remainder treat severally of College Discipline, Rooms, Chapel, Hall, Lecture Room, Library, and lastly, College Friends. The whole is small in bulk, and will amply repay the time spent in perusal it is difficult to select passages as specimens, where what we should like to quote bears so large a proportion to the whole. The following are taken from the First Letter:

"You find yourself enrolled a member of a famous fraternity, surrounded by venerable institutions and ancient laws and ceremonials, and you wish to know something of their history, that you may be able to enter into their spirit and character. Now, believe me, this is the way to enjoy to the full the time spent at the University. It will then become to you something more than a school where you are sent to get prizes, and your College more than a boarding-house. You will come to regard them both with a high and reverential and affectionate feeling, which it will be the object of these letters to call forth, as the home which has adopted you when you were sent forth from your father's roof, till you should be of age to make for yourself a home of your own.-I intend to speak more especially of the student as a member of his College, considering his relation to the University little more than as it bears on and serves to illustrate this; for it is the Collegiate system as exhibited in Cambridge and Oxford, which I wish principally here to open out to you. I shall also throughout regard the student as a member of the Foundation of his College: inasmuch as, though he may be receiving nothing from the endowment, and so consider himself as under no obligations to the Founder, the case is indeed far otherwise. The privilege of residence in College, wherever it is conceded to others besides the Fellows and Scholars, is granted under strict condition of conformity with the laws and regulations of the Society. And this provision was made, in order that, while no member of the University might be excluded from sharing the benefits and discipline of such a home as the Colleges afforded, the rules of the Foundation might at the same time be not in any danger of being relaxed." pp. 9-11. Judging from what remains of the original charters, the education of the young was by no means the only, scarcely even the primary, object of our Collegiate Foundations; though by the reviews made of the statutes under Queen Elizabeth and her two successors, this object was brought forward with much greater prominence. The charter, for example, given in 1511 for the erection of S. John's College, Cambridge, ordains it to be a perpetual body of persons in scientiis liberalibus et sacra theologia studentium et ora

66

turorum." "

"To establish schools from which the Church might be supplied with able defenders, and disciplined and well-instructed Priests,-to give opportunity for studious men to lay up stores of learning, especially in theology, the queen and mother of all sciences,-to train them in habits of devotion, selfrestraint, frugality, and obedience-these were plainly leading motives among those which prompted these magnificent Foundations." pp. 13, 14.

Mr. Whytehead, in the first of these passages, takes a different view from the common one as to the relative importance of the College and the University. Generally, there is a tendency to consider the system of the former as subsidiary to that of the latter. The two have, of course, entirely distinct offices and influences; and, perhaps, it might be said with great truth, that both are sufferers from the too close alliance or rather confusion between them that exists. Without, however, entering upon a topic which it would take considerable space to discuss sufficiently, it may be observed that our author is most judicious in the view in

which he regards them. There can be no question surely between the two, either abstractedly, or with reference to our present needs, and the kind of men we require to supply them. This might perhaps be wisely borne in mind by those who seem to think it absolutely necessary that any new provision for Clerical Education should be placed at the Universities. Colleges, doubtless, we want; and Oxford or Cambridge themselves are of much more beneficial influence as congregations of Colleges, than as Universities. Why, then, if there are certain local disadvantages which seem to be in the way of new machinery there, are not the Cathedral Towns thought of, which certainly would seem the most natural places for nurseries of working clergy? The influences of the University are of great benefit, of course, but they are not the whole, nor the greater part, as the University system at present is. Certainly, the brilliancy of an Oxford or Cambridge life comes from the University. The daydreams in which the student of ability and ambition may indulge, represent to him the honours of the Schools, the applause of the Theatre, the triumphs that are known over England, and handed on to posterity in the calendars. If honours for their own sake are not the objects of ambition, at least they are coveted as furnishing a position, as ensuring a chance of success in the profession that is to be pursued, as placing their possessors in the mouths of their contemporaries, and before the eyes of those who have place and preferment at their disposal. Such are the visions of youth: but let us exchange the half-formed eyesight of ambition with its bright and fond imaginations, for the practised and critical glance of retrospective old age. Then it will be seen that we have been mistaking insignificant objects for characteristic features, because they were on the line of a limited horizon, and that the real beauty and grandeur had been around us and beneath our feet. Then there can be no selfdeception as to the relative importance of the University and the College career. That on which the mind of age will delight to rest in memory, will not be the brilliant examination, the successful poem or essay: these, and the aspirations which sought them, and the training which secured them, will have had little to do with the production of those habits and that temper of mind which will be recognised as having been as a shield against many a temptation, as having furnished the strength in which many a labour has been achieved.

Where did we hear that gentle voice, which day by day pleaded for Heaven against the world, and taught us by the bounden service of one hour, what should be the freewill offering of all the rest? Whose was that mild and wholesome discipline, by which we might have learnt to submit our own wills to the rules, and consider ourselves but as members of a larger family than that of our home; and to acknowledge brotherhood, through their living representatives, with ages and generations past away? What hand was it, that led us into a company of strangers, whose faces gradually became those of brothers; or bade us sit at the feet of a master, towards whom fear turned into reverence and affection, as he became a guardian and a father?-Surely blessings such as these, viewed in themselves or in the habits and tempers that have been formed under their fostering influence, must make all who have known them grateful to their College years in no ordinary degree. With these

tempers and habits the University will have had nothing to do, except incidentally. Its excitements, its trials, its controversies, may indeed have added to their strength, and secured their development; but it will only be in the way that temptations resisted, antagonists overcome, strengthen and secure virtue and truth.

It cannot be that this view of these Institutions is unpractical and unreal. It cannot be that the spirit which pervades Mr. Whytehead's book, may not be produced in any College under our present system. Habits of daily devotion, obedience, and frugality: the life in which, "with opportunities for undisturbed retirement and lonely study, is combined the perpetually recurring idea of common interests and duties, and close brotherly connexion with the Society to which the Student belongs," this system he surely is not wrong or unreal in calling, "beautifully adapted to the formation of a character solid and retiring, and at the same time not that of a recluse." (p. 46.) The character may be built up, little by little, without our consciousness of the process rather it would be dangerous for the thoughts to dwell upon what is going on. The young Student, who, viewing, as Mr. Whytehead says, the three years he spends at College, "as having a likeness to the Vigil which the knights of old used to keep in church, just before they received their sword of knighthood, and were sent forth to do service in the world," (p. 18,) quietly sets to work to carry out in every department of his duties the spirit of the institution: or his elder neighbour and adviser, who has turned, perhaps, to prosecute his own studies, and guide those of others growing up around him, with more entire devotion from the weariness and vexation of Academical strife and controversy: neither of these reap less solid benefit from their Collegiate pursuits, even if they are unable to look on them with deep enthusiasm and glowing imagination. At present, it may be merely conscientious and right-spirited discharge of imposed duties. By and bye, when the character is formed, and the fruit ripened, memory will clothe these common-place duties with robes of light and beauty. A well known passage speaks of—

The sweetness and softness with which days long past away fall upon the memory, and strike us. The most ordinary years, when we seemed to be living for nothing, then shine forth to us in their very regularity and orderly course. What was sameness at the time, is now stability; what was dulness, is now a soothing calm: what seemed unprofitable, has now its treasure in itself: what was but monotony, is now harmony: all is pleasing, and comfortable, and we regard it all with affection."

People are certainly not ignorant, that to our Colleges we must look for the Church's most zealous and useful servants in this her hour of tremendous need. That this is so, is shown very significantly by the multiplication of those institutions, which is one of the features of the movement now going on. But there is a good deal of clamour against their present management, which arises in a great measure, perhaps, from the misconception so common, that education is their sole duty and office. Probably there is some justice, and a great deal more injustice, in the charges commonly made. Perhaps it may be

useful to consider a single point out of several, which has been suggested by Mr. Whytehead's book, which may show tolerably what the defects are, and where the blame is to be laid.

In old times, when residence was longer and less interrupted, and when from poverty and other obvious causes, the Student only left his College at long intervals of time, it must naturally have become to him much more of a home than it can be at present. A great deal is contained in this simple fact. At present, College is less of a home, to the majority, than school is. Out of three years, which is perhaps the average time now spent at the University, the vacations, if united, would make up considerably more than one and a quarter. This and other similar circumstances, which seem to be little more than accidental, have a very material effect in disabling the system; though, of course, there might be other disadvantages incurred by a sudden rush into an opposite extreme. If the effect of the quiet orderly routine of College Life be such as Mr. Whytehead's book makes us hope it may become to many, it is easily seen how much it must suffer from so frequent interruptions, and for so long intervals of time. It is almost strange, that the very loss of time has not produced a general clamour against the length of the vacations, which it may be observed, belong to the University system, and are by some incomprehensible process engrafted, most unnaturally, upon the College Statutes. This loss of time men are driven to supply, as regards their studies, by those very questionable expedients, reading parties; of which it may be enough to say, that they depend entirely for success, even in reading, on the character of the individuals who compose them; and as to everything else, they are under no control of any kind. If ever the English Student approaches the character of his German namesake, it is when he is on a reading party. But if the loss of time is but precariously compensated in this way as regards the acquisition of knowledge, what must those who look for other results, such as have been before mentioned, from the College system, think of its suspension for so large a portion of the year? There is no attempt made to supply, during the vacations, the other far more important influences of the place. If it were then only on the lowest motive, that study might not be so long suspended, it is clear that more continued residence should not only be reluctantly permitted (as it is now, if at all), but encouraged. There are surely many Fellows and Tutors who would not grudge the sacrifice of their Continental tours, and would think it no unreasonable proposition, that College lectures need not cease when the University term comes to an end. May not this fact, too, on which we are dwelling, be at the root of what so many must have felt, as depriving College Life of much of the profit and pleasure of which it might admit; the want, namely, of free and brotherly intercourse and sympathy between the Tutor and his pupils, the Fellow and the undergraduate? We cannot think the explanation of this by the cry of "donnishness," at all a satisfactory one: but as we have thus alluded to him, we may as well let Mr. Francis Newman, who has lately raised it, speak for himself, as his statement may convey some idea of the fact as it is, to our readers.

C

"If that free and kindly intercourse between the resident Fellows and the Undergraduates, in which the noblest natures most delight, were fostered, instead of being thwarted, by tradition and precedent: a large part of the Fellows would naturally bear the place of elder brother to the Undergraduates, and would become the link so much to be desired between the youthful fluctuating mass, and the more aged fixed residents; and there appears every reason to believe, that the sympathy of the Undergraduates with the more elevated minds of the Fellows has contributed largely to the moral progress made in the last fifteen years. But that to which they

(i. e. our aristocratic youth) are pertinaciously unimpressible, and which has exasperated tenfold the moral disease of our Universities, is the system of technical rule which has fixed its roots so deeply there. As strangers cannot by any mere hints understand what is meant, it is necessary to explain this distinctly, more especially since Professor Huber has nowhere noticed it.

"After taking the Bachelor's degree, a student at Oxford is admissible to dine at the High Table with the Fellow, and to sit in the Fellows' Common Room: and a Bachelor who is likely to continue in residence either in Oxford or Cambridge, often passes abruptly from the society of Undergraduates, and in a single year's time, associates solely with Graduates. At any rate, by the time he takes his Master's degree, which is generally about the age of twentyfive, his contemporary Undergraduates have either vanished from the place, or have passed with him into the elder and ruling part of the University. Unless, therefore, a positive effort be made to form new acquaintances with the younger men, he becomes absorbed completely into the body of the fixed residents. From various causes it sometimes happens that very young Fellows are called to be Tutors, and as such, to bear an important place of authority in matters of discipline; and the old doctrine used to be, that without much technical formality, men so young could not keep up discipline at all. At any rate the young Fellow would be in danger of imbibing airs of selfimportance. The term Don is familiarly used to denote a character, who is actuated by a petty love of form and power: who, upon attaining his Degree, aims to separate himself as widely as possible from all familiarity with Undergraduates, although he may be but two or three years older than they puts on the air of a man of middle age: avoids all use of their common phraseology, and behaves with a rather stiff politeness and condescending kindness." NEWMAN'S Translation of Huber's English Universities, Vol. III. pp. 515–517.

Mr. Newman has here described a character of which there may, perhaps, be two or three instances at a time in existence, though our own memory cannot furnish us with so many. Yet the fact of which this is so very exaggerated and hostile an account does exist: the positive effort which he speaks of as necessary for the formation of new acquaintances among the young men, though made in many cases, is not made in all, nor upon principle, and as implied in the spirit of a college. Mr. Newman makes no attempt to explain what is only a phenomenon by its root and principle; but accounts for donnism, formality, and want of sympathy, by saying that they exist. We venture to think that they would never have arisen had all parties been accustomed to consider the college as a home, and to feel it a duty to take a brotherly interest in its members. But see what the facts are. For a very large part of the year, all college ties are suspended, and of course other influences are in active operation; if the Fellow and the Undergraduate meet at all, it is by accident, and it is rather more likely than not that their relative position and rank is changed, and perhaps