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

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
political leaders be ephemeral, will Mr.
Vaughan undertake to answer for their 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 hereafter 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.