men in such a position, at a period of their lives when they ought to be quietly forming their minds for future action, can have any other result than to fill them with a shallow conceit of their own importance; to accustom them to deliver superficial and hasty judgments; and to lead them to take up new systems, with no due appreciation of the knowledge, thought, and gravity of mind, which are requisite for such a purpose. If this course educate a man for anything, it educates him to be a judge of philosophical systems; an office which few Englishmen will ever have to fill. "I believe that this opinion of the effect of the two modes of University education has been confirmed by the actual result. The practical education of the English Universities has produced men fitted for practical life. I need not dwell upon this. I have already noticed how well the training of the College appears to prepare men to become good lawyers. I will add, that I conceive our physicians to be the first in the world, and that I ascribe their excellence mainly to the practical course of general culture which they receive in the Universities; which does what no merely professional education can do ; and of which the effects are seen, when the professional employments bring into play the intellectual habits. Our clergy derive inestimable advantages from the cast of their University education; and if clerical education among us be capable of improvement, this certainly will not be brought about by the substitution of the Philosophy of Schelling and Hegel for the Mathematics of Euclid and Newton. That our Universities educate men to be legislators, statesmen, and magistrates of some practical power and skill, no one can doubt, except he who thinks that this little island has, for the last three hundred years, run an unprosperous course, and held an undistinguished place in Europe. For the fortunes of nations are determined, under Providence, by their practical leaders, and men are formed by their education.. "In Germany and France, we are told that there prevails among the young men of the Universities a vehement and general hostility to the existing institutions of their country. I know not how truly this is said; but I conceive that such a consequence may naturally flow from an education which invokes the critical spirit, and invites it to employ itself on the comparison between the realities of society and the dreams of system-makers. -- "I shall not here prosecute this subject further, since my object is to hasten on to some principles which apply more intimately to that process of instruction which has hitherto existed in the English Universities. But I hope I have made it appear that, distinguishing the two systems of education as I have done, we may, with nearly equal propriety, treat of them as practical and speculative teaching; or on the one hand Mathematics combined with Classics, and on the other Philosophy; or College lectures and Professorial lectures; and may look upon them as exemplifying a respectful and critical spirit. And I hope I have satisfied the reader that (allowing fully the value and use of Philosophy and of Professorial lectures in their due place, of which I may afterwards speak) we could not abandon the practical teaching, the Mathematical and Classical Studies, and the College Lectures of our Universities, without great loss to the intellectual training of our youth, without destroying highly beneficial feelings which exist between them and their teachers, and without putting in serious and extensive jeopardy the interests of the civilization of England and of the world." NOTE (98) WHICH SHOULD Have been referred to in PAGE 392. Defence of the Universities from the charge of Immorality. Luxury and display have very much increased at the Universities, as well as among the higher and middling classes in general in England; but the Universities have not become really more immoral on that account. On the contrary, many of the darkest spots of former days—as drunkenness and other debauchery—have greatly diminished, more particularly in Oxford. Gambling, however, appears in later times to have become more general and more desperate than before. In all these matters, the Universities follow pretty closely the varying fashions of the higher classes. Upon the whole, I am of opinion that things have rather improved than otherwise; the greater part of the evil which remains, is, as I have already insisted, inevitable, under the free developement of character so indispensable to a University. Those who more especially urge these points against the English Universities, have generally no idea of the actual state of the case, and never raised themselves beyond the level of the most trite and often scarcely sound moralism. Edinburgh, for instance, has been pointed out as a practical example of superior morality in the academic population. But, besides that in Scotland "Cant" in morality is carried to a higher pitch than even in England, and the morality of the academic youth of Edinburgh is by no means such as is pretended to be, (of which my own eyes and ears afford ample testimony ;) the comparison is inadmissible, inasmuch as the pecuniary and social circumstances of the Edinburgh students, of themselves exclude a great part of the follies and excesses committed among the English. We must also take into consideration the general difference of national habits, good or evil, between England and Scotland; and there is no denying, that the Scotch have a much more quiet, sober, and sparing way of living; yes, and also of sinning. Another reproach commonly cast against the Universities, is their illiberality in the most general sense, especially in case of any contact or approach of an unacademic nature. There is certainly much that is true in this. The Oxford men especially are far from liberal towards strangers, when not supplied with very pressing recommendations: and even then, the stranger must not expect to be admitted beneath the mere surface of society. Cambridge is much more accessible, and liberal in the best sense of the word. Pedantry, rudeness, and want of kindly feeling may certainly have more or less to do with all this: but we must not forget, at the same time, that this kind of repulsive exclusiveness is a very essential trait in the English character itself, especially with regard to the interior of domestic life; so that the Universities do not mean or claim to behave otherwise towards the world without, than every proprietor of house or lands would do. To this we may add, that they have only too much cause for feelings of irritability and mistrust towards strangers, (I speak not so much of foreigners, as of English not belonging to the Universities,) in. consequence of the bitterness and unfairness of the attacks, to which they have been on so many sides exposed. Note (99) referred to in Page 392. Justification of not repealing and yet not enforcing or observing Statutes that we judge to be unsuitable. Another point, which may be touched upon here, relates to the real or supposed incompatibility, the intolerable contradictions between the old Statutes and the present practice, or between the older and newer Statutes. There are some people who regularly set out hunting after these things. Miller may be considered as the chief of this school of "creators of difficulties:" (v. his work, "The present state of the University of Cambridge," &c., 1771 :) and Walsh in later times has endeavored to follow in his footsteps. These good gentlemen complain of and condemn, in one breath, first the perverse tendency of the old Statutes, and then the abomination of their not being observed, and their being allowed to fall into disuse; in the very instances, when the whole aim and result of their being set aside, is precisely to get rid of this very perverse and unsuitable tendency. Tender consciences are sought to be alarmed by reference to the academic oaths, which they are told, prevent all such innovations: and thus the Universities, in the very same breath, are reproached again with disinclination to undertake any requisite innovations, and informed that they have no right to make such innovations, [A]: consequently, that those really introduced, are morally to be condemned. People put forward also the unchangeableness of the Royal Statutes, although the Crown is itself alone authorized to animadvert upon any real violation of them, and that has never yet been done. Among these accusations, may be classed the complaint, that the Statute Oath is a grievous weight upon the tender consciences of the youth, as in taking the oath, they do not know precisely what the Statutes are, and when they know them, cannot observe them all. We willingly admit that some few timorous consciences may have been embarrassed in this manner: but the same may be found in all other complicated matters: consequently such consciences should be advised to retire from the world altogether. But in fact, men of real delicacy of feeling do not judge in this petty and uncharitable way. In all these matters, “bona fides” is the main point, [B]; and with that, life passes smoothly over all these kinds of difficulties, not only in all honor and passive innocence, but generally in ignorance even of the existence of the difficulties by which it may have been surrounded. Under such complicated circumstances as these, instances certainly may be found of real abuses, and unjustifiable deviations from the Statutes. but then these have never been proved to be more than mere exceptions. Here, as in many other cases, these so called abuses are more or less correctives of unsuitable laws or regulations: and it is really to be feared, that this hunting out of abuses, about which people employ themselves so diligently, may destroy life itself at last. The University-life of modern times needs, generally speaking, no justification for deviating from the old Statutes: and the utmost that could be done, would be to ask, why the old Statutes were not made to apply throughout to the present state of things. Any one, however, who is able to judge impartially and with any knowledge of the facts, such matters as these, which have continued to develope themselves for centuries in an historical manner, out of a certain fixed foundation, and have arrived at a most complicated state, will easily perceive how extremely difficult and dangerous it would be, even in a legal point of view, to attempt any formal change in this fixed and endowed foundationespecially, at a time when every innovation of the kind is sooner or later brought into the precipitous course of System, where there is no stopping; and is moulded according to an IDEA. But why run this risk? when people can get on in other ways, and have got on very well until now, "bona fide," by sufferance, interpretation, or alteration in detail. Certainly, those who bring forward these complaints only to obtain a total change, cannot reasonably be set up to judge of the greater or lesser changes -- |