The Sun.
London, England, 1848-11-04 00:00:00

THE WRIT OF ERROR.

The following communication has reached us from a
most E ccura e source :—" The counsel and agent of Mr.
Smith O'Brien have got Mr. Napier's opinion on the
writ of error from Clonmel. The learned gentleman,

who is a high authority on Crown law, has no doubt that
the writ of error is g,,od.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
TIM ES.—The change in the curriculum of Cambridge
education has taken everybody by surprise. We knew
the event must come, but we did not look to its at-
tainment without a long and arduous struggle. The
Comte de Neuilly did not make a speedier exit
from the little postern of the Tuileries than a whole
host of prejudice from this ancient seat of learning.
Many thousands of men scattered throughout the
country and the colonies will read the announce-
ment with a sigh, and regret that it was so long
deferred. They will see opportunities given to others
that were denied to them. The curse which had been
fulminated at Cambridge against all branches of human
knowledge save one has at length been raised. The
boacls of the University have been compelled to admit I
air and sunshine into the regions over which they preside.
The report of the Syndicate is an. acknowledgment of the I
individuality of intellectual capacity; it admits the
principle, and endeavours to give the admission a
practical effect. Many hundreds of young men, taken
from the highest families in the three kingdoms, will
every year have cause to bless the change which opens a I
career to their praiseworthy desire for immediate dis- '
tinction, and fits them for a more important
sphere of action in after life. Whatever may
be the profession or calling they may choose for
the future—and at two or three and twenty years of
age most young men have made up their minds on
the subject—Cambridge now affords them a fitting nur-
ture. Opportunities of distinction are offered them now
which will hereafter stand them in good stead. Will it be
believed in after ages that, in the middle of the nineteenth
century one of the two seats of education for the middle
and upper classes of England practically debarred its
pupils from access to all knowledge but that of abstract
science in its most arid and distgustful form? If, upon trial,
the young men gave evidence of incapacity or distaste
for the one pursuit, no more was said, the college tutors
abandoned them to their fate—that is, to apathy or idle-
ness, to indolence or despair. Will it be believed that
classical learning, the only other branch of knowledge
recognised at Cambridge, was denied as a test of merit
to all but these who had previously submAted to a ma-
thematical ordeal o' a nature so stringent, that to pass
through it unscathed argued a singular aptitude if the
suSjsets were really comprehended, or a marvellous me-
mory if they were simply retained. Such, however, has
been the case at Cimlaritige. The best years of youth and
deesning manhood might have been devoted to a diligent
stu Iv of those exquisite monuments of ancient literature
which quicken the feelings, interest the iinagination,chas-
ten the toes and develop the various faculties of the mind;
but, however great the diligence, mgr considerable the
attainments of the student in these pursuits, he has
hitherto been denied at Cambridge thegratificatien of an
hen, urabl,s distinction, and that at a period of life when
distinctions are metre valued than when experience
of the world has done its work and erased the
gilding from the gift. The answer given to
such an accusation a 3 this is usually delivered in
a very few words by a successful representative of
the system, who in his youthful days swallowed
pr blems an.l theorems (long since quite, quite for-
gotten) as a jack-pudding might strings of sausages at a
country fair. " Aye, sir, but we are a mathematical
University t" This is simply to meet the accusers half-
way, and to plead guilty to the charge. But for one for-
t unate event the ceuntr • might have waited long enough
for the
change which has opened so many sealed books to
the curiosity
andindustry of the youth of England. The
nation owes a debt
of
gratitude te the Prince Consort,
the Chancellor of the
University, for having been the
first to suggest, and se
alteration in the Camber most
determine to cary out, the
system. We can conceive the
surprise of an intelligent fie
r rer at being initiated in the
mysteries cf these academical
arcane.
breczna. Ile would not at
so
ex,uctrawbo,uld. quietly reflect
wi h himself, if a sy
first reject it as entirely bad,
reasonably might
i ex-
pect to find Newtons end Laptsc„s
Jetcyi as mush-
roomsar good fruit in practice. Ile
in a country wSere every eff.,rtP
theory could
mind
is
directed to evolve the peculiar faculty of the
is necessary fir the pursuits in which these great which
men
won their reputation. Now, is this so? With theeee- I
eeption of Airey, and perhaps one or two others, has
Cambridge produced of late years a single man whose
name is illustrious in science beyond the limit of the first
milestone on the Trurnpington- road? It it be contended
—and we believe the argument to be perfectly just—
that the abs-nee or presence of these exceptional cases
proves nothing; that Newton would have been Newton,
and Herschel Herschel, in a Moravian village, at Paris,
or in Sweden ; does the system work well for
the meliocrities ? What kind of nurture does
the University offer to those who arc to take care of
our souls, bodies, and properties, as l)ivinos, Physi-
ciena, and Lawyers in after years? What kind of
training does it give for the House of Commons or
for the diplomatic mission ? Let it be remembered that
we are talking of the final education of young men, not
Of the first awakening of the nascent intelligence of the
child. There is no question of big A and little C ; of
deciding whether it be more advisable to show the people
in the lecture-room the picture of a cow and require
them to name the animal, or first to name the animal
and then require them to draw the cow. We are speak-
inn- of young men who in two or three years, or perhaps
'n a few months, must be thrown out into the world to
make the hest fight of it they can; and, unless they be
endowed with extraordinary energy, to follow the bias
received during their university career. The Prince
Consort might well be astonished tam find the Professor-
ships of Modern Tlistery end Political Eeene my but a
name. He might ,0,..-;r:der when he :a:formed
that the study of the Civil Law, and the examinations
for degrees in this faculty, n ere as great a laughing-
stock at Cambridge as the sassing of the line on •
board ship ; and. that anything like a study of Eng-
lish lew—evcn so much as the perusal of Blackstone s
Commentaries—was a thing unknown in the University.
The Prince, it is not improbable, would next rna.ko in-