afford satisfactory proof that the work is theirs. The notion may sound revolutionary, but it is really very old—for, I take it, that it lies at the bottom of that presentation of a thesis by the candidate for a doctorate, which has now too often become little better than a matter of form.
Thus far, I have endeavored to lay before you, in a too brief and imperfect manner, my views respecting the teaching half—the magistri and regentes—of the university of the future. Now let me turn to the learning half—the scholares.
If the universities are to be the sanctuaries of the highest culture of the country—those who would enter that sanctuary must not come with unwashed hands. If the good seed is to yield its hundred-fold harvest, it must not be scattered amid the stones of ignorance, or the tares of undisciplined indolence and wantonness. On the contrary, the soil must have been carefully prepared, and the professor should find that the operations of clod-crushing, draining, and weeding, and even a good deal of planting, have been done by the school-master.
That is exactly what the professor does not find in any university in the three kingdoms that I can hear of—the reason of which state of things lies in the extremely faulty organization of the majority of secondary schools. Students come to the universities ill-prepared in classics and mathematics, not at all prepared in any thing else; and half their time is spent in learning that which they ought to have known when they came.
I sometimes hear it said that the Scottish universities differ from the English in being to a much greater extent places of comparatively elementary education for a younger class of students. But it would seem doubtful if any great difference of this kind really exists; for a high authority, himself head of an English college, has solemnly affirmed that "elementary teaching of youths under twenty is now the only function performed by the university;" and that colleges are "boarding-schools in which the elements of the learned languages are taught to youths."[1]
This is not the first time that I have quoted those remarkable assertions. I should like to engrave them in public view, for they have not been refuted; and I am convinced that, if their import is once clearly apprehended, they will play no mean part when the question of university reorganization, with a view to practical measures, comes on for discussion. You are not responsible for this anomalous state of affairs now; but, as you pass into active life, and acquire the political influence to which your education and your position should entitle you, you will become responsible for it, unless each in his
- ↑ "Suggestions for Academical Organization, with Especial Reference to Oxford." By the Rector of Lincoln.
