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peal to the good sense of all unprejudiced readers. I have said that the tutors of Oxford correspond to the professors of other universities. But this correspondence, which is absolute and unquestionable as regards the point then at issue, namely, where we are to look for that limb of the establishment on which rests the main teaching agency, - is liable to considerable qualification, when we examine the mode of their teaching. In both cases, this is conveyed by what is termed "lecturing; "but what is the meaning of a lecture in Oxford and elsewhere? Elsewhere, it means a solemn dissertation, read, or sometimes histrionically declaimed, by the professor. In Oxford, it means an exercise performed orally by the students, occasionally assisted by the tutor, and subject, in its whole course, to his corrections, and what may be called his scholia, or collateral suggestions and improvements. Now, differ as men may as to other features of the Oxford, compared with the hostile system, here I conceive that there is no room for doubt or demur. An Oxford lecture imposes a real, bona fide task upon the student; it will not suffer him to fall asleep, either literally or in the energies of his understanding; it is a real drill, under the excitement, perhaps, of personal competition, and under the review of a superior scholar. But, in Germany, under the declamations of the professor, the young men are often literally sleeping; nor is it easy to see how the attention can be kept from wandering, on this plan, which subjects the auditor to no risk of sudden question or personal appeal. As to the prizes given for essays, etc., by the professors, these have the effect of drawing forth

latent talent, but they can yield no criterion of the attention paid to the professor; not to say that the competition for these prizes is a matter of choice. Sometimes it is true that examinations take place; but the Oxford lecture is a daily examination; and, waiving that, what chance is there (I would ask) for searching examinations, for examinations conducted with the requisite auctoritas (or weight of influence derived from personal qualities), if-which may Heaven prevent!- the German tenure of professorships were substituted for our British one: that is, if for independent and liberal teachers were substituted poor mercenary haberdashers of knowledgecap in hand to opulent students - servile to their caprices and, at one blow, degrading the science they profess, the teacher, and the pupil? Yet I hear that such advice was given to a Royal Commission, sent to investigate one or more of the Scottish universities. In the German universities, every professor holds his situation, not in his good behavior, but on the capricious pleasure of the young men who resort to his market. He opens a shop, in fact: others, without limit, generally men of no credit or known respectability, are allowed to open rival shops; and the result is, sometimes, that the whole kennel of scoundrel professors ruin one another; each standing with his mouth open, to leap at any bone thrown amongst them, from the table of the "Burschen;" all hating, fighting, calumniating each other, until the land is sick of its base knowledgemongers, and would vomit the loathsome crew, were any natural channel open to their instincts of abhorrence. The most important of the Scottish profess

orships those which are fundamentally morticed to the moral institutions of the landare upon the footing of Oxford tutorships, as regards emoluments; that is, they are not suffered to keep up a precarious mendicant existence, upon the alms of the students, or upon their fickle admirations. It is made imperative upon a candidate for admission into the ministry of the Scottish Kirk, that he shall show a certificate of attendance through a given number of seasons at given lectures.

The next item in the quarterly (or, technically, the term) bills of Oxford is for servants. This, in my college, and, I believe, in all others, amounted, nominally, to two guineas a year. That sum, however, was paid to a principal servant, whom, perhaps, you seldom or never saw; the actual attendance upon yourself being performed by one of his deputies; and to this deputy-who is, in effect, a factotum, combining in his single person all the functions of chambermaid, valet, waiter at meals, and porter or errandboy-by the custom of the place and your own sense of propriety, you cannot but give something or other in the shape of perquisites. I was told, on entering, that half a guinea a quarter was the customary allowance, - the same sum, in fact, as was levied by the college for his principal; but I gave mine a guinea a quarter, thinking that little enough for the many services he performed; and others, who were richer than myself, I dare say, often gave much more. Yet, sometimes, it struck me, from the gratitude which his looks testified, on my punctual payment-of this guinea, for it was the only bill with regard to which I troubled myself to practise any severe

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punctuality, that perhaps some thoughtless young man might give him less, or might even forget to give anything; and, at all events, I have reason to believe that half that sum would have contented him. These minutiæ I record purposely; my immediate object being to give a rigorous statement of the real expenses incident to an English university education, partly as a guide to the calculations of parents, and partly as an answer to the somewhat libellous exaggerations which are current on this subject, in times like these, when even the truth itself, and received in a spirit of candor the most indulgent, may be all too little to defend these venerable seats of learning from the ruin which seems brooding over them. Yet, no! Abominable is the language of despair even in a desperate situation. And, therefore, Oxford, ancient mother and thou, Cambridge, twin-light of England be vigilant and erect, for the enemy stands at all your gates! Two centuries almost have passed since the boar was within your vineyards, laying waste and desolating your heritage. Yet that storm was not final, nor that eclipse total. May this also prove but a trial and a shadow of affliction! which affliction, may it prove to you, mighty incorporations, what, sometimes, it is to us, poor, frail homunculi a process of purification, a solemn and oracular warning! And, when that cloud is overpast, then, rise, ancient powers, wiser and better- ready, like the launadnogo of old, to enter upon a second stadium, and to transmit the sacred torch through a second period of twice* five hundred years. So

*Oxford may confessedly claim a duration of that extent; and the pretensions of Cambridge, in that respect, if less aspiring, however, as I believe, less accurately determined.

prays a loyal alumnus, whose presumption, if any be, in taking upon himself a monitory tone, is privileged by zeal and filial anxiety.

To return, however, into the track from which I have digressed. The reader will understand that any student is at liberty to have private servants of his own, as many and of what denomination he pleases. This point, as many others of a merely personal bearing, when they happen to stand in no relation to public discipline, neither the university nor the particular college of the student feels summoned or even authorized to deal with. Neither, in fact, does any other university in Europe; and why, then, notice the case? Simply thus: if the Oxford discipline, in this particular chapter, has nothing special or peculiar about it, yet the case to which it applies has, and is almost exclusively found in our universities. On the continent it happens most rarely that a student has any funds disposable for luxuries so eminently such as grooms or footmen; but at Oxford and Cambridge the case occurs often enough to attract notice from the least vigilant eye. And thus we find set down to the credit account of other universities the non-existence of luxury in this or other modes, whilst, meantime, it is well known to the fair inquirer that each or all are indulgences, not at all or so much as in idea proscribed by the sumptuary edicts of those universities; but, simply, by the lower scale of their general revenues. And this lower scale, it will be said — how do you account for that? I answer, not so much by the general inferiority of continental Europe to Great Britain in diffusive wealth (though that argument goes for

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