A Tamesis Ripis
is difficult to tell of our current Term. Presentation Day has come and gone. It brought Lord Eustace Percy's momentous announcement of the settlement of the question of the site of our Central buildings. Behind the Edward VII Galleries of the British Museum, upon 81 acres of land owned by the Duke of Bedford, we are, thanks to a Government grant and Rockefeller Foundation munificence, to find "a local habitation and a name." In the past, the puzzled inability of the 'bus con- ductor, even in the neighbourhood of South Kensington, to say at what point the examinee, fresh from the country, should alight for the University has always hurt the External student's burgeoning pride. Later the student has learned more of London and discovered, for example, that even Southwark Cathedral is terra incognita to the officials 011 Route 20. SoMe few years froth now the 'busman's reproach will die. We have looked down upon our new campus, with the help of the aerial photograph in the Times, and we arc right well satisfied.
There have been spells of pleasant weather. In the sunshine the file of fair young things who, in silken exiguity, pre- ferred the seats beneath the slender shade of the boxed trees in the quadrangle of King's to the drearer aspect of their library, talked, inter alia, of tennis. When, recently, I pene- trated into the home of the Badger, which is, Sir, I assure You, most fearfully and wonderfully organized, yet never made--has not one of its own dons alluded to it as "the place on which the concrete never sets" ?—I heard them mix statistics with talk of cricket directly or vicariously enjoyed. I know too that Tamesii litres many to dalliance and some to labour, in the hope that, one day, upon " his broad aged back " shall ride a real University boat. Indeed, I have a friend who says that that may even happen before the Bishop of Gloucester, who once remarked that such a boat alone would convince the man in the street that a University of London existed, retires from episcopal duties. I wish I could accurately discover whether the doctors of Bart's and Guy's think the hope is pathOlogical symptom.
June will be remembered for the visit of Princess Mary, Viscountess Lascelles, to lay the foundation stone of a new wing to Bedford College. At length the wooden huts are to disappear !
And June brings us also the centenary of one of our two oldest colleges, giving excuse to remind us hOw, in 182:3, Thomas Campbell wrote a prose letter to the Times which Fate has decided shall be more famous than even that which
is excellent iii his loudly patriotic poetry. Campbell did suggest a University of London which, open " to both sexes,"_ should not be " an appendage to the establishment " but should aim at " multifariously teaching, examining, exercising and rewarding " the " middling rich," which Oxford and Cambridge did leave then in outer darkness. In 1827 the Duke of Sussex laid the foundation-stone of Univer, sity College, built by a group of public-spirited shareholders who approved the poet's plan. It began to teach ; it hoped to examine for degrees. But we are grateful that Lord Mel- bourne's Government settled the matter more wisely. Though, in 1836, the Government gave the Charter prayed _for on behalf of University College, it also invested a Senate, by simultaneous Charter, with the power of examining and granting degrees above University College and King's College.
Not the least. merit of a centenary is to invest domestic history with a pleasant importanee. CerMinly, in libraries and places where they are supposed to read, many who have not previously turned the first thirty pages of the white University Calendar have been induced to do so. No doubt, as loyal alumni, they have realized that, for all that 1827 and 1836 were landmark years, they tell only a small part of a great story. For my part I like to take front the shelf Stowe's Annales, with Sir George Bite's interesting Supplement,. The Third Universitie of England. -What would he say, I wonder, could it be whispered to him that we arc now both the third and first of English Universities ? For,. Sir, this term, as indeed previously, we boast more students than those that seek even the populous schooLs of Cambridge.
Abeunt studio in mores.- am, Sir, &c., Youst " LONDON " CORRESPoNMNT.
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