Of the value of the two branches of study as a mental training, we shall only say, that we fully agree in the common opinion upon the subject. We think that either of them, taught as they are to the better class of students at Cambridge, has a great tendency to give habits of accurate, patient, continuous thought, and to impress upon the mind the necessity of understanding the principles upon which rules are founded, as well as the empirical application of the rules themselves. Thus far we fully agree with the University conservatives. We differ from them in thinking that, for many reasons, a great proportion of people are quite incapable of studying classics or mathematics in such a manner as to derive from their studies any mental training at all. We further think that the advantages in point of mental training derived from the existing studies depend almost entirely upon the manner in which they are conducted; and that if other studies were pursued in the same manner, they would produce the same results. The question as to the comparative intrinsic value of different studies admits of little more than assertion and counterassertion. The other part of the problem seems to us to require more illustration and discussion than it has hitherto received. We will not undertake to say how many of the subjects which are at present comprised in the examinations for the natural and moral science triposes are fitted for the purposes of University education. We should feel very considerable doubt about some of them; but we are quite sure that others admit of study as close, as accurate, and as consecutive as either classics or mathematics, and that they would afford to some at least of the students a far more useful mental training. As at present constituted, the new triposes, as they are called, are a mere mockery. They are open to bachelors of arts only, and are therefore altogether excluded from the ordinary curriculum; and they are moreover entirely dependent on a single competitive examination, so absurdly constituted, that a student has to be examined in some five or six different subjects, any one of which would furnish him with ample work during the whole of his University course. Such an institution is of course ineffectual. Let us suppose that, by some such revival of the powers of the professors as we have indicated, it were made a reality. We are not prepared to say what professors would be included in the list; but it would certainly include theology, law, modern history, political economy, and some other subjects. For the sake of a single special illustration of our meaning, let us suppose a student to choose the professor of English law. What sort of education would he get? We will suppose the textbook adopted to be the common legal handbook-Stephen's Commentaries. The curriculum might perhaps be somewhat as follows: In the first year the professor would probably endeavour to give a general view of the subject. He would begin with some discussion of Blackstone's definition of law in general, and municipal law in particular. He would go on to personal rights, and particularly to proprietary rights. He would then explain what is meant by real, and what by personal property. Taking real property first, he would point out the distinction between corporeal and incorporeal hereditaments, and explain the fundamental maxim of English law, that all land is held of some superior lord. He would then shortly explain the general rules as to the quality of estates-freehold and copyhold, and as to their quantity-estates in fee-simple, fee-tail, for life, or for terms of years. He would say something of the difference between legal estates and trust estates, and something also of prescription and inheritance. He would then go on to personal property, and point out the different modes in which it is acquired as by invention, contract, bankruptcy, and the statutes of distribution. He would next explain the rights arising out of the private relations of master and servant, husband and wife, parent and child, and guardian and ward. Some of the principal points of the law of public rights, of wrongs and their remedies, and of crimes and their punishments, would complete the course. Much most accurate and definite knowledge on all these subjects might be imparted in the first year. Such of the students as fully understood what they then learnt might be taken over the same ground more minutely in their second, and more carefully still in their third year; and the others might, with great profit to themselves, be forced to attend the same lectures a second, and, if necessary, a third time. The function of the lecturers (if the number of students were such as to make them necessary) it is not easy to illustrate without going a good deal into detail. But suppose that the professor had lectured upon the subject of personal incapacity to commit crime, by reason of infancy, coverture, or insanity; and suppose he had referred, amongst other things, to the doctrine that insanity only entitles a man to acquittal when it incapacitates him from distinguishing right from wrong. The lecturer might put to his class various questions tending to test their grasp of the principle. He might ask them how, upon the principle in question, you can punish a man who does not, when sane, believe in the difference between right and wrong? How far an insane and violent impulse to commit a crime is a defence? What would be the effect of proving that the prisoner laboured under a delusion if the evidence stopped there? And he might set them as an exercise to read and report upon the cases of Lord Ferrers, of Onslow, of Sir A. Kinloch, and of M'Naghten. Three years' lectures upon such a plan as we have suggested would certainly not be a very desultory or superficial study; and we think that no one who has ever made the experiment, will doubt that such of the students as thoroughly understood even that small part of the learning of uses and trusts, or of contingent remainders, or of special pleading, which is contained in the Commentaries, would have gone through a pretty severe mental training. To write down with perfect accuracy the outline which Mr. Sergeant Stephen gives of the proceedings in bankruptcy, would require as clear a head and as strong a memory as the reproduction of almost any mathematical "bookwork;" whilst it would require not much less ingenuity and logic to solve some of the problems, of which the reports are full, than to trace a curve or calculate a chance. No doubt definitions are not used in law with the same precision as in mathematics; but we do not think that the meaning of words and the precise value of facts are ever scanned by any human being with such ingenuity and such sagacity as by a special pleader. As to the intrinsic value of law and mathematics, when acquired, opinions of course will differ: we cannot help thinking that something might be said on the legal side of the question, and that minds would occasionally be found which would take an interest in that study, and which no earthly power could induce to learn mathematics. One such course of lectures as we have recommended would, if united with a certain amount of classics or mathematics, be quite enough fully to occupy an undergraduate's career; and we think we have said enough to show that it might be made a study infinitely more severe, searching, and continuous, than any thing which the University now teaches. We can see no reason why a man should not pass three years most profitably in studying Stephen's Commentaries, J. Mill's or Ricardo's Political Economy, Butler's Analogy, or Carpenter's Physiology. It is, to our minds, utterly unintelligible why there should always be assumed to be an inexorable dilemma between teaching a person classics and mathematics thoroughly and teaching him every thing else superficially. That the existing system of the University of Cambridge is so contrived as to create such a difficulty we quite understand; but if a man lays out his day in such a manner, that if he does not employ all the morning in arranging his toilette, he has to fritter it away in gossip, we should feel more inclined to advise him to lay it out more wisely than to join with him in lamenting that the constitution of life is such that he must either be careful about trifles or careless about matters of importance. So far we have pretty freely criticised the principles and the practice of our* alma mater; but it must never be forgotten, that * We beg to be permitted the use of the personal pronoun in a personal sense: there is another and a far pleasanter side to the subject. That the education which the students give to themselves and to each other is far more important for good or for evil than any thing which they derive from lectures or examinations, is a fact universally recognised by those who have themselves experienced its character. A youth of nineteen, just emancipated from schoolrestraints, and master for the first time of his actions, must be very unimaginative and very passionless if the world does not wear a strange appearance in his eyes, if his curiosity is not awakened by numberless questions on all sorts of subjects, if, in the free collision with his equals and superiors, he does not find his previous prejudices, feelings, and estimate of himself, of others, and of all the relations of life, undergoing all sorts of changes, and assuming all kinds of new and strange forms. He must be very fortunate if, in the outburst of passion, he does not find his way into situations in which he will learn sterner lessons than any which the schools have to teach him. He must be very unobservant, if he does not find in the careers of his associates commentaries of the most curious kind on life in a great variety of shapes. Add to this, that if such a youth has talent enough to come within the range of the express instructions of the University, he is sure to read, or at any rate to skim, novels, poems, memoirs, histories, political pamphlets, the latest theology, the fashionable metaphysics, voyages and travels, reviews, newspapers, and sermons, with an omnivorous appetite which will hardly come to him again. All this may be very desultory, very disconnected, very unsatisfactory in a thousand ways; but it will nevertheless happen. Perhaps a not unwise criticism might say to such a person, in the words of one who is pretty sure to be one of his favourite poets, "Thy dream was good; If nature put not forth her power Who is there that would live an hour?" It is through this kind of fermentation, acting on many minds and assuming many forms, that the most important part of University education is performed. The difference between a man who has and one who has not enjoyed that advantage, lies much more in the influences under which he has passed through the stage which connects boyhood and manhood than in the possession or non-possession of particular accomplishments, accompaits double use is one of the great inconveniences of periodical literature. Some time since, the Times, in reviewing Mr. James Montgomery's poems, said, “We first met Mr. Montgomery in a Brixton omnibus." One is inclined to wonder that Mr. Montgomery and the other passengers escaped the fate of Semele. nied by the habits of mind which their acquisition in a particular manner engenders. What, then, is the duty of the University? It is, we think, rather that of an alma nutrix than of an alma mater. At best it can but assist nature. The most important part of the education which it professes to give is out of its reach, and is regulated by influences over which it has but an indirect control. We do not, however, agree with Mr. Carlyle's suggestion, that the best University would be an hotel, with a certain number of police regulations, a good library, and a competent quantity of stationery. There is, as we have been all taught by a familiar and venerable authority, a certain great capitalist who is always ready to relieve the labour-market by an unlimited demand for idle hands. The peculiar office of a University, in our opinion, is to supply to the students precisely that kind of employment which a profession supplies to grown-up men. The University course of study ought to be a permanent solid occupation, the diligent prosecution of which should be attended by the ordinary rewards, and its neglect by the ordinary penalties of diligence or negligence in a profession-that is to say, the obtaining or not obtaining of the rewards which the University has to give. The comparison may appear fanciful, but it may be carried further; for as a man is not to be envied who makes himself a slave to his profession, so the University, which has it in its power to regulate the conditions under which the profession of study shall be carried on, ought to make such arrangements as should suggest to the minds, or rather to the instincts, of the undergraduates the truth that their studies are to be followed with a certain liberality of spirit, and with a full acknowledgment of the value of many influences collateral to them. It is an unwise thing to condemn a high-spirited young man to pass the three freshest years of his life in a continual bondage to examinations, so that, as soon as one ordeal is passed, he is to begin to prepare himself for another. He ought to have much leisure. If he is industrious, he will have no sort of difficulty in occupying it; and being thrown on his own resources whilst it lasts, it will probably be the most useful part of his University course. If he is idle, no amount of college regulations will diminish his idleness; and, after all, the University must assume a certain amount of industry on the part of its pupils in all its arrangements. It is on this principle that we strongly agree with Mr. Blakesley in advocating the maintenance of the present long vacation as a most valuable part of the University year. We must remember, that the students are growing, are forming their plans and opinions of life, and that they must have frequent opportunities of doing so unfettered by University restrictions. They have arrived at an age at which the natural sanctions of A A |