The Express.
London, England, 1850-11-27 00:00:00

Elte Ontreoo.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.
At. orimmats monied fat Th• UMW" limbs Rlslm.( Perm,
mart be al tlis 01110, 10, IlsawarisAtiesi, by Twe lot lie
ay et
won WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Tug Narelas, 411 s. Ahemols. no.
Toololtauw -Morals& Oh Its- Ahressal, IL Um

.ONDON, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27.

IF the University of Oxford be still destined to pre-
serve unimpaired its old distinction of dignified in-
utility cad sristocratic unfitness for the wants of the
me, the fault will apparently not rest with the
University Commissioners, if we may Judge of the
probable tenor of their future proosedinp by
the eater* of the questions they have just issued to
the Vice Chancellors, Heads of Houses, and Profee-
son of the University. These interrogatories have
evidently been prepared by men practically familiar
with the real abuses of the educational system into
which they are appointed to investigate, and deter-
mined to penetrste,if possible, that shroud of academic
reserve with which it bit hitherto been sought to
screen from the gaze of the
.profane the mysteries of
college management and university finance.
It is not our intention to ran through the
counts of tbat long indictment which the educational
reformers of the day have to bring against the pre-
sent Oxford system of instruction. One and all the
varied evils, social and intellectual, of that sys-
tem are traceable to, and comprehended in, the
great fact that Oxford is not in the proper
sense an University at all, but virtually a mere ag-
gregation of colleges ; that her real teachers are not
University professors but college tutors; that her real
prizes are not University distinctions bat college fellow-
ships, which in Oxford, at all events, depend in •
majority of cases rather upon the accident of birth and
locality than on any intellectual m
who erit at all ; whiCh in
all cases are bestowed are themselves
fellows and tutors of colleges, and who, as such,
would be certain to reward only that species of intel-
lectual attainment on which their own training had
alone led them to set • value, or rendered them com-
petent to pass • judgment. Hence it follows, as more
than once has been pointed out by those really fami-
liar with the Oxford system, you may introduce new
subjects of university examination to any extent you
please, without neceeearily varying to any material
extent the present standard of university acquire-
ment. The substantial object aimed at is the
college fellowship ; and this, it is certain, will
sever be made to turn upon proficiency in
those newly introduced brancaes of study in
which the fellows and tutors, with whom exclusively
the election rests, are themselves unversed, which they
have no adequate incentive to acquire, no ability
to test, and no inclination to reward. Those uni-
versity distinctions and those only which have a di-
rect bearing on collegiate advantages will be sou tilt,
and those, as long as the present tutorial system sur-
vives, will still be nothing but mere tests of pro-
ficiency in the Ethics et /Leiden, the dates of the
Pelopoonesian war, and the metres of the Greek
dramatists. To conjugate, to decline and derive, to
reduce all foreseer argument to syllogisms in Barbara
—to write Greek prose like PLATO or Latin verse like
Vinott.—will still be the natural passports to those
endowments and emoluments, the entrance to which
is in the hands of those whose own fortunes
have been made and whose own minds have
been formed by syntax, prosody, and logic—by
"the detection of an anapest in the wrong place, or
the restoration of a dative case which CRANZIUB had
passed over, and the never-dyisg failed to
observe."
Intellectually speaking, this is the great mischief
of the collegiate and tutorial system—its natural and
alin-st unavoidable tendency is to keep the highest
education in the country within the bounds of the
same narrow curriculum in which the tutors of col-
leges have themselves been trained and in which
alone they ate competent to act as teachers. Under
such a system se this it may be true for an indefinite
time to come that a man may leave Oxford loaded
with all the honours the university can confer, yet be
totally guiltless of modern languages, wholly igno-
rant of modern history, literally without an elemen-
tary notion of those manly sciences, by proficiency in
which alone real distinction is now to be won, or of
those professional pursuits by labouring in which his
bread must be earned.
Gross, however, as are these intellectual evils of
the college system, its social abuses are perhaps more
glaring sill : it is impossible to gather under one
roof a number of young men of every variety of for-
tune and social position without necessarily subject-
ing the poorer to the strongest temptation of a fatal
rivalry with the wealthier. From the contagion of
that close intercourse is unavoidably generated •
moral atmosphere of folly, frivolity, and display,
which would be far lees intense if the aca-
demic population were more scattered. The
men of 2001. a year is divided merely by
a narrow staircase from the man of 2,0001.; is it
possible that the breskfuts and the suppers, the
cigars mid the champagne, the hunting coat and the
taedeniry of the one should be without effect on the
boyish rivalry of the other? What is the natural
result? The man of hundreds gets sucked down into
that ready gaping vortex of Oxford credit which per-
haps mars the whole happiness of his future life, but
which no system of college inspection can ever, we
believe, wholly put down, as long u the absurd
system of college residence is, as at present, strictly
enforced.
The questions of the commissioners seem directed to
the twofold object of ascertaining how far it is possible
to give new strength to the university, and impose
new checks upon the overgrown predominance of the
College*. With this view they first. address to the
Vice-Chancellor certain queries, calculated to elicit
full information on a point which, we believe, is in-
volved in much darkness, even for the majority of
. Oxford graduates, namely, the exact nature, extent,
and mansgem..nt of the resources possessed by the
university, as distinct from the colleges, and the emo-
luments of the university officers, such as the Vioe-
Chancellor himself, the Proctors, the public orator.
the librarians, &c. The Professors are required to
furnish information as to the nature and tenure of
their offices, the modes of appointment or nomination,
the emoluments, if any, attached to them, the facili-
ties provided in the way of residences, lecture-rooms,
libraries, apparatus, and collections ; the average
annual number of lectures and of pupils ; the general
condition in the university of the branches of study
to which their professorships relate, and the means of
promoting their advancement.
The most important questions, however, are there
addressed ti the Heads of Houses ; the attention of
those dignitaries is specially called by the commie-
/LOOS(' to the following amongst other points:—The
possibility of diminishing the ordinary expenses of an
university education, and of restraining extravagant
habits; the sufficiency of the powers which the autho-
riegszs re to enforce discipline ; " the moans of
' the bensfi's cf the university to a larger
somber of students, by the establishment of new
boa, by perms giog un,leryrad.to,es to lots in pirate
Alma more generally th,:n at present, ty ailacing *N-
andi 611 becOuse members of the university, and to be
othwaged al Oxford loser due superintendence but with-
out selibeting Mess fe the evens*. incident to connexion