The Times has written a set attack on the new
Oxford Stat- utes for the revision of the duties of the University Professors, but we should be sorry to pass as yet any deliberate judgment on their effect, for they need study, and, perhaps, some dis- cussion teo, before one can clearly grasp what their net result will be. We shall publish a letter of some interest on this subject, showing how hasty and unintelligent the Times' article was, next week. It may be that the new statutes attempt to bind down the Professors too closely. It may be that the creation of a new authority for keeping the Professors steadily to their work, and enforcing more than mere teaching,—the periodical examination of the taught,—has been conceived in a spirit somewhat too jealous, though we are quite convinced that the leisurely view of these Professorships is wholly unsound. But this appears to be clear,—that it is the tendency of the new regulations for creating " Councils of Faculties " to secure a better organisation and centralisation of the studies of the University, and to give the Professors their full share of influence over the organisation of those studies. If this should —as it well may—result in securing for the highest teachers-of the University a more definite influence over the whole course of study and of examination, one of the greatest defects of the present Oxford system,—which gives all the substantial in- fluence in the University to very young men,—will be in a fair way for remedy.
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