those that are rich, or have leisure to pursue a long and thorough general education.

It is perfectly absurd to protest against such institutions on democratic grounds. Provided the poor are well supplied with the education which is suited to them, it would be suicidal for any nation to abolish, or to strive to abolish, the privileges which wealth gives to those that possess it. That a small class should have leisure to pursue science and literature at their ease is not only fair and right, but of great use to the majority who are unable to do so. Our greatest men of science are often from the wealthy classes, and owe their greatness to early advantages of good teaching and of leisure. How poor, for example, would the English nation be without Charles Darwin or John Ruskin, the two foremost names in the great roll of English men of science and of letters in this century ! Each of these men came from parents who were able to provide him with a long and expensive training.

The first function, then (at least, in order of time), is to afford a complete and thorough training, especially in those great subjects called useless by the vulgar, but which are the real salt of any higher culture. And next, these universities should provide the most suitable home for the prosecution of Research, where men who have completed their training can live in the midst of books and laboratories and observatories, prosecuting those studies which enlarge the boundaries of knowledge. As regards the policy to be pursued in these two directions, it seems quite plain that in the former they can hardly be too conservative, in the latter too progressive. The best subjects and the best methods of training the mind being well ascertained, and not disputed by any experienced educator, this training should be in no way relaxed to meet the cry of the idle, the im-. patient, and the vulgar. Though results are in the long run the only convincing test of success in a system, immediate results, if demanded, may spoil everything. On the other hand, as homes for investigation, as the hot-house for the fostering of new ideas, the old Universities have ample means and apparatus in the way of Fellowships, to which temporary Professorships might well be added, which should induce original thinkers to stay there and make them their home.

And yet when I ask what the policy of the Universities has been during the last generation it appears that their wisdom runs directly counter to mine. Every sort of difficulty has been placed in the way of endowment for Research, which has been met by every sort of hostile argument (including ridicule), and shackled in every way. He whose whole time is not engaged in teaching is supposed to be idling, and is treated accordingly, and yet the same people complain that the Universities are slow and scarce in producing original thinkers! On the other hand, in the department of instruc

tion to students, every kind of innovation seems to be tolerated. Not only are young people, who are wholly unfit to judge, allowed omissions and selections of the subjects they will study, but under the so-called University Extension, the benefits of Oxford and Cambridge training are being administered in homœopathic or in sugared doses by popular lecturers, and ignorant people who visit the University for a few days in the vacation are invited to believe that they participate in Oxford and in Cambridge culture. Thus not only does the Oxford man go down to teach in the country, which is highly useful and desirable, but the boys who hear him are told that they are practically Oxford men, which is absurd. When I inquired into these things at the University I was told by men who saw well the idle pretence of the thing that it was done to ensure the popularity of the old University, which might any day be swept away by Radical reformers if it were not in touch with the people.

This was the very policy adopted by the decaying Roman Empire, when foreign races were clamouring around its frontiers, and threatening to assail its territory. It was thought a safe and even astute device to invite a portion of the outlying barbarians to settle within the frontier, and to act as protectors of the Empire against those that remained without. Everybody knows the sequel. No sooner were they admitted to part of the Roman privileges, than they clamoured for more, and presently invited the remoter and therefore purer barbarians to join them in looting the Empire. And so came about the horror and confusion of the Dark Ages, from which modern Europe only emerged after centuries of intellectual eclipse.

I have said nothing as yet concerning the professional students at our Universities who do, who must, specialise at some part of their course, unless we banish them altogether from the University. To do this would indeed be a violent measure, and might be fatal to the prosperity of most universities. But I am here speaking merely as a theorist, and without regard to £ 8. d., which latter should not be allowed to dominate higher considerations. Regarding then the four great professions, Divinity, Law, Medicine, and Engineering, the two first are plainly more akin, and more suitable to university studies than the latter. Such studies are necessary to any proper qualification in the former, and as there is no hurry about entering either of these professions, there seems no difficulty in having Professional Schools of Divinity and Law, conducting the post-graduate studies of arts' students, who have already received an honest education in general subjects. The case is widely different with Medicine and Engineering, which require a long and early special education. Nay more, the Medical Council has so needlessly burdened the official course with useless subjects, and with additional time, that this policy

5

5 On this point see the instructive protest to the Medical Council published last year by Mr. Teale of Leeds.

almost forces the medical student to abandon arts and become from an early age a technical student. In such professions-I may add the Army as another-I see no corresponding benefit gained by the sacrifice of time and labour required to obtain an honest arts degree.

But I shall be told that I am protesting against specialisation at the University on the one hand, and advocating it on the other. Why should not the Universities meet the practical difficulty by doing what they now do, and permitting professional students to take a shorter and simpler arts' course. Is it not better that medical and engineering students should be after all in some sense university students rather than the members of a mere technical college? Such a compromise seems in the present day inevitable. But if so, let it be an honest compromise; let us not confuse things which ought to be distinct; let us not deceive the public by giving the same stamp to all our students, whether they have studied arts honestly and completely, or only partially and superficially. Let us be ready to give certificates not only for professional studies, but for those partial educations which are carefully to be distinguished from true and complete university education. Above all, let us endeavour to get rid of the false notion which exists in the minds of many parents, that the sham part of such an education-the pretended arts-is the more dignified and important, while the real part occupies an inferior place in their social estimate..

When we exhibit and weigh all these serious defects in theory, all these evidences of want of clear insight in our legislators, all these efforts to confuse and confound methods and aims which should be distinct-the wonder is not that our National Education is so bad, but rather that it is not worse. The fact is that the English are a practical nation, accustomed to compromises, not afraid of logical inconsistencies so long as men are permitted to do their best, and to some extent free to carry out their convictions. Thus I found, while I was writing this address, that by the device of Higher Grade Schools, apparently not supplied in the State programme, various stirring towns in England were providing for themselves that higher technical training which I have pointed out as a great need for our industrial population. And happily the State system is elastic enough to admit of these modifications. Provided then we are in earnest and do our best, there may be great teachers and brilliant pupils in a very poor and defective system. You have, moreover, in England, escaped from the plague that still haunts education in Ireland, where every new scheme, every reform is in the first instance a political move, intended to make political capital under the guise of education.6

I since learn that this is too optimistic a view, and that even in England political conveniences determine educational theories. I heard this in connection with the view I have proposed below for a Birmingham University. This is very melancholy, especially as the more ignorant a politician is, the more difficult it is to persuade him that he is blundering on this difficult and complicated question.

And this is so even where the ostensible problem is that most difficult, and yet unsettled one, regarding the relations of religion to secular education-a great question I have touched but incidentally, nor had I room in this address to do more. But, standing in a great modem foundation from which, by the will of the Founder, religious teaching, as being highly contentious, is put upon the level of political controversy, and therefore formally excluded, I cannot but urge one very grave consideration. Those nations in modern Europe which have gone furthest in recent years towards dissociating religion from secular instruction, those who have thought that intellectual enlightenment was in itself, if widely diffused, sufficient to secure a nation's well-being-I may cite as instances France, Italy, Greecehave shown, by the rapid deterioration of their public morality, that even, as in the individual, talent without character is little worth, so in the nation, it is the moral standard, rather than the intellectual, which will determine its progress or decay. The words of the Hebrew sage are not yet antiquated: Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.'

As I am, like old Cadmus, sowing dragons' teeth, I may as well cast one more into this rich and fruitful soil. If you will turn this great foundation into a University College, and seek a charter to give university degrees, do not make the fatal mistake first made in Ireland-the home of mistakes-then in the North of England, and recently in Wales-of lumping colleges, widely separated in position, in traditions, in associations, under a Common Examination Board, and imagining that under the title of Midland University you will indeed increase or improve the education of this city. You will do nothing of the kind, and your degree will soon lose the only value which a degree can have to thinking people-evidence of a distinct course of training, under well-known teachers, with a distinct flavour and associations. Oxford I know, and Cambridge I know, but who are ye? If on the contrary you choose to unite all the colleges and institutes of this great city into one system, requiring residence and training here, conducting your examinations by your own men on your own methods, then the future University of Birmingham may well come into fair competition with any or all of the oldest and most genuine seats of learning in the British Empire.

J. P. MAHAFFY.

THE ITALIAN NOVELS OF

MARION CRAWFORD

I BELIEVE that the novels of Mr. Crawford of which the scene and the characters are Italian are not among those of his works which are the most generally popular. This fact, if it be a fact, must be due to the general inability of his English and American public to appreciate their accuracy of observation and delineation. Nearly all of them have qualities which cannot be gauged by those to whom the nationality of his personages in these works is unknown. In my own works, of which the scene is in Italy, I have dealt almost exclusively with the Italian peasantry. Mr. Crawford has devoted his attention to the middle and the higher classes. I do not think his portraiture of the Italian aristocracy always redolent of the soil, but that of the lower and middle classes is faithful to a wonderful degree. That side of Italian life which is given in Marzio's Crucifix, for instance, is drawn with an accuracy not to be surpassed. The whole of this story indeed is admirable in its construction and execution. There is not a page one would wish cancelled, and nothing could be added which would increase its excellence. It is to my taste the capo d' opera of all which he has hitherto done.

I think in his studies of the Italian aristocracy he has given them less charm and more backbone than they possess. He has drawn their passions more visible and furious than they are, and their wills less mutable and less feeble than they are in general. He seems to have mistaken their obstinacy for strength, while, if he have perceived it, he has not rendered that captivating courtesy and graceful animation which are so lovable in them, and which render so many of their men and women so irresistibly seductive. According to him they are a savage set of berserkers, always cutting each other's throats, and he does not in any way render that extreme politeness which so effectually conceals the real thoughts of the Italian gentleman, and which never deserts him except in rare moments of irresistible fury. No one remembers so constantly as the Italian of all classes that language is given us to conceal our thoughts, and no one lives so completely as the Italian does from the cradle to