The Express.
London, England, 1850-06-04 00:00:00

glie erpregqi.

OUTGOING NAILS.
The Mule foe Illadmia, the Brazils, mid Deimos Ayres, will
• made tap this evesdas.
Tie meJle for Lisboa, Spain, end Gibraltar will be made
p ea Jebel.

The mails for British Berth America and the Milted
*awe will be made up on the evening of hoe 7.
The sans el/ Marseilles, to the Mediterranean, Sept,
los, India, Hong•soug, dco., will be made up on the
*lsaias of June 7.

The West India Mane, excluding limeade, H
Unman, Ho darns, New Orleans, and Melia* and including
hoes ter Madetra, Bt. Juan-er-Niearagua, New (Impala,
and Peru, will be made up on the (mantel of June 17.
The math ter Gibraltar, Malta, Orme*, the looms Islands,
Mgrpt, Oryien, India, and China, mkt Southampton, will
be made up on the morning of June 20.

nlOll WATT& AT LONDON SAIDOn.
Ten Day—nentise. ft 2IA
Teseasow-ilang, r. Lra Alermeem. len. Na

LONDON, TUESDAY, JUNE 4.

Ws cannot imagine that Lord J. Rraesu, in re-
commenditg the crown to appoint a royal commission'
for the inapection of our two universities, intends to I
confine its attention to the few secondary objects hel
hes so ambign 'ably proposA ; but that be is really
aiming, under the feint of improvement in concrete
science, at a radical and absolute reform in those
houses of eduction. We wonder that this season
of tardy justice has been delayed so long. It is now
sixteen years since his former colleague, Earl User,
introduced the bill for opening the universities to
dissenters in the Lords, and considering that it was
supported by a powerful array of talent, and already
passed the Commons by a majority of 164 against 76,
it is rather striking that the agitation should have
awed, and that the powerful bodies of nonconform-
ists should Dave fallen back upon their own re-
sources, and run up collegiate establishments for
themes lees. In the aebetes of that period, we do not
remember a single reason produced to justify sub-
scription to the article'. Some, to be sure, said
that the church would Lill, and others
that the throne would be shakes, but with the
exception of the bigotry and prejudice of the high
church leaders, the shadow of an argument was not
urged in its favour. Event, have since transpired to
render the abolition of exclusive tests a measure of
absolute necessity—the tractarian tendencies of the
majority of Oxford graduates; the gradual absorption
of doctrinal differences in the rationalistic element of
the church of England; and the rapid increase of the
nonoonformist bodies, which now fairly divide the
population of this country.
Leaving out of question the absurd plea that the
granting of this boon woad affect in the remotest
degree our constitution, we are not aware that it
would, unaccompanied with other reforms, work any
radical change in the nature of the universities them-
selves. The divinity lectures, at least, at Cambridge,
are wholly concerned about the grand fundamental
doctrines of Christianity, and are each that every dis-
senter, with the exception of the Roman catholic
aid the Unitarian might attend. The books are
confined to the Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistles;
and no other questions are started at the examinations
but such as unite the concurrent opinions of the
enteral bode of dissenters. We have looked over
their peas examinations at Cambridge for the last ten
years, and have not met a single query calculated to
excite polemical wrangling. There might be a new
chapel erected hen and there, but we much doubt
whether church service would not be more orderly
attended, and a better system of expenditure take the
place of that reckless extravagance, which is no less
fatal to health and reputation than to the formation
of business-like habits.

The plea which the heads of these national bodies
have recently started, that any interference extra
eseroe is a violation of their chartered rights and
the claims of the original founders, we confess our
inability to comprehend. These gentlem• n cannot be
entirely unmet:loin of an event which happened some
300 years ago, which placed all their revenues and
privileges at the mercy of the crown, and if
they take the trouble to look at their charters, they
will find them entirely remodelled by the exercise of
King EDWARD the SIXTII'B warrant, and their in-
come applied to purposes of which their original
founders never dreamed ! The crown may surely re-
vise a work which it accomplished in days of semi-
barbarism and political struggle, especially since the
altered state of the country demand• the exercise of
its powers in fashioninx ancient institutions, to meet its
requirement.. Like the inhabitants of Cochin, the Dons
dream away their lives in blinded ignorance of pro-
gression, and while our constituencies have undergone
reform, and our suffrage has changed its basis ; while
physical science is displaying its triumphs in shorten-
ing distances and abridging libeler, and an enlight-
ened press (Briareas-handed) is diffusing cheap
information among the million—they imagine that
they are the only bodies privileged to enjoy repose,
and to keep up those old abeam enacted
during oar apprenticeship in civil govern-
ment, and which are now actually imposing
a drag tpon the career of our civilisation.
Their age of gold is rapidly passing away ; the spirit
of the times is encroaching on their boundaries, and
Dame Partingion might as well attempt to keep out
the Atlantic with her broom, as the tutors and fel-
lows to stop its progress by the absurd cry of abso-
lute wisdom and stationary perfection.
That our universities are lamentably deficient in
everything except cl ssical learning, and abstract
mathematic*, is admitted on all hands, even by the
heads of houses themselves, who defend the restric-
tion, on the ground that universities are not esta-
blished with a view to convey information, but to
prepare the mind for its reception. We have no
wish to overcrowd the subjects for degrees, knowing
the great evil of distracting the attention of students
by a multiplicity of pursuits ; but we see no ma nn
why their minds should not be brought professionally
into contact with that elementary learning which is to
form the b sic of their future profession.
Many had neither taste nor aptitude for making latin
versos whose minds ought to be allowed a freer range
in the choice of those objects round which their other
studies are to group themselves. In seminaries which
profiles to guide the education of the country every
science ought to be taught which la liberal and ser-
viceable to mankind. Looking always to real utility
as oar guide, we should see with equal pleasure a stu-
dious and inquisitive mind 'ranging the productions of
nature, investigating the qualities at bodies, or mas-