21 DECEMBER 1907, Page 26

The Cornubian and West Countrie Annual, 1907-8. (The Cornubian Press.

2s. 6d. not.)—A county or a region, a city or even a suburb, may well have an annual of its own. It is our privilege from time to time to notice some excellent publications of this kind, and the Cornubian Annual, with its special West Country lore, takes a good place among them. But that the said county or region should have a University of its own is quite another matter, and we are glad to see that Mr. Quiller-Couch, who yields to no one in local patriotism of the right kind, answers with a decided negative the question,— Shall we have a Cornish University ? There is a Bulgarian proverb, "All these twopenny saints will be the ruin of the Church," and he applies it with force. What there should be, he thinks, is a Technical College dealing with the special industry of the county. And his opinion is supported by many weighty authorities. We venture to think that " Desdichado," who takes a different view, is wrong in his financial comparison between Oxford and Cam- bridge and other Universities. A student who chooses to live as hardily as a young Scotsman is willing to live at Edinburgh or Glasgow can do so as an "unattached" at very little more cost. Life in College is really to the average middle-class young man far more comfortable than what he gets at home, or will get anywhere till he earns a good income for himself. To say that "much of the expense is artificially created in the interests of caste" is, to put it mildly, unjust.