term tu tjitlitur.
THE REFORM THAT THE UNIVERSITIES NEED.
Sin—May I be allowed to make a remark or two on the excellent and aenaible letter of Mr. James Cecil Wynter, on the subject of University Re- form, which appeared in your paper of December 7, in which he alludes to a previous letter of mine.
I have as little wish as he can have to "join the ranks of Alma Hater's foes in this her hour of mortal agony." I believe that the Universities have been for centuries, in spite of all defects, a great means of educing the best points of the English character; I believe that, if they fall, or are remodelled —in plain English, destroyed—by Whig sciolists, England will suffer irre- parable loss. I do not want to see them made more like that soulless phan- tasm the London University College, but more like themselves. Force them to be true to their own idea. Let their collegiate life be a real and not a merely nominal system of association and brotherhood ; let their maternal care of youth rise above " bull-dogs," "gates," and "impositions," to the reality of personal loving superintendence and sympathy; let their institu- tions, which profess to have the right of monopolizing English education, be as good as their word and educate talent in every class and not merely in- discriminate mediocrity in the highest ; above all, let their religious teach- ing:teach something beside mere doctrines : let them keep the Catholic for- mulae, in God's name, but let them infuse an Apostolic spirit into them ; let them learn, face, and answer the miserable doubts which now torment the snajority of earnest and thoughtful Under-graduates; let them develop their " ohapel-keeping," till instead of a ghastly and soulless compulsory mockery, "hateful to God and the enemies of God," it becomes a real living united worship of Him from whom they profess to expect wisdom and truth ; let them, in short, be true to their own names of " Alma Metres," "Catholic and Apostolic institutions," "English Universities" ; and, whatever more the Whigs may ask of them, England will ask nothing. It may be answered, that all these improvements have been in many cases *mad,- made. I confess it with delight; and I appeal to the extraordinary imd, novel success which has attended every effort of the kind, as proving at owe their efficacy and the deep want of them which had previously existed. Bat I ask any man of common sense, are these cases the exception or the rule? have they been the efforts of a College, or of some single and often Persecuted individual in that College ? Most late corporate attempts at Col- lege Reform, in my eyes, have been steps still further in the wrong direc- tion; still hastier substitutions of law for gospel, of mechanical compulsion for grateful loyalty, widening still further the fatal distance which exists between the teachers and the taught. Was it by new College regulations that. JohnHenry Newman gained his miraculous influence ? No; by the
intense self-sacrificing earnestness, by the loving human sympathy, even to tears, which shone out in every word and action of that great though mis- guided teacher. These compelled, as by a spell, belief and obedience. These made his pupils feel "there is a real man ; he has a message, for he be- lieves his own words." These qualities, new, alas ! to ninety-nine out of a hundred of his hearers, encouraged youth to pour into his sympathizing ear the record of its wildest doubts, its basest sins, and love his bitterest sar- casm or sternest rebuke better than the cold indifference of the scribes and Pharisees around him.
And it is the utter want of this human sympathizing method of real education, in all but a very few either in Oxford or Cambridge, and still more ugly, the utter want of any sense that such sympathy is needed, which gives me but little hope for the impending University reforms. They may be expedient, or otherwise ; but they are merely exterior and mechanical reforms, and therefore useless, if not worse. The proposition of allowing scholars to reside freely in private houses, and establish themselves in the University independent of any College or Hall, I regard with simple horror, as widening still further the door to a lawlessness and pro- fligacy already but too abundant. Any outward advantage of such a plan would be overwhelmed by its inward evils. Mr. Sea ell's plan, on the other band, is a truly noble one. But where shall we find men to carry it out ?—brave loving human teachers, such as are required for Man- chester or Nottingham even more than for Oxford and Cambridge If the present race of instructors cannot (and as a fact they cannot) cope with the defects, doubts, wilfulness, simpleness, of their hereditary pupils, the country gentlemen's and clergymen's sons, how much less with the manufacturers, shopkeepers, and working men of the North? There will be no use in propa- gating offshoots of the University system, unless there be a living spirit in them' and if there be no living spirit in the central brain, how much less in the distant ganglions ? This is the reason why I still advocate the plan of examining the Under- graduates themselves. / quite agree with Mr. Wynter's objections. If all that was required were mere legislative alterations, they would be valid and final; young men can be in nowise judges on such matters. But something deeper is required—a more living, manlike, Christian spirit; and whether that is exercised towards him or not—whether the education he gets makes him better, wiser, more manful, as well as merely more learned—the veriest schoolboy, will know full well. As it is, he does not get that, but anything rather than that. He does not even learn the old Persian rudi- ments of education "To speak truth and to draw the bow." The latter he gets from his boating and sporting, and must and ought to seek for it there, unless something of a real athletic education is provided by the University itself, which is out of the question just now. And for the former, mathe- matics, classics, and theology, which ought, above all studies, to induce se- vere and honest habits of thought, do now, under the baneful influence of emulation, "cramming," and parrotlike repetition of stock-proofs and stock-statements, breed a generation of looser thinkers, more incorrect and unscientific users of words, and hasty signers of half-believed formulre, than England ever taw before.
And I am Derry to have to repeat my assertion, that this is the feeling of
the majority of young men themselves—at least of those whom I meet ; and I meet very many, It is simply a question of fact, whether or not young men reverence the Universities. I assert that they do not. I can well be- lieve Mr. Wynter's opposite statement as to the feeling of men who left them five-and-twenty years ago. Simeon, in Cambridge at least, was then filling a large circle with that very genial personal life, the absence of which I now deplore. The old orthodox party in both Universities was far more hearty, manful, and indulgent than now ; and what is more important, a hundred fearful questions then slumbered unknown, which are now forcing them.- selves on the minds of thinking gownsmen. Men were not then going over to Rome by hundreds. The writings of Strauss or of his followers were not then gaining ground every term in the libraries and the hearts of gowns- men. Young men were not then crying frantically to every one, orthodox
or unorthodox, who looked, to use their own phrase, like " man," "For God's sake tell me what to believe, or if there is anything really worth believing in beyond five senses, my pocket, and my ambition ?" It was not so then. It is so now ; and unless the Universities take note thereof, it will soon take fearful note of them.
I am quite ready to confess myself to have been "the worst of sons to Alma Mater.', I am quite ready to confess that I too have "often laid at her door sins chargeable only on myself." Perhaps these humiliating wool. lections, sobered down by time into objects of earnest analysis rather than of passionate remorse may give me some insight into what are and what are not her real defects; some calling to speak a word for the many, who, with far nobler hearts than I, fall yearly under continually increasing temptations. A CAMBRIDGE FIRST-CLASS MAN &ND COUNTRY RECTOR.
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