The Sun.
London, England, 1848-11-11 00:00:00

UNIVERSITY REFORM.
(From the Examiner.)
The sudden reform in the studies of Cambridge
University has excited general surprise. But near
observers had not been without warning of what has
come with such an impromptu air. Among the Uni-
versity men who memorialized Lord John Russell the
other day were some of the best scholars of Cambridge,
and the language employed very much contrasted with
former indications of the discontented spirit. The
wonder is not that the movement should now be made.
It is that while the world has been pushed along
for centuries, one cloistered corner in it should have
remained intact. But we may remember in what
noble language the question was asked many years
ago, why, " while the civil state was purged and
restored by good and wholesome laws, devising reme-
dies as fast as time breedeth mischief, contrariwise
the ecclesiastical state should still continue upon the
dregs of time ?" and we have not to look further than
the answer to that question for the existing state of
our Universities on the last of October, 1848.
It is exactly two hundred and seventy-three years
since Francis Bacon left Trinity College, Cambridge,
with a conviction that it was an institution unfavour-
able to the advancement of knowledge. There were
only two beliefs, he said, which in his day were tho-
roughly taught to the University student, the first
that others knew that which they knew not, and
the second that themselves knew that which they
knew not ; and he compared Cambridge to
a becalmed ship, never moving but by the
wind of other men's breath, and having no
oars to steer by. He was very young when he
said this; but in mature life he repeated the opinion
more earnestly, and he opens the second book of his
Advancement of Learning with a full statement of his
reasons. He warns the King, to whom the work is
addressed, that statesmen cannot in the least profit by
collegiate education as then existing ; and that this has
not only a malign influence upon the growth of sciences,
but is prejudicial to states and governments, and" is the
reason why princes find a solitude in regard of able men
to serve them in causes of state." The remedy he would
suggest, he proceeds to say, is that since the old col-
leges seemed to have been established for the commu-
nication of dead knowledge, and the learning of the
past, and since improvement in them was hopeless,
there should be a new college appropriated to the
discovery of new truths, as a living spring to mix
with the stagnant waters. It will be the unceasing
amazement of future ages that it should have taken
two centuries and a half to effect one practical advance
in the direction thus pointed out by the greatest man
of his time.
For what has been the course of study in both
Universities since Bacon's death ? In recalling it, no
slight can possibly be intended to the distinguished
names which shed a lustre upon Oxford and Cam-
bridge, since for the most part these have belonged to
men to whom, as to Bacon himself, an adverse influ
ence acts but as the stimulus to increased intellec-
tual power. Nor is it necessary that the value
of the studies hitherto exclusively prescribed
should be la any manner depreciated. All men feel
the importance of classical literature, as of mathema-
tical science, and it will be one of the most precious
results of the present reform to make the pursuit of
both more liberal and comprehensive. As instruments
in the training of the intellect of youth, and in
forming it for higher exercises, those noble studies
retain the first place. But the complaint hitherto has
been that they have substituted a means for the end,
and that when they had opened the intellect to the
discovery of truth they were rhernselves interposed as
a barrier to its attainment. This is precisely what
Bacon complained of in his day. He said of the
powers cultivated at Cambridge, and of the uses to
which they were applied, that it was as if one should
learn to weigh, or to measure, or to paint the wind;
and he added that so to limit education, excluding
" philosophy and universality " as idle studies, was
to make contemptible and childish what you might
make fruitful and great.
In this we have the substance of every objection
since made; nor, in the essential matter, has a reform
been attempted until now. Amendments have dealt
merely with the surface, and have had no result but
to make the evil seen more plainly. "If you will
have a tree hear more fruit than it hath used to do,
it is not anything you can do to the boughs, but it is
the stirring of the earth, and putting new mould
about the roots, that must work it."
Well, then, we have had a stirring of the earth at
last, and new mould is put about the roots. Cl' the
five Graces offered to the Senate of Cambridge Uni-
versity last Tuesday, and adopted by considerable
majorities, three will be long selected for re-
membrance. By the first it is made incum-
bent on all candidates for a degree who shall
have commenced residence in or after Michaelmas
term, 1849, in addition to the modicum of classics and
mathematics at present exacted, to attend at least one
term of lectures in Laws, or Physic, or Moral Philo-
sophy, or Chymi6try, or Anatomy, or Modern His-
tory, or Botany, Gr. Geology, or Natural and Experi-
mental Philosophy, or English Law, or Medicine, or
Mineralogy, or Political Economy, and to show a cer-
tificate of examination satisfactory to that one of the
professors whose lectures they may have chosen to at-
tend. The choice of the particular science to be thus
added to the book of Euclid, the chapter of Thucy-
dides, and the pittance of Christian Evidences, is left
wholly to the student himself; but without its culti-
vation to this moderate extent he cannot go in for his
degree. The second and third Graces are more im-
portant. One establishes a new Honour Tripos
in the Moral Sciences, and the other a new Honour
Tripos in the Natural Sciences. For the first the
places are to be determined by an examination in
Moral Philosophy, Political Economy, Modern
History, General Jurisprudence, and the Laws of
England; and for the second, by an examination in
Anatomy, Comparative Anatomy, Physiology,
Chymistry, Botany, and Geology. The first exami-
nations are to take place in the year 1851.
Thus an effort is at length made to infuse into
our ancient seats of learning something of the
general knowledge that has grown in the world since
the days when they were founded ! For those who
desire to make it so, a Cambridge education may in
future be a positive reality, and shape itself to actual
necessities and wants. The future lawyer, statist,
physician, may here have received the bias that deter-
mined his career, and opened to him its distinctions.
Most of all, society will be the gainer. It will ob-
tain the securities of knowledge derived from sys-
tematic study, and the advantages of system applied to
the correction of knowledge. For it is impos-
sible to conceive that if the Laws of Eng-
land, the Lessons of History, the Principles
of Economy, had been the subject of sys-
tematic investigation for the last century at our
seats of education, we should not by this time have
felt the effects in almost every direction of our public
polity. This is what James's Chancellor pointed at
when he attributed it to deficient training that
English Princes should so often have found a solitude
in regard of the statesmanlike service of able men.
Let us quote again his pregnant sentences. "It is
ever a true rule in exercises, that they be framed as
near as may be to the life of practice; otherwise they
do pervert the motions and faculties of the mind, and
not prepare them. The truth whereof is not obscure,
when scholars come to the practice of professions, or
other actions of civil life; which when they set into,
this want is soon found by themselves, and sooner by
others."
It may be long before we have any of these results.
We are not disposed to exaggerate what was done at
the Senate-house on Tuesday. As far as the corn-
p_ulsory course is involved it is trifling enough.
There is nothing in it to alarm the University idlers,
hunters, rac
matter
and Newmarket men. It will be
no hard
and the r to cram a little history or botany,
But the examinationchange will break nobody's brains.
deep. The University is not to-day what it was last '
now,erhi!t it then was, to those who I
resorted to it for other attainmentslt than the mere dis-
cipline of life and manners,thi
the la
more than a huge theo-
logical seminary, where
meagre allowance
were admitted to participate in ay
experience had
of purely intellectual trainingsuch
thus ignored
could
ignored by
shown sufficient or safe for the eiaes
feel surprise that the world without,rBa;
en re-
the University, had long denied to University
wards for which they proved no Etness intyystia
occasion to allude to this not many months sinece
took
to remark that no improvement or reform would
really felt till the practical faculties of law and medicine
were more than merely tolerated ; till in fact they
were made of the same importance as theology, and
the more comprehensive philosophical faculty put
lII= a footing of equality with the other three.
This is what in effect is now begun. The door is
unlocked, and there is liberty of entrance for those
who may please to enter.
In the life of a reading man at Cambridge the boon
will be-at once felt gratefully. That is quite certain.
It will be no longer possible to describe the studies
of such men, or the leisure of studious men, as they
were described a year ago by Archdeacon are, when
be sought to account for the small affection borne by
the more thinking class of undergraduates to their
University, by showing how little their University
could do for them. "It has come to pass," said this
conscientious and impartial witness, " that almost the
only study
specially fostered by the University, and
rewarded by its honours, except the various branches
of mathematical sci -nee, is classsical philology, of a
somewhat meagre kind, hardy rising beyond gram-
matical criticism, and the minute details of archeology.
But if a certain class of studies is specially encou-
raged, those which are left without this encourage-
sire in a manner discouraged. The contrast of the
sunshine deepens the shade. When a race is
going on, they who do not join in it are mostly mere
bystanders, with no higher object than amusement.
At all events they cannot partake in the benefit of
being swayed and borne along by a common impulse ;
they lose the stimulus, so powerful with the young,