and the subserviency to falsehood, than when, at the revival of literature, the struggle was between knowledge and ignorance.

We would have the universities remember that it is their best policy as corporations, as well as a duty they owe to those great medieval spirits who planted them where they stand, to own a better principle than that which would lead them to succumb to what is called popular opinion—in other words, the floating fallacy of the day—and aim at producing the shallow party leaders and favourite writers of the passing moment. They cannot control the frothy surface and the deep under-current at the same time. It would be a sacrifice to expediency which, after all, would not serve their turn. There are institutions which will do that work, and which will beat them in the race. Let all such take their own course.

"Let Gryll be Gryll, and have his hoggish kinde:" let Stinkomalee train the statesmen for the League and the jokers for Punch,—but Oxford and Cambridge have other rÔles.

It is true, we are told there is a new aristocracy rising in England, and that the English universities are gaining no hold upon the coming generation of "chiefs of industry." It would be far better for our social condition that these same chiefs of industry should be educated men, and should pass through a training which might tend to neutralise the power of the mercantile iron in entering into their soul. But at present the race to be rich is so strong and hardly contested, that this class is hardly likely, in general, to devote their scions to academical studies of any description; and the merchant or manufacturer who came from the banks of Isis or Cam, at the age of twenty-one, to the Exchange or the Cloth-hall, would find himself starting under a most heavy disadvantage as compared with his neighbour of the same age, who had spent the last three or four years in a counting-house. The reason that this class is not commonly trained in the national seminaries, is to be sought in the habit and requirements of the class, and not in the nature of the education afforded them.

We have spoken chiefly of Cambridge, because Cambridge has put herself forward as the representative of a system of so-called university reform—of a certain movement in the direction of that principle which would accommodate the education of our higher classes to the caprice of a popular cry or cant phrase. We care not so much whether that movement in itself be advantageous or the reverse: it is against the principles supposed to be involved in it that we protest. The report goes, that changes of some kind or other are contemplated at Oxford also. If these changes be made, we trust that they will not be devised in deference to the noisier portion of the public, or to that fondness for short-cuts to knowledge, which fritters away the energies of the rising man in the collection of desultory facts, and the dependence upon shallow plausibilities. The Scottish universities, too, are likely to be put to the test in the same manner as their sisters of the Southern kingdom; and the questions raised cannot be uninteresting to them.

Nor, indeed, can the whole nation be otherwise than deeply concerned in this matter; and we are not surprised, at the interest which has been excited by the recent alterations at Cambridge, though not measures in themselves of any great importance. While we have contended for a higher ground on the part of the universities than that of merely finding such knowledge as is required by the popular taste, and happens to be most current in the market, and have called upon them to lead the public mind in these matters, we need hardly say that we must not be understood as failing to see the necessity of those institutions closely observing the shifting relations of our social equilibrium, and adapting their policy by judicious change, if need be, to the circumstances in which they find themselves. We might perhaps adduce the altered position of the Church with respect to the nation at large, as an instance of these changes. We have before hinted that the universities have, as we think, in some degree aimed at being too exclusively the training-schools of the clergy; and this circumstance, in our judgment, so far as England is concerned, has both narrowed the operations of the Church and the influence of the universities. The Church and European civilisation—the latter having grown up under the tutelage of the former—stand no longer in the relation of nurse and bantling, though Heaven forbid that they should ever be other than firm friends and allies! But the Church is no longer the exclusive teacher of the world: mankind are in a great measure taught by books. Viewing the clergy not in respect of their sacerdotal functions, but as the instructors of mankind, we find their office shared by a motley crowd of authors, pamphleteers, newspaper editors, magazine contributors, quales nos vel Cluvienus. It is incumbent, then, on the universities to consider how they may bring within the sphere of that control which they exercised in old times over the clergy, this mixed multitude of public instructors; how they may become not merely the schools of the clerical order, but also the nurseries of a future caste of literary men, who are to bear their part with that order in the coming development of human thought.