German Universities : a Narrative of Personal Experience. By James
Morgan Hart. (New York : Putnam and Sons. London : Sampson Low and Co.)—If Mr. Hart had limited himself to the subject which is prominent on his title-page, it would have been well. He began his University career at Gottingen, and removed thence to Berlin, returning to Giittingen and actually proceeding there to examination. This process he describes at length, and his description is one of the most interesting passages in his book. The subject-matter was law, and if we may judge from what we are told about it, the examination was not very difficult ; not more so, we should say, than the Honour examinations at our own Universities. Besides this crisis of University life, we have a sufficiently copious description of its other features, especially of its teaching, which is, indeed, described in much detail, and we may say generally, with a very satisfactory impression of having been acquired, according to the author's profession, by "personal. experience." When he proceeds to compare "the German, English, and American systems of higher education," this experience fails him, as far at least as concerns that branch of the comparison which most interests ourselves. He cannot even have consulted the latest authorities on the subject, or taken ordinary pains to make himself acquainted with the facts. We mean by "the facts," the facts as they' are, not the facts as they were a quarter of a century ago. Every one here knows that a change amounting to revolution has taken place in our Universities daring that period. What can Mr. Hart possibly mean by the statement that "the popular element is excluded de facto from participation in the real or supposed benefits of Oxford and Cambridge ;" and this, "that Oxford and Cambridge are at this day not seats of learning pure and- simple, they are the trysting- places of the nobility and the bourgeoisie parvenue?" He cannot possibly know who really go to the Universities, and he is equally ignorant of what they teach. He grudgingly allows that England is prominent in "pure mathematics and natural history," but in "these departments themselves the Universities have but a small share." Cambridge has bat a small share in the mathematical knowledge of England ! Has he ever heard the names of Cayley, Adams, and Tait? But it is useless. to waste words on a man who tells us that "the leading historians of the present generation are Freeman, Fronde, Trollope, and Lingard." It is enough to say that Mr. Hart's paragraphs on the English Universities show nothing but a prejudice which is, we fear, too common among his countrymen, and an ignorance which we cannot but hope is rare. ,
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