rascality in desiring payment, she asked the Minister to a farewell dinner, and insisted on advancing the full amount. Such was the financial finale of this brilliant embassy, which cost the Spanish Government 2,100,000 reals, in addition to 650,000 reals which its Minister was unable to recover.

The Duke finally left Moscow on November 30. On December 27 he entered Warsaw, crossing the floating ice of the Vistula, with only his bag, and in complete prostration. Travelling in Eastern Europe was not luxurious. For twenty-nine days he had not changed his clothes; the necessities of life could only be found in the Jews' houses, and they were such a rough and dirty people, and their houses were so offensive, that he could not enter them. From Warsaw the Duke passed to Vienna, where he aided in the negociations for the Treaty of Vienna. Here he was happier than in Russia. Viennese cookery and Viennese ladies were thoroughly to his taste. He never returned to Spain; after a visit to his beloved Paris he served with Don Carlos in his Neapolitan campaign. His health had, however, been undermined by his residence in Russia, and he died of consumption at an early age on June 2, 1738.

ART.

ART. VIII.-1. Minutes of Evidence taken before the Royal Commissioners appointed to enquire whether any and what kind of new University or powers is or are required for the advancement of Higher Education in London, 1889.

2. Draft Charter of the Albert University, 1891.

IN

N a former article we endeavoured to trace the history of the existing University of London through the half-century which had witnessed its varying phases of experiment, of hope, of disappointment, and yet on the whole of steady growth and increasing public usefulness. It was seen that the Institution had begun with a programme and expectations which had not been entirely fulfilled; but that it had in the course of years been able, by availing itself of opportunities as they occurred, to render services to education not contemplated by its founders. Established before religious tests were abandoned by the older Universities, and before the railway system had made Oxford and Cambridge easily accessible, some of the special arguments on which its early friends had rested their case, had in time lost much of their force; it had, nevertheless, exercised a large and beneficent influence on the higher education of the whole country, and especially on those students who were from various circumstances unable to become resident students at the great seats of learning, and were yet engaged successfully in the prosecution of liberal studies.

But the large and oecumenical scope of the University's operations, the absence of any organic connexion between the governing body of the University and the authorities of the colleges in which students were taught, and the fact that its functions were practically limited to the setting forth of programmes of study, and to the task of examining students and conferring rewards upon them, led, as we have before shown, to a demand on the part of many influential persons for a Teaching University which should fulfil other purposes, and become a great centre of academic life and influence worthy of the Metropolis.

The desire to establish such an institution found expression in many ways, notably in the formation of an Association, which sketched out a large and comprehensive scheme for bringing all the great teaching agencies of London into harmony under a common government. Subsequently a petition was presented to the Crown by the two leading Colleges-University and King's praying for a Charter of incorporation which should

* 6 Quarterly Review,' January 1887.

grant

grant them the power to confer degrees in addition to the powers already confided by former charters to their respective governing bodies. At the same time the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons united in another application to the Crown for a new Charter, empowering them to confer degrees in Medicine and in Surgery.

In conformity with the well-known usage in like cases, it was determined by the Government, before formally entertaining in Council the prayers of these petitioners, to refer the whole subject for preliminary enquiry to a Royal Commission. There are some obvious conveniences in this usage. It relieves the Government from the necessity of immediate action, and it gives to experts and persons possessed of special knowledge an opportunity for contributing facts and suggestions which could not properly be presented before a more formal tribunal. There is, it is true, a mass of loose and unmethodical opinion and conjecture brought into view on these occasions, which is technically, though not without a touch of sarcasm, designated 'evidence.' The witnesses are of course not on oath; their testimony is often given without verification and with a very feeble sense of responsibility; and the minutes of evidence' furnish matter, much of which is felt by the most patient reader to be bewildering and irrelevant. Yet there is often in the ponderous Blue-books,' would men observingly distil it out,'valuable material for forming judgments and for shaping future legislation.

Of the two very different methods of constituting Royal Commissions, the public have of late witnessed several characteristic examples. The Royal Commission of enquiry into the working of the Education Acts, under the presidency of Lord Cross, was formed avowedly on the principle of selecting representatives of all the various interests, parties, and opinions concerned with elementary education, and setting them to confer with each other. A Cardinal, an Anglican Bishop, a Methodist Clergyman, a representative of the Schoolmasters, another of the Secularists, and a third of the working men, members of the great Educational Societies, and two or three public men whose views on educational politics had been very distinctly pronounced, were placed round a table to listen to evidence,' and to advise and report on it. But among the numerous members of the Commission, there was no outside authority-lawyer, statesman, or school-manager-who was uncommitted to strong opinions on the matters in controversy, or was presumably free to form an impartial estimate of the various phenomena to be brought under review. The result may easily in such cases be

foreseen.

foreseen. Either such compromises are made, that the Report, when it appears, is colourless and ineffective, or it is accompanied with a minority report not less weighty than that signed by the Chairman, and having a practical tendency to neutralize its force. Both of these results occurred at the end of the investigations of the Royal Commission on Elementary Education. The official Report was not very skilfully framed, and was on many important points sadly inconclusive. Such recommendations as it made referred to minor improvements and modifications of the existing system, which, judging from the recent history of the Education Department, would have been effected in the ordinary course by successive changes in the Code, if no Royal Commission had reported. And it is a notable fact that the only legislative measure concerning education which Parliament has sanctioned since the publication of that Report, happens to be in direct contravention of the opinion and advice of the Commission.

When the time came for the Government to nominate a Royal Commission for the purpose of investigating the University problem in London, it was determined to pursue an entirely different course. The Commission was composed exclusively of persons who had not been identified with any one of the interests or institutions concerned, and to whom the entire field of enquiry and discussion was a tabula rasa. Lord Selborne presided. Sir James Hannen, now Lord Hannen, assisted. The Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, and Glasgow were represented respectively by Mr. George Brodrick, Sir G. Stokes, Dr. Ball, and Sir William Thomson; and Mr. Welldon of Harrow brought to the Commission the special experience of an eminent Head Master from a Public School. But neither London, nor the medical profession, nor any person connected with the teaching or examining bodies of the Metropolis, was included in the Commission. For complete detachment from all the controversial questions and interests concerned, and for the absence of all previous bias, the Commission was perfect, and formed a a marked contrast to the Education Commission, which had been filled with experts and partisans. But it must be owned that there were compensating disadvantages; for some of the Commissioners entertained a rather vague conception of the problem they were asked to solve; and some of the questions propounded by them betrayed curious ignorance of necessary preliminary facts. It is much to be regretted that at the outset the sudden and inexplicable withdrawal of the Warden of Merton from the Commission reduced its number from seven to six, and destroyed the balance

of

of special experience and knowledge which the Government had sought to secure. Mr. Brodrick was intended to represent Oxford, and he was probably the one member of the Commission most familiar with academic questions generally, and with the social and educational needs of London in

particular. The Commission was was therefore incompletely constituted from the first, and was deprived of the services of one member who would probably have exercised a material influence on its deliberations.

The witnesses examined were representatives from King's and University Colleges, from the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, from the University of London, from the Incorporated Law Society, from the Medical Schools of London, from the Society of Apothecaries, and from the Association for University Extension.' Communications were also received from the Birkbeck Institution, the Working Men's College, certain Ladies' Colleges, and the British Medical Association. None were received or invited from the provincial Colleges or from the Public and Endowed Schools, which at present send up so large a number of candidates to the examinations of the University of London. The terms of the Royal Commission, in fact, expressly precluded any extension of the field of enquiry to what may be called the imperial or cosmopolitan part of the University's present work. The Commissioners were enjoined to enquire and report Whether any, and' (if any) 'what kind of new University or powers is or are required for the advancement of higher Education in London ;' and on the 29th of April, 1889, the Commissioners made their Report, of which we quote the concluding words:—

'We humbly recommend to your Majesty, that a reasonable time should be allowed to the Senate and Convocation of the University of London to consider whether they will apply to your Majesty for a new Charter, extending the functions and duties of their University to teaching; associating with it teaching colleges and institutions; remodelling the constitution of its Senate; establishing as electoral bodies the teachers of its constituent and associated colleges and institutions, as in the several faculties of Arts, Science, Laws, and Medicine; establishing boards of studies; and otherwise granting new powers to the University, in accordance with the suggestions contained in this our Report. In the event of their applying for, and obtaining, such a new Charter, we recommend that no other University be now established in London, and that the prayer of the petition of University College and King's College be not granted. We further recommend that the consideration of the course which your Majesty might be advised to take, in the contrary event, should be for the present reserved; and that, if that event should happen, and if your Vol. 174.-No. 347.

Q

Majesty