There are persons who would have England arm on the suspicion of dangers; there are others who would have us act the part of Gallio, and "care for none of these things." Our opinions coincide with neither-while we despise Russian force, we dread Russian intrigue; but we could afford to contemn artifice as well as violence, if the governments of our dependencies, and especially the Indian presidencies, be so regulated as to show every class, sect, and caste, that, in a change, they will risk something. There is only one efficacious argument for revolution under the sun, and that is

Hungry belly, empty purse,

May be better, can't be worse.

Let Hindústan be secured internally by the amelioration of its oppressive land-tenures, the abolition of its pernicious monopolies, the administration of substantial justice, and the avoidance of such outrages as the deposition of the rajah of Mysore, and the impolicy that caused the late disturbances in Coorg and Canara, and then we may leave the Russians to build their fancied castles, convinced that their basis will be air, and not the soil of Hindústan.

THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES.

Die Englischen Universitäten. Eine Vorarbeit zur Englischen Literaturgeschichte. (The English Universities. A preparatory work to the History of English Literature.) By Dr. Huber, ordinary Professor of Western Literature, at Marburg. First Volume. Čassell. 8vo. 1839.

We have, in the book before us, a new proof of the interest which English History and Literature are now exciting in Germany, and an example also, how the German scholars detect and take advantage of the neglect or incapacity of our own historians. Last month, we had to complain that it had been left to a foreigner to furnish us with a good History of England; on the present occasion, we introduce to our readers a work which makes us indebted to another foreigner for a history of our Universities. It is a debt, however, which we acknowledge with gratitude; and the task has been so well executed, that, in the absence (we may fairly say) of any general book in our own language, on this most interesting subject, we think that Dr. Huber's book ought to be translated into English, and that the translation ought to come through one of our University presses. It would be doing an honour, at the same time, to the book and to the Univer

sities.

VOL. I.—NO. II.-JUNE, 1839.

N

At various periods, during the last three centuries, different members of both Universities have been induced, sometimes in the spirit of rivalry, but more often, we trust, with feelings of zealous and meritorious emulation, to undertake the history of the University to which they belonged, as was done by Caius, Fuller, and Anthony à Wood, or that of particular colleges, as those by Baker, of St. John's, and Masters, of Corpus, Colleges, in Cambridge, but nothing has been done towards an investigation of the general history of the two Universities taken collectively, to trace comparatively the successive steps through which each has progressed, the changes which they have undergone within themselves, or the influence which they have exercised on the world. without. Whatever has been done in later times, with the exception of the collection of records published by George Dyer, has possessed too much of the pictorial character, and has been intended rather to give amusement to the eye than to furnish light to the mind; it has scarcely even been attempted to mix the utile dulci, but we have been treated with a few pictures, often paltry enough in themselves, and a tasteless compilation from what has been repeated over and over again, and is commonly full of errors, because these pictures must have a text to accompany them. We are speaking chiefly of books which have been produced within the Universities. The interest which late events have drawn to the subject of our University system in general is, however, producing its results, at least in one of our great national establishments, the University of Cambridge, where, at present, is shown a most praiseworthy zeal in bringing to light the early documents of our University History, which, not excepting even the private muniments of the colleges, are the only groundworks on which we can hope to build truth. The fruits of this zeal have already appeared partially in the valuable and interesting volume of inedited documents, recently published by Dr. Lamb, master of Corpus Christi College; and, we believe, that another work, equally, if not more important, by Professor Peacock, of Trinity College, will not be long before it sees the light. We expect much information from this latter work. From our charge against the common run of pictorial publications, we must except, at least, one work, which is at present in the course of publication in the University; we mean that edited, under the title of the Cambridge Portfolio, by a liberal-minded fellow of a distinguished, college, who has contrived to mix up with lighter matter much previously unpublished materials relating to the affairs of the University in former times, and its system and customs of the present day. Another source of much information is found in the history of particular colleges, compiled in former days from the college muniments, and still preserved in The Cambridge Portfolio, 4to. Cambridge; Deighton and Stevenson: London; Parker.

the college libraries, or elsewhere; these deserve well to be published; and we hope that others, ere long, will follow the example of Mr. Halliwell, of Jesus College, who is now preparing for publication the history of his own college, written by J. Sherman, president of the college in the reign of Charles the Second. We ought, perhaps, to add, that a new edition of Fuller's History is now printing at the Cambridge Press, in an 8vo. volume, with notes compiled partly from inedited materials. Having said thus much for what has been done at home, we will now return to what is at present being done abroad. Dr. Huber's first volume treats of the Universities, as they were, previously to the time of the Reformation; we must look forward to his second, and, we believe, concluding volume, for the history of our two Universities as they are. Dr. Huber's principles, with regard to his immediate subject, are strongly conservative. He looks upon these venerable institutions as the true legacy which we have derived from the wisdom of our forefathers, and as the instruments which have exercised an extraordinary influence in handing down and perpetuating the national spirit which has lived through past ages, and the mental culture which has shone forth in the persons of so many great men. If we have any thing to lay to his charge, it is, perhaps, somewhat of partiality which he has derived from a more intimate personal acquaintance with Oxford, than with its sister establishment; but, perhaps, we are only laying to Huber's charge what really exists in our own feelings. Otherwise, he has brought to the task, not only an intimate acquaintance with all printed materials which have the slightest bearing upon his particular subject, but a deep and extensive knowledge of general history, and of the interior mental, and exterior political, movements and revolutions which, in England, and throughout Europe, have characterised the ages in which these great scholastic institutions took their rise, and through which they have lived.

As we pursue, along the stream of history, the gradual development of civilization in Western Europe, we observe, from time to time, periods of extraordinary intellectual excitement, when learning and science, by a sudden movement, seemed to be on the verge of occupying that elevated position which, in reality, they have taken so many centuries to attain. This was a natural result of the accidental combination of great energies, which were brought together and urged forward by the outward influence of political events; and, accordingly, after a short blaze, the light which had thus been raised sank before other influences, until it became only a smouldering ember, which sparkled feebly for some time, destined to be again fanned into flame by the favourable events of another age. Such a period of excitement followed the first introduction of Christianity among the German tribes who had settled upon the mangled carcase of fallen Rome;

but the Christians of the West had received science and learning from the hands of the Romans in a very equivocal form; and for several centuries it was a mere system of book-learning, not attended by the slightest advance beyond the faulty elements with which they had started. Here and there, the minds of a few men struggled hard against the chains which fettered them all, and by their exertions, without having much influence on their own immediate contemporaries, these men prepared the way for the glorious outbreak which followed the introduction of Græco-Arabian science. This second period of intellectual excitement is most strongly perceptible from the middle of the eleventh to the middle of the thirteenth centuries, its last great name being that of Roger Bacon, one that is quite worthy to stand by those of Galileo, Newton, and Laplace. During the whole of this period, science was extending its domain far and wide, by the aid of experiment and patient observation, and the numerous manuscripts of this age which remain in our national libraries are filled with splendid monuments of literary genius.

It is to this last-mentioned period that we owe the origin of Universities in the modern sense of the word. Our two Universities, Oxford and Cambridge, seem to have been formed at some period in the twelfth century. That there had been schools in both these places, even in Anglo-Saxon times, appears to be a well-established fact: but the chief Anglo-Saxon schools of science and literature were situated in the monasteries, such as Malmesbury where Dunstan studied; and whilst these monastic schools were shedding at least some light over the land, those at Cambridge and Oxford produced little or no fruit, and, probably, had the old system continued, they would never have given more. During the twelfth century, and at the beginning of the thirteenth, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge appear to have resembled the famous University of Paris: numerous students were there collected about celebrated professors and masters (magistros) as nuclei, and they lived and supported themselves by their own means. They are in records of that period designated simply as the clerks (clerici) of Cambridge or Oxford. The University of Cambridge seems, in its origin (in the earlier part of the twelfth century), to have been closely connected with that of Orleans, whence its first professors came, and whence its members, in early times, imported the name of glomery-scholars (glomerelli), which was long afterwards given to them. To judge by one or two incidents which we have observed, we are inclined to think that, in these early ages of University history, the University of Oxford was more intimately allied with that of Paris, and to this connection we, perhaps, owe the more distinguished figure which Oxford then made by the acquirements and celebrity of its scholars.

In their first rise, the Universities throughout Europe came into immediate collision with another power, that of the church. The

frequent charge of magic brought against great scholars, and the numerous tales and legends in which they so often figured, as well as some other circumstances, show that their learning was regarded with an evil eye. When the popish church found that it was useless to place itself in direct opposition to the great intellectual movement which gave rise to them, it was obliged to have recourse to stratagem, and it tried to draw them under its own influence, and to soften down and turn off that which it could not destroy. In this work, its most active agents were the Dominicans and other orders of friars.

We must, above all things [observes Dr. Huber], here, as in all similar crises, not only consider what is lost, but also what lies at stake, and how much has been saved. And, when we take our view from this position, we cannot but wonder at the prudence, activity, and power of the Catholic church, although we should be so blind as not to perceive that the church, in spite of all her imperfections, was actuated by a higher principle in opposing many of those which were inimical to her. But, leaving out of the question the urgent necessity which existed of saving the dogma, still we cannot reproach the church with not having perceived the necessity of rescuing also the remaining positive elements of the old studies from the stream of speculation. So far as this went, it was without doubt the essential gain of the church.

But the positive practical branches of the new tree of knowledge also threatened the church in part with dubious fruits. In Italy, it is true, where the practical application of the jus cæsareum threatened to become the most dangerous, this danger vanished with the imperial power itself. The small powers, which placed themselves under the imperial mantle, in order to cover the nakedness of their claims, and which very soon brought into use the worst principles of the Roman monarchy, for the oppression of the freedom which already existed, as well as that which was springing up, were no longer able to be dangerous to the church. On the other side of the Alps, the vital elements of Teutonic law hindered that part of the Roman law from thriving, which was most dangerous to the church. The canon law, on the contrary, was, according to the nature of things, directly in unison with the church, aud was seized upon and cherished by its scientific champions, especially the Dominicans. With the natural sciences the church could least interfere openly. In their practical moral application, they were absolutely necessary to the study of medicine, and pope and bishop, as little as emperor and king, could look so strictly after the orthodoxy of those to whom they gladly made themselves indebted for life and health. So long as it only concerned itself with these, people were obliged to let this science alone, though its professors might receive their art from Jews, or Arabs, or even from infernal spirits. But, in every other application, and in its purely scientific experimental development, natural science remained, if not altogether forbidden, at least suspected and discouraged. He who would seek for sufferance or court honour was obliged to wrap himself up in the wide variegated robe of speculation or mysticism.

The Universities of Italy and Provence were more particularly given to these suspected studies, and it was among them, especially in the south of France, that, in the earlier ages, so many doctrines sprung up, which were, under Catholic dominion, visited as the most impious heresies. The Italian Universities were much more independent of the church than those founded on this side of the Alps. Indeed, the popish church had always less influence over the minds of men in Italy than in other parts of Europe, for