The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-11-29 00:00:00

1.222'137

'T0ta1.....

48,470
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Out of nearly one million and a quarter of children receiv-
ing daily instruction, less than
,fitly thousand are supplied
with schools by the dissenters ! Not a twenty-fifth part of
the whole owes anything to them ! These are the stubborn
facts : let the dissenters say what they will.—Cambridge
Chronicle.

ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES
(From the John Bull.)

In Mr. Dickens's recent publication, American Notes for
General Circulation, we find the following passage, in which
the American University of Cambridge is very highly praised,
and, by inference and suggested contrast, our own universi-
ties proportionably condemned :
" There is no doubt that much of the intellectual refine-
ment and superiority of Boston is referable to the quiet
influence of the University of Cambridge, which is within
three or four miles of the city. The resident professors at
that university are gentlemen of learning and varied attain-
ments ; and are, without one exception that I can call to
mind, men who would shed a grace upon and do honour to
any society in the civilized world. Many of the resident
gentry in Boston and its neighbourhood, and I think I am
not mistaken in adding a large majority of those who are
attached to the liberal professions there, have been educated
at this same school. Whatever the defects of American
universities may be, they disseminate no prejudices, rear no
bigots, dig up the buried ashes of no old superstitions, never
interpose between the people and their improvement, exclude
no man because of his religious opinions; above all, in their
whole course of study and instruction, recognise a world,
and a broad one too, lying beyond the college walls."
We do not mean to quarrel with the commendations be-
stowed by Mr. Dickens on this American institution. It is
probably as good a school as the country is capable of main-
taining ; but as to its fame, it has not in any great force as
yet crossed the Atlantic (we only know one distinguished
person elnueeted with it, Judge Storey ;) nor does Mr.
Dickens think proper to give us any information with respect
to particulars or individuals which might serve to enlarge
our appreciation of the merits of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
For the rest, we do not think the very amusing author of
" Pickwick" is exactly the visitor one would select to report
upon the system of education at a university, or the learning
and attainments of its professors. We dare say Mr. Dickens
ascertained that these gentlemen were good Pickwickians,
but as for the learning and attainments, we apprehend ht
was obliged to take them upon trust.
At least it must be so, if we are correct in believing that
to judge of scholarly acquirements in literature and science
one would require to be himself imbued with some small
tincture of learning, which deep, and long, and regular study
alone can give, and which, it is evident, from all Mr.
Dickens's works, it was not his lot to acquire. But we pass
on to his very obvious and preposterously bitter attack upon
the universities of his own country. It is an extraordinary
thing that, notwithstanding the splendid array of men of
learning and genius the universities send forth every year, ti
fill the highest ranks in every profession or vocation, learned
and honourable, no "puny wbipster" who has contrived to
make a noise in the world—often great, in proportion to the
emptiness of the vessel from which it proceeds—can refrain
from assaulting those seats of learning, those benign mothers
of mightiest men. Year after year is the offence committed.
And these assailants, writing, as they do, in utter ignorance
of the universities and all belonging to them, are suffered to
swell the vulgar clamour which prevails amongst the un-
educated, without reply or reprobation. The fact is, the
children of the universities will not condescend to reply to
those attacks, at which every gentleman and scholar in the
community cries " Pshaw ! " Perhaps, too, it is better thus.
But there is something so racy in Mr. Dickens's flood ot
philosophic eloquence above cited, that we really must throw
away a word or two on it. In the first place, the utter mis-
conception of the nature and objects of a university, as we
English understand it, is abundantly ludicrous. Our uni-
versities do not profess to breed stockbrokers, or money-
jobbers, or the like "calculating cattle." There is no talk
of cents, no class for instruction in the mode of winning
them. Our boast is that our universities are not at all con-
nected with the " world worldly," or its sordid pursuits.
There it is, that after a man has passed through the pains of
childish years, and derived from his school-boy labours
enough to enable him to present himself as an intellectual
recipient of knowledge, he goes to prepare himself for the
struggles of the world as an aspirant should do for initiation
in the ancient mysteries. In the sacred seat of learning
there is presumed, so far as all sordid, common-place—
" common sense" if you will, and as snobs apply the phrase
—common-sense feeling is concerned, to be an utter ab-
straction from the world ; " no public and no private care "
is to weigh upon the student, who has only to educate his
mind by the discipline of the exact sciences, and to make
it " richly dight " with the memories of the sacred past.
He is not "in the race " for anything ; he is only training
to take a lead upon any course whereon an honourable am-
bition may in after days incite him to attend. And in the
beautiful lore then acquired he is providing for himself that
consolation in retreat from the turmoils of public life whereof
Cicero most grandly speaks, and which William Pitt and
Lord Wellesley found. Pitt—Wellesley ! There was some-
thing very beautiful in the recurrence of one whose name is
well known in the east, " from which," as Napoleon says,
" all great reputations come," as that of the mightiest bar-
baric conquerors, to his early studies, as the boy of Eton and
the youth of Oxford. Beautiful, too, to find him in his old
age coming forward to refute a slanderer (one Wraxhall) in
his ignorant assault upon the scholarship of William Pitt,
and showing that the favourite studies of the great statesman
and orator's decline were those which inspired his rise in life
—Demosthenes and the rest of the illustrious orators of
Greece.

With respect to the sounding charges made by Mr. Dickens
against our universities, of disseminating prejudices, rearing
bigots, and digging up old superstitions, and the like, we be-
lieve, in point of fact, that it amounts to this—religion is
made the basis of education in the English universities, and
radicalism is not admired ; the reverse being the case in the
American institution, whose praises Mr. Dickens so delights
to promulgate.

CASE OF CUTTING A FEMALE WITH A KNIFE.—A young
woman named Mary Fairweather was, yesterday, charged at
the police-court with having assaulted a Mrs. Edwards, and
wounded her severely in the head with a knife. The prisoner,
it appeared, called at the complainant's house on Saturday
night; a quarrel ensued, and the prisoner took up a knife
and inflicted a large wound on the head of the complainant,
just above the right temple. The prisoner stated that the
complainant bad first assaulted her and torn her dress. She
denied having used the knife at all. The prisoner was re-
quired to pay a fine of £5, or be imprisoned for two months;
also to find bail to keep the peace.
CHURCH ARRANGEMENTS.—On Sunday last being the
first Sunday in the Ecclesistical year, the Rev. J. H. Staf-
ford, minister of St. Paul's Church, in this town, according
to previous announcement, made several alterations in the
mode of conducting public worship in that church. No
psalm was sung, as has heretofore been the case, before the
commencement of the service, but an anthem was sung after
the third collect. A " Sanctus" was sung whilst the minister
passed from the reading desk to the communion table •, and
there was no psalm or hymn between the Nicene Creed and
the sermon, hut the clergyman proceeded at once from the
communion table to the pulpit. After the sermon in the
morning, the minister returned to the Lord's table, and,
after repeating one or two sentences of the offertory, said the
prayer for the church militant, and concluded with one of
the appointed collects, and the usual blessing On Sundays,
when the holy communion is administered, alnis will be col-
lected from the whole congregation. We believe the same
order was observed in St. Stephen's Church.

THE ANTI-CORN LAW LEAGIIE,—This august body con-
tinues its weekly meetings, and, judging from the lengthy
reports in some of the London papers, the general reader
would be led to believe that its importance was daily in-
creasing. Such, however, is not the case : the meetings are
not characterized by any new feature ; the same gentlemen
who have all along kept up the agitation are the only speakers
on these occasions ; no means are left untried to give them
an importance that neither does nor never did belong to
them. The elaborate reports which appear in the London
papers are regularly paid for from the funds V the asso-
ciation ; and every now and then a new bait is held out in
orderf to collect numerous companies, including a number of
emales who belong to a certain class which excludes them
fromo any pretensions to the definition given of the " guid"
housewives of Scotland, who are " woo'd an' married an'
addressed 13y
~
Friend Bright" announced, as an inducement to attend
the meeting
for his non-attendance. on Thursday night, that the company would be
aolloselyte from the conservative body of Man-
chester; but thefo occasion referred to this newly-acquired
disciple was not nor was any explanation given
announcement.
So much for the veracity of " Friend
bad beard of the stacteenent.
Bright's"
Manchester Chronicle.—ElNe
statement which is in italics before. We
journals
ernlat the league subscribes largely
believe the fact toi
to anti-corn law both in London and in the
country, but more especially Manchester ; in some
cases taking and distributing hundred copies daily
and weekly. Thus not onlvmgosotes the " talk" of anti-
ious anti-Figrfno.law declamations
cboordniloa leaguers,meetin bportotcleleedfoarl
everywhere from the same
the league.—
of most journals are stimulated and
etren6t meeting
ED. Morning Herald.]—[The same tactics, bye
are credibly
informed, were practised with respect to ti., wr
at the amphitheatre in this town, a member of
the platform having, during the delivery of one of the ZIY upon
requested, from a gentleman connected with a radical journal,
who was seated at the reporters' table, that a fullorbwernopuo7(i
should be furnished,-and intimated that, if required, it
be paid for.—En. LS.]

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