'vulgar competition.' One of the ablest and most energetic college tutors, when examined before Mr. Ewart's Committee, declared that the whole current of opinion was against the changes indicated. As he mentioned, an attempt was lately made to arrange the last class of the classical tripos in alphabetical order, instead of the order of merit. It was given up in consequence of the general discontent. The objection to substituting college for university examinations as a test for fellowships is of the same nature. It would diminish the interest in the tripos and by increasing the number of competitors, deprive the great competitions of their keenness. It would spoil the interest much as if the race for the Derby was to be divided into seventeen independent heats. The fact is, that Cambridge men have been accustomed so long to associate improvement in education with increased competition in examinations, that they consider everything which tends to diminish the competition as necessarily deteriorating education. As I have argued already, this appears to me to be a narrow and mistaken view. I fully sympathise with Mr. Seeley's denunciation of the theory; but I fear it will be long before he can overcome the weight of prejudice arrayed against him. He will have to educate the educators to an extent which would startle even Mr. Disraeli.

Even were Mr. Seeley's plans adopted, the essence of the difficulty would remain. So long as the fellowships are in their present sense the mainspring of the universities, and the one mode of encouraging study is understood to be the offer of heavy pecuniary prizes, it will be difficult to raise the Cambridge ideal of study. No considerable change can be made without legislative interference. There is, indeed, a

reasonable objection to harassing the universities by continual executive commissions. It tends to reform the universities by jerks instead of a continuous development. The grievances are allowed to accumulate, like gas in a coal mine, till they produce a violent explosion. It would obviously be better to introduce changes gradually, and, for example, to found a professorship only when there is some chance of the study being seriously taken up. The first conclusion to which such considerations point is the apparently sacrilegious one that the universities should be put under some central authority which could gradually effect the desired changes. It is a matter, too, of great importance that university reforms should be carried on with some reference to school reforms. At present, we too often find each waiting for the other. The universities will not introduce studies because the schools send up no competent pupils, and the schools will not attempt to educate because the university offers no rewards. In short, in this as in many other directions, we are conscious of the need of some central power which may look at the educational system of the country as a whole, and reduce its chaos to some kind of order. To the further

question, What is the model to which the university should be brought to approximate, when such powers have been conferred on competent authority?. -no answer can be given within a reasonable space. I am the less desirous to do so, because in a work which has appeared since these pages were written, Mr. Pattison, the distinguished rector of Lincoln College, has published an elaborate plan, to the main principles of which I fully subscribe, and which should command the attention of every one who takes an interest in the subject.

THE

HE publication of The Early Years of the Prince Consort has had a political effect, of which its authors probably did not dream. They desired to set forth to the British people the history of an accomplished and virtuous Prince. But in so doing, they set forth also the history of a Queen. Thus they proved once more that the wisest actions are often those which are performed unintentionally, out of the simplicity of an honest and good heart. For no king-craft of old times could have well 'devised a subtler policy' than this-that at the present time, when (for good and evil) mere authority counts for less and less, and mere humanity for more and more, a great Queen should take her stand before her people simply upon the ground of her common humanity; should tell them that if she was every inch a queen, she was also every inch a woman; that she gloried in one of those great affections, utter, self-sacrificing, enduring, not to be curtailed by time or space, which purify and ennoble men and women more than all the boasted triumphs of civilisation. By telling her own story, simply, earnestly, confidently, her Majesty has appealed to women's suffrage, of a most subtle and potent kind. She has enlisted for herself every truehearted woman in her dominions, and every man who has been kept true-hearted by woman. She has claimed her place in that great freemasonry which is open to all ranks and races-the freemasonry of those who believe still in love, chivalry, romance; who would desire to have written on their tombstones, as the sum of their history, little or nought save the old

Viximus, amavimus, Vivimus, amamus.

When their sympathies were enlisted on her Majesty's side, it mattered little what club gossips or town wits (about as important to the nation now as they were in the latter years of Elizabeth, or those of Anne) might say or write for the amusement of their own special cliques. The public press-which is worked by men who have no standing-ground save their own human abilities; and who have, for the most part, wives and children, for whose daily bread they toil humanly enough-was sure to judge the book from a fair and hearty human point of view, and to shame! and frighten certain animals from the conduct natural to them, whenever pearls are cast before them. Thus it has befallen, that her Majesty, in doing justice to her husband, did justice to herself; and while she tried to raise a monument to the Prince Consort, added a stalwart buttress to her own throne.

It was necessary to say these few words, bearing not on the book itself (which has been already reviewed in these columns), but on the effect which it has undoubtedly had on the British people. The volume just published cannot be expected to have so great an influence, as it does not pretend to so lofty an aim: but it may at least (and, as we believe, will) add some what to that wholesome influence and will serve as a pleasant inter lude and hopeful preface to the con tinuation of the Prince Consort's life which is now being edited-and by whom better?-by Mr. Theodor Martin.

This volume consists simply, a the title page sets forth, of Leave from a Private Journal of Highlan Life. Mr. A. Helps, in his preface takes on himself the responsibilitie not only of having advised he

doing well, he was expected to do, or to try to do, or at least to pretend to do, better than the public. But if his pretensions, when tested by fact, were found false, it was little worth to him that he drew his descent from Odin and the twelve Asas. Rebellion, civil war, public contempt, possibly interdict or excommunication, taught him, by bitter experience, that he was a man, and was expected to be a good man, of some sort or other. In the early middle age, he was expected to be the best fighter and the best judge in his dominions-sometimes the best lawgiver likewise. In after times, he had to be the best son of the Church;' at the era of the revival of letters, he was expected to be, or seem to be, the best scholar, or at least patron of scholars, like our Henry VIII., or even our James I.; in the ages of Machiavellian policy, he was bound, like Charles V. and Philip II., to excel all his subjects in the arts of a low attorney. In the age when the French invented (for which all Europe is bound to thank them) the art of good manners, the French monarch was bound to be at least the most graceful and courteous personage in France-indeed, in all Christendom; and it was not till Louis XIV. attempted to establish a sort of Eastern sultanship over France, and, if possible, over the whole world, that, raised by his flatterers to more than mortal dignity, the French king enveloped himself in a sacred cloud of etiquette, which was copied, clumsily enough, by other monarchs, the form of power being more easy to copy than the substance thereof. But such etiquette was still despised by the really strong, because really human, royalties. How much etiquette (in the French, or rather Eastern sense of the word) was there about Frederic the Great? And was it not the chief complaint among the worshippers of empty forms and

dead ghosts of power, against poor Marie Antoinette, that she continually outraged etiquette-being, in fact, too human for her unhappy post?

But etiquette, a truly foreign plant, has never taken root upon free English soil. The first three Georges-whatever else they were or were not-were at least thishonest German country gentlemen. The country gentleman's life, alone of medieval institutions, remained possible, at least in England. This was the Englishman's ideal. It remains so still; for every man, whether in Manchester or in Glasgow, who makes a fortune in trade or manufacture, longs to become a country gentleman, and generally succeeds in becoming one, and an excellent and useful one likewise. Right or wrong, this is the Englishman's ideal. And because the princes of the house of Hanover have gone with the times and with their people, and have tried to realise this ideal, as kings in other ages have tried to realise other ideals; therefore, in spite of many failures, and many dangers, they have remained, by public opinion and really universal suffrage, the acknowledged heads of the British people. Whatever political power they may have lost, this moral power remained possible to them; and this they have had the wisdom to keep and use; and none among them more than the Queen and Prince Consort at Balmoral and elsewhere. Of this these pages give ample evidence. They relate (only for private use, be it remembered) picnics and excursions, rather of ordinary tourists, than of grandes gens de par le monde, in which all, from royalty to gillies, take their fair share of fatigue, and even danger, in which princes get wet and dirty, gillies, when tired, ride their masters' ponies, the Queen herself walks over moss and mire where the pony cannot carry her,

and says of her last expedition : 'October 16, 1861.-We came down by the Month Eigie, a steep hill covered with grass, down which I rode, walking where it was steepest: but it was so wet and slippery that I had two falls.' They tell of trips incognito over the hills to Grantown or Fettercairn, in which all fare and sleep as they can, sometimes ill enough, in wayside inns; prefer 'shabby carriages and drivers,' and 'rather miserable' horses; find matter of amusement in all mischances, and kindly words of praise for all concerned; specimens, in fact, of that love of simple out-door life; of roughing it' for a while; of exertion and endurance, and even fatigue, for their own sakes, which has been and still is so potent an element in the success of the British people. Foreigners, while they laugh at us (and deservedly) for our eccentricities, wonder in secret at seeing high civilisation combined so often with manful hardihood: if they should peruse these pages, they will find that the British people are at least following the example of their Queen, and that she is, in this as in other things, the representative of her subjects.

But more valuable than this, however valuable it may be, are the proofs which this book gives us that -to quote Mr. Helps' preface:

These notes [he is speaking of her Majesty's, at the foot of the pages] besides indicating that peculiar memory for persons, and that recognition of personal attachment, which have been very noticeable in our sovereigns, illustrate, in a striking manner, the patriarchal feeling (if one may apply such a word as 'patriarchal' to a lady) which is so strong in the present occupant of the throne. Perhaps there is no person in these realms who takes a more deep and abiding interest in the welfare of the household committed to his charge than our gracious Queen does in hers, or who feels more keenly what are the reciprocal duties of masters and servants.

Nor does any one wish more ardently than

her Majesty, that there should be no abrupt severance of class from class, but rather a blending together of all classes-caused by interchange of good offices, and a kindly a full community of interests, a constant respect felt and expressed by each class to all its brethren in the great brotherhood that forms a nation.

Those whose duty it has been to attend must have noticed that her Majesty, as a upon the Queen in matters of business, person well versed in the conduct of affairs, is wont to keep closely to the point at issue, and to speak of nothing but what is directly connected with the matter before her. But, whenever there is an exception to the rule, it arises from her Majesty's anxious desire to make some inquiry about the welfare of her subjects to express her sympathy with this man's sorrow, or on that man's be.

reavement to ask what is the latest intel

ligence about this disaster, or that suffering, and what can be done to remedy and assuage it-thus showing, unconsciously, that she is indeed the mother of her people, taking the deepest interest in all that concerns them, with respect of persons, from the highest to the lowest.

Not the notes only, but the whole volume, corroborate Mr. Helps' words. But we have been saved the labour-or rather, robbed of the pleasure-of quoting passage upon passage to prove him in the right, by the daily and weekly press, which has, with a wholesome instinct, chosen out and already made public the very extracts which we should have chosen ourselves.

We must nevertheless call attention to one chapter, headed

VISITS TO THE OLD WOMEN.'

Albert went out with Alfred for the day, and I walked out with the two girls and Lady Churchill. Stopped at the shop, and made some purchases for the poor. Walked up the hill to Balnacroft, Mrs. P. Farquharson's; and she walked round with us to some of the cottages, to show me where the poor people lived, and tell them who I was. Before we went into any, we met an old woman who, Mrs. F. said, was very poor, 88 years old, and mother to the former distiller. I gave her a warm petticoat, and the tears rolled down her old cheeks, and she shook my hands, and prayed God to bless me: it was very touching.