THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY COMMISSION.

[FROM A COP.IIESPONDENT.1 PREGNANT with the future fate of the two old Universi- ties of England are the few remaining weeks of this year.

The Commissioners within that brief period have to determine the conditions under which, say for the next decade—since there can be no finality in the matter—all officials of those ancient bodies are to discharge their duties, and the emoluments to be attached to their several posts.

It has been generally remarked that nearly every article, in newspaper or magazine, professing to treat of University matters is found to refer almost exclusively to Oxford, Cam- bridge being dismissed in a couple or more of succinct sen- tences. The present writer at once acknowledges his ignorance of the state. of things, existing or proposed, at Oxford, which he knows only as a sojourner, and to speak of what concerns his own University of Cambridge.

The Draft Statutes promulgated by the Cambridge Commis- missioners in December last, and believed to have been the work of a member of their body who had not for years visited his University, met with little or no approval from any quarter, and encountering even more ridicule than hostility, have been by common consent allowed to drop. The scheme, however, had no small merit, and for a brand-new University, or one fallen into total torpidity, might have answered its purpose and produced good results. But Cambridge had always been the University of Evolution, and its reformers—even the most radical among them, and the most discontented with the exist- ing state of things—were always imbued with a conservative spirit, and were for rebuilding on the old foundations. The very reforms that had been effected—and of them there were many—since the author of these Draft Statutes graduated as senior wrangler of his year, were all so framed. Reforms greater still, but on the same lines, were already in progress, so far as was permitted by the Statutes enacted by the preceding Com- mission, when straight from Victoria Street came down a cut- and-dried scheme, hemming in the University on every side with regulations and prescriptions, yet removing but few of the restrictions which all who knew it best, and had the best right to know, deemed intolerable.

By what strange fatality the Commissioners allowed them- selves to put forth this scheme, at once revolutionary and retrograde, the world is ignorant, and probably does not care now to know. There were some men who, when the names of the Commissioners were announced, declared that they formed a body of which little good could be expected. Distinguished as some of them were in law or divinity, statecraft or science, there were few, if any, among them who knew anything of the work of Cambridge at the present day. The Draft Statutes fully justified the sceptics, and still more justified have the sceptics been by the action of the Commissioners in throwing those Draft Statutes overboard.

"Second thoughts are best," says the proverb, but the proverb would be truer if it said that "second thoughts are better." It is only in comparison with the Draft Statutes originally promul- gated that the proposed Statutes set forth within the last month can be pronounced better. That there is good in them cannot be denied; but the greater grievances of which University re- formers—conservative reformers, too—complained have been passed over ; while rules, hard and fast, have been laid down to check the natural growth, whereby the University can alone keep itself in accord with national wants. In justice to the Commissioners, it must be confessed that until the new Statutes

of the several colleges are published, it is impossible to say whether some of these grievances may not therein be redressed; but it is equally impossible, from what is common report, to suppose that many of them, or any of the most important of them, can be. It can hardly be doub e I that the most crying abuse in the University is that of the Headships of Colleges. Yet headships are expressly named in the proposed Statutes, and provisions made accordingly, while it is generally understood that in the Statutes for the several Colleges the headship is to be main- tained. Time was, no doubt, when the Head of a House per- formed some useful function, but this was long since. Then there came an epoch when the holder of this high office, by virtue of his distinguished character as a man of learning or hey, by the exercise of generous hospitality or by his genial spirit, was an ornament to the society over which he pre sided; and it was, at any rate, believed that no man wh) did not possess some one of these characteristics would ever be appointed to what had become a comfortable and dignified sinecure. Later experience has shown that this belief was utterly mistaken, in spite of the election, tlirough very ex- ceptional circumstances, of Sir Henry Maine to the Mastership of Trinity Hall. When a headship becomes vacant, the tutor of the College is almost as a matter of course chosen to fill it— sometimes because he is a signal failure in that office, sometimes because he has therewith combined other offices which are 'lucrative to their holder—and hence his elevation causes promo- tion among the Fellows, who, in fourteen out of the seventeen -Colleges, have the appointment in their hands. But then, again, in many eases their choice is restricted, for, in the majority of Colleges, the Master must by Statute be a clergyman, and it is understood that the Commissioners are not prepared by a general Statute to abolish this restriction ; though, where the Governing Body desires to free itself therefrom, they will not object to its liberation. In these days, no one who pretends to 'liberal ideas can uphold this restriction, so contrary to the -spirit, though, unfortunately, not to the letter, of the Univer-

sities Test Act ; and it is to be hoped that, when the new Statutes of the different Colleges are laid on the table of the House of Commons, as they must be, before re- ceiving the approval of the Queen in Council, the disability of a 4ayman to fill the office of Master will be invariably struck out, while at the same time it should be made entirely optional in .every case with the governing body of a College whether it should have a headship or not,—in other words, whether it should assign the pay of at least two fellows to a man who, having no duties to perform, is useless, and (in most cases), not occupying his post with dignity, has ceased to be ornamental. Yet at the very lowest estimate, £14,000 per annum of the revenue of the Colleges is wasted upon these personages.

The next great Cambridge abuse is that of the Tutorships,— not that all college tutors, or even the majority of them, do abuse their position. It is in the larger Colleges that it has be- come customary for tutors—by far the best paid officials in the place—to take no share whatever in the teaching, but merely to pocket the tuition fees. There is a tendency on the part of some tutors of smaller colleges to imitate this bad examples but it is to the credit of many that they resist the fascination of lucrative idleness, and do their duty by their pupils remark- ably well. Yet, so far as can be gathered of the intentions of -the Commissioners, there is no sign of their being aware of the existence of this abuse, or of taking any steps to guard against it, which is all the more remarkable, since the abuse is of very recent growth. Twenty years ago, a college tutor was not only theoretically, but actually, in loco parentis, as regards his pupils. He knew their circumstances, their personal character, their habits, tastes, and the like. Now-a-days, we have tutors of whom it is often said that they do not know their men by sight even, and that when one of them comes into their room, they have to ask him his name. Shade of " Tommy " Thorpe, can this be Trinity ? Tutors of this stamp have their clerks, who do the routine business of the College accounts, and, on occasion, they themselves correspond with the parents or friends of their pupils. Otherwise, they have nothing to do, save the appointment of lecturers. In this, it must be admitted, they are very suc- cessful; but the success is easily attained, seeing that the lecturers are, to begin with, first-rate men, and inspired with the hope of themselves succeeding to tutorships when vacancies occur. Meanwhile, they do the work, and sufficiently hard work it is, paid for not inadequately, but certainly not extravagantly.

The scheme of the Commissioners, as regards the Profes- soriate, has, in the lately-proposed Statutes, been frilly set forth. and it is understood that no changes of any importance will now be introduced into it. This scheme has produced none of the feeling here that the Professorial scheme of the Oxford Commissioners seems to have done, whether justifiably or not.

The fact is probably due to the Professors under the existing Cambridge Statutes being, within certain limits, already subject to the control of Boards of Studies, and so far as. is known, not finding that control irksome. Indeed, the plan is not only rea- sonable enough in theory, but in practice has been found to work well. The new scheme is merely an extension of the pre- sent, but an extension which is likely to produce great benefit.

One feature in it cannot, however, be overlooked, and that is one which no doubt has sweetened it to the taste of those whom it will more immediately concern. Tim stipend of nearly every Professorship is increased, in some cases very largely, and in time every Professor will also be as officio a fellow of a college, though such Professorial Fellowships are in no instance to exceed £250 a year in value, and generally the Professors will be by no means highly-paid functionaries—not to be compared for a moment with the Professors in Scotch Universities ; while the regulations for the proper discharge of their duties seem to be sufficiently stringent, without being meddlesome or irritating.

Of the Commissioners' proposals, there remains that relating to University Readerships, of which it is intended to found a.

score, each ordinarily at a stipend of MO a year, power being left to the University (by means of a General Board of Studies, to be forthwith established), to determine the subjects to which they are to be assigned, as well as to vary the stipends paid. On.

no part of the scheme is there such divergence of opinion as this ; and, even among the most radical reformers in the University, there are many who view it with suspicion. As an experiment, it seems worth trying, though it will be costly. Its success or failure must depend largely on the subjects and the men chosen. If the former be such as are new, but worth encouraging in this manner, and the latter are specialists of high attainment, success may certainly be looked for. But if the Readers are to be only second-class Professors, or additional teachers of mathematics, classics, and divinity—such, indeed, as were mainly shadowed forth in the Draft Statutes of December, 1879, which the Commissioners so wisely let drop—assuredly the scheme will come to naught and the £8,000 per annuni which the Readers are to cost will be money as much thrown away as is the £14,000 now absorbed by the Heads.

One thing more may here be mentioned. In accordance with views entertained by the Commissioners—forced upon them ab extra, say some—of the University Tests Act, every college has been called upon to introduce into its statutes a clause appoint- ing a "Religions Instructor." The purport of this it is not easy to see. Some Colleges are said to have objected to the clause, and their objection, after a struggle, or show of a struggle, has been admitted by the Commissioners. One may ask why, in the name of common-sense, such an apple of discord has been thrown down, and who has thrown it. No answer is forthcoming to either question, and it is to be hoped that Members of the House of Commons will insist on this aggravating and aggressive provision being omitted from the Statutes of all Colleges. Those that have hitherto effec- tually resisted it are some of the larger bodies, in which, if any- where, the appointment of a religious instructor would be com- paratively harmless. It is in the smaller societies that harm is likely to arise from it. Nearly all Colleges have had, and are still to preserve, a clerical officer in their dean.—why, then, should a second be wanted ? The Commissioners have not taken on themselves to lay down the duties of the religious instructor,

nor to determine his salary. Whether he is to hear the Under- graduates their catechism—and if so, of what kind that catechism is to be—to read Paley or Pearson to them, or to lec- ture on the Greek Testament, is unknown, and what emolument he is to receive for his trouble is equally uncertain ; but one thing is certain, that a door is opened for the restoration of a religious difficulty, which was hoped by all reasonable men to have been settled some years ago.

P.S.—Since the above was put into print, the Commissioners have held several meetings in Cambridge, and, it is reported, have in many, if not all, cases abolished the clerical restrictions as regards Headships, besides having introduced into the statutes of the several colleges some of the other reforms above indicated. Pity it is that these noblemen and gentlemen did not begin, where they are ending their labours,—at the University they were commissioned to remodel !