The Press. — London, England, 1854-03-18 00:00:00

MARas 18, 1854. tended to imply, what I doubt, that he has been in England, and that there ho has had reason to boast of the kindnesses of the fair sex, which I deny. We might go on with such extracts ad libitum ; but must conclude by repeating our impression that these are most entertaining volumes. OXFORD REFORMERS. Recommendations respecting the Relation of the Prqfessorial and Tutorial Systems as Adopted by the Tutors' Association, November, 1853. (Reports of the Oxford Tutors' Association, No. 8.) Oxford and London : John Henry Parker. Oxford Reform and Oxford Professors. By Henry Halford Vaughan, M.A., Regius Professor of Modern History in the Univer sity of Oxford. London : John W. Parker and Son. A Reply to Prqfessor Vaughan's Strictures on the Third Report of the Oxford Tutors Asso ciation. By One of the Committee. Oxford and London : John Henry Parker. A Letter to the Riyht Hon. the Earl of Derby, D.C.L., Chancellor qf the University of Oxford, on University and College Reform. By Henry Bristow Wilson, 8.D., late Fellow and Tutor of St. John's College, &c. London : Ridg way. THOUGH the present proceedings and future sta tus of the Hebdomadal Board have for the last few weeks been the most prominent topic of aca demic controversy, we must remember that the constitution of the governing body of the Univer sity is but a secondary question in comparison with changes which may be effected in the fundamental principles of its education. Upon certain proposals for the latter the eyes of all interested in the University are now fixed with considerable anxiety : her leading men, as the above list of pamphlets testifies, are declaring their individual convictions, while it is most desirable that the public should be enabled to pronounce thereon a reasonably well-grounded and unbiassed judgment. The most preten. tious of these testimonies is the elaborate de fence of the professoriate scheme by the pre sent Professor of Modern History. Mr. Vaughan certainly does not do things by halves : his pamphlet is a wholesale eulogy of professorial teaching, professorial learning, and professorial morality. Into this rather ex tensive field of inquiry we need scarcely say it is not our intention to pursue him, but it may be perhaps a useful, if a humbler, task to indicate certain practical difficulties in the realisation of this glowing ideal, of which the professor may perhaps, in a moment of less enthusiasm, acknowledge the importance. Before doing so, we demur to the position which Mr. Vaughan would claim for the Royal Commissioners. They alone, he says, of all the parties concerned, are able to be impartial: they occupy a middle station be tween the Crown and the University, and we can listen to their suggestions unfettered by any of those misgivings which accompany the recommendations, however otherwise excel lent, of interested persons. Mr. Vaughan forgets that every commission of inquiry naturally feels under a sort of obligation to make out a case ; every such body shares in the animus of its authors, irrespective of the pre bendal emoluments by which such sympathy is occasionally rewarded. When, therefore, Mr. Vaughan employs such an argument to discredit the suggestions of the Tutors' Asso ciation, pro tanto we participate in the regret expressed in his preface that he should have expended so much irretrievable time on the composition of this essay. Not less singular are his assumptions on the subject of Crown influence. He believes "it is not the wish of " our chief statesmen, not the pleasure of the " Crown," that the professors should represent " the caprice of some ephemeral political " leader.' Perhaps not. Yet, if our present p o litical leaders be ephemeral, will Mr. Vaughan undertake to answer for th e ir suc cessors, or the successors of these ? Seriously, we cannot take his ipse dixit for any such THE PRESS. supernatural impartiality. Whose in authority will appoint men of their own way of thinking to the end of the world. In regard to the practical working of the professorial system as recommended by Mr. Vaughan we must express our conviction that it could not exist beside the tu tonal—one. or other must give way. The difficulty on the score of time alone would appear to be insuperable : one hour's earnest attention to a lecture is at least twice as fatiguing as one hour's diligent study of the most abstruse author. A reading man finds ccllege lectures as much as he can manage; were those of the professor superadded, he must relax his attention or lose his senses. Now, this is a practical difficulty with which Mr. Vaughan has not attempted to grapple. Indeed, all his statements ou this head are confused and unsatisfactory. In one place ho implies that professorial lectures will not interfere with the authority or emoluments of college tutors; in another he endeavours to console these gentlemen for the injury to be inflicted upon both by bidding them compare their own position with that of other "promising young men " in the other learned professions. Mr. Vaughan, however, overlooks the distinc tion between an Oxford tutor and a London law student. They do not play the game of life on the same principles. The one is con tent with fixed and moderate gains, the other throws for a high stake, and risks his all upon the cast. The hardworking college tutor fully earns his income, while it is not so certain that the professor upon Mr. Vaughan's princi ples would earn his. For it is clear that Mr. Vaughan would impose no equivalent obliga. tion on the professors : each is to be a man devoted to the cause of learning, reading what he likes, writing what he likes, and lecturing as little as he likes ; advancing intellectual interests by the force of his example and the dignity of his position, far removed from the vulgar cares of tutorial existence. No irksome duties to perform, no refractory youths to punish, no stupid ones to drill, no domestic hopes indefinitely postponed; but, instead of this, an easy competence, the tranquil study and the placers usn9r, the stroll down High street with a halo of learning streaming from the cap tassel, the Socratic discourse by the banks of Isis, or the meditation upon virtue in Magdalen Walks. Mr. Vaughan proposes, on the ground of their superior functions, that the professors should be amply remunerated without being obliged to give frequent lectures. As a preca rious investment of capital, we may quote the following illustration of this proposal by " One of the Committee," &c. (cited above) : Mr. Vaughan observes, " The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which occupied its able, secluded, indefa tigable, and fluent author during twenty years, assisted as he was by very many grand works of research recently pre pared to his hand, would at this rate of work have flowed from his pen in the course of twenty months, and left him at leisure to write with similar speed on the same scale the history of every modern nation in the world during a short academical career." But let us imagine this prin ciple applied to professorial duties. Let us conceive the Regius' Professor of Modern History thus addressing lrls Aflntt Mater: " Venerable Mother, I am Professor in ease, lam a Gibbon in posse. Your name will be asso ciated with my future glory, and this hope must console you for the loss of my present services. I require you to release me from the obligation of delivering lectures (unless it be a minimum quantity), and at the end of twenty years you shall be rewarded by the publication of the New Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The trifling salary of ' 1,0001., 1,2001., or 1,5001. per annum,' which you will pay me in the interval, must be regarded as a small investment, to be repaid herea ft er by an abundant harvest of renown." The University might reply : " Con scientious and modest son, the twenty years may elapse, and the New Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire may not appear ; or it may appear, and the world may discover that the professor has overrated his own abilities. You must pardon me if I decline to invest so large a portion of my revenues in the contingent remainders of eccentric and seltestimating genius." To sum up what we have said :—The pro fessoriate, according to Mr. Vaughan's concep tion of it, must either be made the working system of the place, thereby superseding the present catechetical college lectures—a change in the opinion of the leading Oxford men fraught with the most pernicious results—or the professor will be in dangerof degenerating into the mero dilettante philosopher above described. In the appendix to Mr. Vaughan's . pamphlet we have a dissertation by Mr. Comngton, of 257 University College, on the inferiority of English scholarship to German, from which is meant to be inferred, we suppose, the neces sity of some institution more favourable to the growth of abstract learning. Now, although we think Mr. Conington has scarcely done justice to many English scholars, yet did we believe that the encouragement of such men as the German race of scholars had been one of the primary objects proposed to themselves by college founders and benefactors, or indeed that the old spirit of learning could ever be re • vived in this country, we should attach consider• able weight to his remarks. Religion and education were the purposes to which the re venues of Oxford were originally dedicated ; and we must not forget that her connection with a national church is alone sufficient to invest her with a character essentially different from the German Universities. This view of the question has been glanced at in the letter addressed to the Earl of Derby by Mr. Wilson, late fellow of St. John's College, in connection with the subject of close fellowships, on which it contains some very valuable and original reflections to which we may possibly recur on some future occasion. It is in the idea of a University entertained by the Commissioners that we must, we think, look for the main source of the mistakes of them and theirbottleholders. "We wish," say they," to " see the University the centre of the learning " and intelligence of the country." Now, to such a notion as this the whole spirit of English life is antagonistic. The " scholar" is a character that no longer exists—the student of the pre sent day looks to the public for support, and his inducements to do so are daily on the in crease. The uncertain yet splendid prizes of professional life, the prodigious fecundity of the press, the general activity of society ever opening out new fields of employment, the demands of education at home, and the rise of institutions in the colonies, all beckon the young recluse from his cell, and point to paths thronged by the efforts of masculine energy, and radiant with the glow of honourable wealth. The proper centre of " the learning and intel ligence" which the present age requires is un doubtedly the metropolis : this is proved by the constant and steady influx of all the ablest Oxford fellows who are not in orders. " The " gentlemen at large," in the words of a morning contemporary, " with their two or " three hundred a year," in nine cases out of ten do but little at the bar, but instinctively settle in London as their natural home. Will the appointment of a dozen, ay, of fifty, professors alter this? We think not. When the Commissioners can once more point to men begging their way to the University — when the streets of Oxford are once more crowded by 30,000 students—when men again begin to think learning better than houses or land—then, perhaps, their grand project may be accomplished. Till then we must continue to think that their proposals are but inter fering with much certain good for the sake of a very doubtful, nay, most improbable, advan tage. RECENT FICTION. slgnes Valmar. A Novel. London : Chapman and Hall. lValter Hurst; or, Early Struggis* at the Bar. By Herbert Greville Pelham, Eq. London : Routledgo and Co. HERE we have two first attempts at novel writing, resulting in productions above the average of the circulating-library standard, but still falling far short of a high class in fiction. "Agnes Valmar" is freshest in style, but has least matter, while, on the other band, "Walter Hurst" exhibits a wide range of life, described with prosaical minuteness. We have no doubt in pronouncing "Agnes Valmar" to be the work of the most youthful writer of the two authors, and there is an ardour and charac teristic intensity about its style of which a great use might be made in future attempts. But the plot of the story is wild and impro bable, for Belgravian society does not produce such extravagant incidents as form the ground work of the fashionable melodrama, which this impassioned writer exhibits for our wonder. Agnes Valmar, the heroine, is a widow—and a M IP I iIIMIIMIIINIi