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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 Ex Lihris 
 
 SIR MICHAEL SADLER 
 
 ACQUIRED 1948 
 
 WITH THE HELP OF ALUMNI OF THE 
 
 SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
 
 7'
 
 THE NEW UNIVERSITY 
 FOR LONDON 
 
 A GUIDE TO ITS HISTORY 
 
 AND 
 
 A CRITICISM OF ITS DEFECTS 
 
 BY 
 
 KARL PEARSON, M.A. 
 
 Formerhj Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, Profesmr of Applied 
 
 Mathematics, University College, London, and Gresham Lecturer in 
 
 Geometr;/ 
 
 LONDON 
 
 T. FISHER UN WIN 
 Paternoster Square 
 
 1892
 
 Through the suspension of the University, and the usurpation 
 of its functions and privileges by the Collegial bodies, there has 
 arisen two systems diametrically opposed to each other. The 
 one, in which the University was paramount, is ancient ; . • . 
 the other, in which the Colleges have the ascendant, is recent. 
 ... In the former, all was subservient to public utility and 
 the interests of Science ; in the latter, all is sacrificed to 
 private monopoly, and to the convenience of the teacher. The 
 former amplified the means of education in accommodation to 
 the mighty end which a University proposes ; the latter limits 
 the end which the University attempts to the capacity of the 
 petty instnnnents which the intrusive system employs. 
 
 Sir William Hamilton.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. The Proposed University for London. — Sir George 
 
 Young's " Association " 7 
 
 II. The Omnium Gatherum. — Lord Justice Fry's 
 
 Scheme and Sir George Young's First Scheme.. 14 
 
 III. The Ideal University for London 23 
 
 IV. Three New Schemes 3G 
 
 V. The Eoy.\l Commission 47 
 
 VI. The Second Scheme of the London University 
 
 Senate 58 
 
 VII. The Albert Charter. — Sir George Young's Second 
 
 Scheme 67 
 
 VIII. Arguments used in Favour of the Test and the 
 
 Admission of University Extension 73 
 
 IX. Arguments against the Test and the Admission 
 
 OF University Extension 82 
 
 X. Sir George Young's Defence of the Test and 
 
 THE Albert Charter 92 
 
 XI. Is a New University Keally Wanted in London ? 106 
 
 XII. What is to be Done Now? 113 
 
 XIII. Gresham College. — Past and Futm'e 122 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 A. Extracts from theKing's College London Act, 1882 129 
 
 B. Extracts from the Albert Charter 130 
 
 C. The Albert Charter and a Professorial University 130 
 
 D. Opinions of some University CoUege Professors 
 
 against the Albert Charter 136 
 
 G29382
 
 To those of my colleagues who have formed a higher ideal 
 for university life in London than is represented by the " Albert 
 Charter " I dedicate these pages. 
 
 K. P.
 
 P K E F A C E . 
 
 THE haste with which these essays have been put 
 together, is only justified by the importance of 
 their reaching those interested in the problem of a 
 University for London, before its solution is permanently 
 settled by the action of Parliament with regard to the 
 draft-charter which will be laid on the table of the House 
 of Commons on its reassembling. No delay was possible 
 which would have allowed of these essays being recast 
 and welded into a more homogeneous whole. The first 
 six essays bear upon the history of the project for a 
 Teaching University for London, and detail the various 
 schemes which have been put forward in succession by 
 Sir George Young, the Convocation and the Senate of the 
 University of London since 1884. The criticism to which 
 these schemes are subjected is not solely negative, it 
 brings out not merely the defects of the successive 
 proposals, but it further suffices to show what the author 
 olds to be the true lines of academic reorganisation in 
 London. At the same time his object in the case of each 
 scheme has been of the nature of a compromise ; it has 
 not been to insist on the ideally best, but to suggest 
 feasible modifications which would render current pro- 
 posals less antagonistic to the ultimate development of a 
 great professorial university in London. 
 
 Much has happened since the earlier chapters 
 were written. In particular, Sir George Young's per- 
 sistency and energy, which has ever adapted itself to the 
 feasible, has led him to forget his original omnmm gatherum, 
 and in the Albert Charter to work for a much more
 
 6 PREFACE. 
 
 valuable project. This project, however, is still very 
 distant from the ideal ; it cannot even be looked upon as 
 educationally efficient. But some important modifications 
 suggested in the twelfth essay would go a long way to make 
 the project acceptable /or the time being. These modifi- 
 cations may be summed up in the phrases (i.) abolition 
 of the religious test for all appointments in the Faculties 
 of Arts, Science, and Medicine, (ii.) ultimate control of 
 the University over appointments in the Faculties of Arts 
 and Science, and (iii.) wider powers of extra-collegiate 
 lecturing. The republication of these essays has for its 
 end the insistence on these points as the minimum of 
 modification which can render the proposed Charter 
 efficient. It is earnestly to be hoped that Parliament will 
 not accept the Charter without some such modifications 
 being made. 
 
 The announcement as to the incorporation of Gresham 
 College with the proposed University, may be very fruitful 
 of consequences, but that incorporation does not in the 
 least turn a defective Charter into an unexceptional one. 
 It does, however, mean that the Charter must be with- 
 drawn for amendment, and the withdrawal will give an 
 opportunity for more fundamental modifications still. 
 This little book is sent out, therefore, not as the best or 
 most suitable for its purpose, but as all the author could 
 compile in the short interval at his disposal. He ventures 
 to think that the reader, with some patience, may obtain 
 from it a fairly clear idea of the history of the present 
 Charter, and an acquaintance with the much that is to 
 be said against, and the little that has been said for, the 
 reintroduction of tests into the constitution of a modern 
 university. KAEL PEAESON. 
 
 University College, London. 
 February 3, 1892.
 
 1.— THE PROPOSED UNIVERSITY FOR 
 
 LONDON AND SIR GEORGE YOUNG'S 
 
 ASSOCIATION.* 
 
 The very favourable reception which the movement for 
 the fomi elation of a " teaching " university in Loudon has 
 met with warrants the behef that it is destined to supply 
 a real need, and at the same time calls upon all those 
 who have a genuine interest in the project to discuss and 
 criticise it from every side. The comments of the daily 
 press have been friendly, but not peculiarly suggestive. 
 The general public, less inclined of late years to look 
 with complete suspicion on every educational enterprise, 
 has been fairly sympathetic, but somewhat puzzled. The 
 idea of a second university in London has appeared to it 
 somewhat superfluous ; and, although several German 
 principalities provide two universities for a population 
 less than that of the metropolis, it is not an idea likely to 
 find favour with the economic Briton. We cannot help 
 feeling that the promotors of the scheme would have 
 done well first to have brought strongly home to the 
 public the fact that London does not possess any uni- 
 versity at all. The nearest approaches to such an insti- 
 tution are University and King's Colleges, together with 
 the medical schools. To term the body which examines 
 at Burlington House a university is a perversion of 
 language, to which no charter or Act of Parliament can 
 * The Academy, December 27, 1884.
 
 8 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 give a real sanction. The promoters of the new scheme 
 have by their adoption of the word "teaching" given 
 additional currency to the fallacy that a university can 
 be anything else than a teaching body. A university is 
 essentially a teaching and a learning body, and its 
 function of examining is purely secondary — a practically 
 convenient, but by no means necessary method of gradu- 
 ating its members. As a process which has its historical 
 origin in the transference of a member from the learning 
 to the teaching sections, examination only marks, or 
 ought to mark, the passage from receptivity to self- 
 production, from apprenticeship and journeymanship to 
 mastership and the full freedom of the guild. 
 
 Every true university essentially represents a guild of 
 learning. It has not only to educate its junior members 
 but to progress itself. The advancement of learning and 
 original research are characteristic parts of university 
 life. There must be an unbroken chain from the 
 recognised scientist and scholar to the veriest apprentice 
 or yearling. There must be that esi^rit de covins, and at 
 the same time that freshness which can only arise from 
 a diversity of minds united for a common end. The 
 establishment of such guilds of learning is all the more 
 necessary in our nineteenth century, in that men's minds 
 are gradually recognising that truth is only to be obtained 
 by long generations of study. The age of the prophet, 
 who thought inspiration a reality capable of replacing 
 knowledge, has long since fled. The age of the dialec- 
 tician, of him who believes that physiological and 
 psychological mysteries can be solved by argumentative 
 subtleties, is disappearing with the disciples of Hegel. 
 The present age is one wherein men have begun to 
 realise that their knowledge of truth can only be extended 
 by patient investigation of humanity and its physical
 
 FIRST PROPOSALS. 9 
 
 surroiinclings, by science and scientific history. Know- 
 ledge rarely, if ever, advances by leaps. It is the slow 
 progress of many minds investigating through long years. 
 It is the result of a continuity of study, and not the 
 output of individual genius. The so-called genius has 
 too often something of the prophetic or the dialectic in 
 his constitution, and thus obscures rather than adds to 
 our knowledge of truth. 
 
 The continuity of study, the union of diverse minds 
 for the common advancement and spread of learning is 
 especially the function of a modern university. That 
 function might very well be termed the religion, the 
 higher service of many of our modern scholars and 
 scientists. If such be the aim of a university, the 
 present institution — the examining body of Burlington 
 House — cannot by any elasticity of language be con- 
 sidered to fulfil it. We say this in no spirit of opposition 
 to the so-called London University. It has done 
 excellent work, and will do. It is simply not a university. 
 With as much reason the examinations of the Science 
 and Art Department, or the Cambridge Locals might be 
 termed a university. Examinations may be excellent, 
 may even fulfil all that could be expected from them ; 
 but it is the teachers, not the examinations ; the scholars, 
 not the degrees, which constitute a university. 
 
 If it be granted that London possesses no true univer- 
 sity, it has still the elements out of which one may be 
 called into being. It has not only many unsurpassed 
 teachers, but all the attractions of libraries and learned 
 societies, which would draw first-class men to the 
 capitaJ. It has the wealth and the material, and, let us 
 hope, it will soon have the necessary enthusiasm. When 
 one thinks of the enormous power brought to a focus in 
 the University of Berlin. — with its Kanke, Gneist, Du
 
 10 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 Bois-Eeymond, Kirchhoff, Watfcenbach, Mommseu, 
 Curtius, Miillenhoff, Helmholtz, Zupitza, Oldenberg, 
 Weierstrass, Kiepert, and a dozen or two more European 
 names — one is inclined to be impatient with Londoners 
 that they have slumbered so long. Owing to the present 
 educational chaos the enei'gies of our best men may be 
 frittered away. The first pure geometrician in England 
 may be driven to a technical college, or a leading 
 physicist rival Egyptian Hall conjurors in giving Christ- 
 mas entertainments for children. The slightest investi- 
 gation of educational institutions in London shows not 
 only the materials, but, as well, the absolute need for a 
 real university. 
 
 When we turn from this want to the scheme proposed 
 by the sub-committee of the " Association for Promoting 
 a Teaching University for London," we must, while 
 agreeing with its general spirit, confess that it seems 
 based upon a mistaken principle. To begin by endeavour- 
 ing to mould the new university to fit a variety of hetero- 
 geneous existing educational bodies is like an attempt to 
 make a table with a superfluous number of legs of 
 different sizes. The table is extremely unlikely to stand 
 firmly. The units are too incongruous ; and several that 
 have been mentioned have no proper relation whatever 
 to real university work. If the proposed university 
 is to be representative of higher culture and scientific 
 investigation, it must not at its very foundation hamper 
 itself with various sectarian theological colleges, with 
 artisan and technical colleges, or with the London 
 schools. Such institutions may be excellent in their 
 way, but they are not component parts of such a 
 university as we have endeavoured to define. To include 
 their students would be to lower fatally the standard of 
 education in the new foundation. Still more objection-
 
 FIRST PROPOSALS. 11 
 
 able seems the scheme for placing upon the council 
 representatives of the Incorporated Law Society, the 
 Institute of Civil Engineers, the authorities of the British 
 Museum and of the Eoyal Academy. All these bodies 
 are doing their own extremely important work ; but it is 
 something quite different from university work. Useful 
 members of any of these institutions might be made 
 graduates of the new university, or placed upon the 
 council, but only for individual qualifications, and not in 
 their corporate capacity. It would seem as if the sub- 
 committee had really gone out of its way to propitiate 
 the powers that be, if not to create future difficulties, by 
 suggesting that even the Corporation and companies of 
 the City of London should in the case of contribution to 
 the endowment have a voice on the council. "What do 
 these bodies know of the aims of university education ? 
 
 Finally, we may notice the singularly indefinite 
 character of the relations which it is suggested should 
 be established between the proposed university and 
 Burlington House. If the new university is to be of 
 real value, it must, like Oxford and Cambridge, govern 
 itself. It cannot in any way be subject to the senate of 
 the existing institution. It must either obtain the com- 
 plete freedom of Oxford and Cambridge, or else it will fall 
 into the fatal error of supposing an examining rather than 
 a teaching staff constitutes the backbone of true university 
 existence. The science and arts examinations of the so- 
 called London University are a check rather than an 
 incentive to genuine teaching. They enter into no 
 one subject with sufficient width to make it worth the 
 student's while to become a specialist, and they are no 
 criterion whatever that the graduate has attained that 
 mental training which can only arise from thorough 
 and exhaustive study of some one, however small, field
 
 12 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 of knowledge. These examinations may, perhaps, be a 
 useful directive to the work of small local colleges, but 
 they act as a distinct check on original teaching in the 
 greater London colleges. The best teacher for the 
 London University examinations will inevitably be a 
 crammer. This must always be the result of a system 
 which subjects the teacher to a foreign examining board. 
 He must surrender his individuality to the demands of a 
 rigid system, whose character is fixed, not by a peculiar 
 school of teachers, but by the fiat of an irresponsible 
 body of educational laymen. 
 
 For these reasons we think it would have been better 
 had all consideration of relation to Burlington House 
 been omitted from the report, and had no attempt been 
 made to weld heterogeneous elements into the homo- 
 geneity which ought to be a characteristic of the pro- 
 posed university. Let us first have before us the whole 
 plan for a great teaching university with its professors, 
 assistant professors, and lecturers. It will then be time 
 enough to determine how far existing institutions can be 
 adapted to the scheme, or how far it may be necessary 
 to modify the scheme to suit what teaching bodies exist 
 of university standing. The faculty of medicine ought 
 to find its material ready at hand in the hospital schools, 
 and it would seem a rational proposal to entrust to repre- 
 sentatives of those schools the discussion of the organi- 
 sation of their own faculty. The construction of a faculty 
 of arts and science would meet with greater difficulties ; 
 but these difficulties might be overcome were our two 
 representatives of university teaching — University and 
 King's Colleges — prepared to suffer consolidation. It 
 would be unnecessary, if not unprofitable, to interfere 
 with existing interests ; but it surely might be feasible in 
 time to economise in the teaching staffs, and so enable
 
 FIRST PROPOSALS. 13 
 
 London not only to obtain, but even to retain the best 
 teachers. Endowment might also assist in the same 
 direction, as well as in widening the range of teaching. 
 If the proposed university is to succeed, its professorships 
 must be the best prizes in the teaching profession, and 
 its teaching must be maintained at a high standard. 
 This would be impossible in the proposed scheme of 
 innumerable associated institutions, but might be feasible 
 were the two chief colleges prepared to submit them- 
 selves to a broad scheme of reorganisation on the basis 
 of a united teaching university. Such a union would be 
 strong enough to carry with it public opinion. It would 
 represent a body of scholars to whom it would be hard 
 to refuse what is granted to Aberdeen. It would have a 
 right to ask for that assistance from the public which 
 would enable it to command the first teachers and a fair 
 share of the better class of students. From the associa- 
 tion of such teachers and students would spring 
 inevitably a tradition, and thence that continuity of 
 study, that union of diverse minds for the common 
 advancement and spread of learning, which we have 
 defined as the peculiar features of a true university.
 
 II.— THE OMNIUM GATHEEUM. 
 
 LOED JUSTICE FEY'S SCHEME AND SIE GEOEGE 
 YOUNG'S FIEST SCHEME.* 
 
 The public has now before it the two schemes prepared 
 respectively by the Committee of Convocation and the 
 Committee of the Association for Promoting a Teaching 
 University for London. These two schemes are practi- 
 cally identical. " Subject to the reservation for further 
 consideration of some matters of detail," the Association 
 Committee "is of opinion that the proposals contained 
 in the report of the Committee of Convocation should 
 receive the support of the Association." In other words, 
 we have now before us the liighest ideal it has been 
 possible for the leaders of this movement to form of the 
 function of a local university in London. The London 
 public does not occupy itself very much with educational 
 matters ; but we trust that on this occasion at least it 
 will study the proposed scheme, viewing it in relation both 
 to university life elsewhere, especially in other European 
 capitals, and to the possibilities which exist here. Such 
 study, we feel convinced, can but lead to one conclusion 
 — a determination that London shall have a university, 
 but a determination tliat the present scheme must be 
 rejected entirely. Let us have no teaching university 
 for ten years, for twenty years, but let us not hamper 
 the future with such an institution as this. To call this 
 omnmin gatherum of everything, from a night school to 
 the British Museum, a "Teaching University" is merely 
 * The Acudemij, Septembers, 1885.
 
 THE OMNIUM GATHERUM. 15 
 
 to caricature the aims, the means, and the strength of 
 university Hfe. If this be all that is possible, then let 
 London starve intellectually rather than accept such 
 stones as these in the place of bread. 
 
 We can imagine only one scheme which could equal 
 this in its incongruity, and that would raise the laughter 
 of all Europe. Suppose a French reformer were to step 
 forward as conjuror : " Here, gentlemen, are some dozen 
 very useful institutions ; for example, the Ecole Normale, 
 the Ecole des Mines, the Ecole des Fonts et Chaussees, 
 the Ecole Polytechnique, the Ecole d' Application du 
 Genie, &c. I have also taken sorce half-dozen Commis- 
 sions pour I'examen des candidats in different subjects, a 
 bit of the Institut, and another of the Bibliotheque 
 Nationale, besides a few other odds and ends. You see 
 I just pass over them this report, drawn up by twelve 
 of their most distinguished members, and eh presto ! you 
 have a harmonious whole — the new University of Paris ! 
 If I have left out anything of importance, you will find 
 no difficulty in sticking it in anywhere hereafter." 
 
 A similar attempt at sleight of hand seems to us to have 
 been made by the x\ssociation Committee ; but we fail to 
 see why they should not have been still more catholic in 
 their selection of bricks for this new temple of intellect. 
 Why should the Academy of Music and the Pharma- 
 ceutical Society, why should the Eoyal Naval College, 
 why should the National School of Cookery, be left out 
 in the cold ? Are there not also Queen's College and 
 Bedford College, whose students hsten to the same or 
 like teachers as those of University College ? Surely 
 they have as great a claim to be of " university rank " as 
 the various Nonconformist colleges, or shall we say the 
 Birkbeck Institute ? 
 
 But let us examine a little more in earnest the pro-
 
 16 THE NEW VNIVERSITY. 
 
 posed scheme ; and, in order to do so, let us endeavour 
 to arrive at some idea of what the functions of a local 
 teaching university should be. It is, perhaps, easier to 
 begin the definition of a university from the negative 
 side ; and we believe most of our readers will agree with 
 us in holding that a university is neither a school nor a 
 complex of schools for providing men with practical 
 training or with professional knowledge. These are 
 essentially the missions of technical schools and pro- 
 fessional corporations. Here it is that the Association 
 scheme goes most hopelessly astray. The institutions 
 which are to be brought into connection with the pro- 
 posed university are, in several cases, technical colleges 
 and professional examining bodies which have no relation 
 whatever to university life. Let us consider some ex- 
 a,mple&. The Council of Legal Education can hardly be 
 considered even local. It is the general examining body 
 for the grade of barrister in this country, and, as such, is 
 recognised by the State. It is localised in London 
 because London is the capital, and this localisation will 
 grow more anomalous as the resident bar in the leading pro- 
 vincial towns becomes more numerous. It cannot eaiter 
 into closer relations with a local London university than 
 with any other university in the country. All it can do 
 is to demand a certain intellectual, apart from- profes- 
 sional, training from those who wish to be called to 
 the bar, and to recognise certain examinations as a suf- 
 ficient test. But in this matter it certainly will give no 
 preference to London over Oxford or Cambridge. That 
 the Inns of Court pay for certain professors who teach 
 law in London arises rather from a past fear of parlia- 
 mentary inquiry into their expenditure than from a desire 
 to found a local legal school. These professors also, in 
 so far as thei lectures are attended, prepare for a pro-
 
 THE OMXIUM GATHERUM. 17 
 
 t'essional examination, and do not give the intellectual 
 training which we must demand even from the faculty of 
 law in a university. Much the same remarks apply to 
 the Incorporated Law Society and the Eoyal Colleges of 
 Physicians and Surgeons. These bodies are national and 
 professional ; they cannot enter into closer relations with 
 cue university than with any other. When we turn to 
 the technical colleges, we find the committee have adopted 
 the same narrow view of university purpose. We want 
 technical colleges in England — all we can get — if we 
 can only drive young people into them ; but to teach 
 brewing, carriage-making, and carpentry, is not the 
 function of a university. To drag these colleges into 
 the scheme is like an attempt to affiliate the Carlsruhe 
 Polytechnicum with the Hochschule in Heidelberg — both 
 serve equally important but quite distinct purposes. 
 Similar reasoning applies to the school founded by the 
 State at South Kensington, with a definite, undoubtedly 
 useful, but non-academic aim. As to " colleges which 
 are intended to aid the evening studies of persons en- 
 gaged in business," their inclusion in the scheme would 
 be laughable, were it not seriously meant. Perhaps 
 under this heading we may also include mechanics' 
 institutes, and the Sunday lectures at working men's 
 clubs ; for a scheme sufficiently broad to contain the 
 London University Extension, the British Museum, the 
 Inns of Court, and other centres of lucidity must cer- 
 tainly find room for these ! A university exists in order 
 to advance the mental life of the country by giving 
 intellectual training to its younger, and by exciting to and 
 assisting original work among its older members. If it 
 give only professional training to any of its students, it 
 so far fails in its purpose. It prepares the mind to receive 
 such training ; it does not give it. If the training given
 
 18 THE NEW UNIVEESITY. 
 
 by any faculty has taught the student a definite method 
 of earning his living, and not how to use his intellect, 
 that faculty is most certainly not accomplishing what 
 we understand by university work. We are aware that 
 these remarks may, in a certain sense, be applied to the 
 medical faculty, which is now recognised as an essential 
 part of every university. But, apart from the purely 
 theoretical side of medical studies, we believe every 
 medical teacher would agree with us in emphasising the 
 importance of a previous general scientific training. 
 The increasing importance of the Cambridge Medical 
 School may, to a great extent, be attributed to the fact 
 that the majority of its members have first graduated in 
 either arts or science, while those acquainted with the 
 London hospitals could doubtless give evidence of the 
 superiority of those students who have previously 
 received an academic training. 
 
 "We think, then, that the first vital defect of the pro- 
 posed scheme arises from this misconception of the object 
 of a university. The aim of such a body is to develop 
 the intellectual life, to increase, in the broadest sense, 
 the theoretical and scientific knowledge of its students 
 and members. To place a local university in special 
 relation to State and national institutions on the one 
 hand, and on the other to incorporate in it schools 
 giving professional or technical education, is to show a 
 lamentable ignorance, not only of the nature of existing 
 universities, but of the academic ideal in itself. Cum- 
 brous faculties formed from every sort and grade of 
 teacher, composed of men not daily working side by side 
 to a common end, will hardly elect boards of studies 
 capable of producing anything but compromises. If it 
 becomes a question whether a certain branch of learning 
 shall be a necessary subject of examination, what hope
 
 THE OMNIUM GATHERUM. 19 
 
 is there of a decision when it is judged, not from its 
 intellectual value, but for its professional or technical 
 profit ? Is it not clear that the technical schools, whose 
 business is 7iot to prepare students for graduation, will 
 either be diverted from the purpose for which the nation 
 with some sacrifice is founding them or else that the 
 academic teaching in London will fall even below the 
 level of the present university examinations ? This will 
 be founding a " teaching university " indeed, wherein it 
 will not be the recognised teachers who examine their 
 own students, but examinations twisted so as somehow 
 to suit a dozen absolutely divergent bodies which will 
 drag these teachers after them. We cannot conceive 
 what the great London colleges have to gain from such 
 proposals. 
 
 More fatal still to the success of the scheme, if possible, 
 is the patchwork by which this new university is to be 
 tacked on to the old. The old university is essentially 
 a State and non-local examining body ; the majority of 
 its students are drawn from the various " county 
 colleges," both in this country and the colonies. These 
 colleges are at present something less than universities, 
 and more than schools. They do very much the same 
 work as the higher classes in a first-rate German gymna- 
 sium. To these colleges the present London university 
 must adapt its examinations, and it would be highly 
 unjust to them if it were to change its standard. Yet 
 this is precisely what the teachers of London demand. 
 They want something quite different from the standard 
 which rules at Burlington House. They want to regu- 
 late the examination of their own students, and so 
 endeavour to preserve some originality, some freedom in 
 the lecture-room. This can never happen unless teachers 
 are brought personally in contact, and have at least an
 
 20 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 equally high standard. How can this possibly be under 
 the new scheme ? Is it to commit a great injustice to 
 the affiliated colleges, or are the London teachers to 
 submit to the old yoke under a new name ? Under the 
 third paragraph, " Constituent Colleges," we read — 
 "The constituent colleges to consist of the following 
 bodies in or near London" ; under the fourth paragraph: 
 — " Each faculty shall consist of the representatives of the 
 constituent colleges " ; and, finally, under the seventh — 
 "Candidates to be admitted to matriculation and all 
 degrees other than degrees in the medical faculty without 
 regard to the place of education." The first sentence 
 we have cited, taken in conjunction with the second, 
 makes the faculties and boards of study local, but the 
 last throws open the examinations, presided over by a 
 local teaching body, to the whole world. Is this, we 
 ask in astonishment, the spirit we imagined connoted 
 in the adjective teaching attached to the name of the 
 new university ? Is it fair to the affiliated colleges of 
 the present university that the London teachers should 
 direct examinations wherein their own students are to 
 compete with this enormous advantage against those of 
 the county colleges ? We think every reader must agree 
 with us in holding this utterly contrary to the ideas 
 implied in a teaching university. But there may be an 
 escape from this dilemma. We have looked carefully 
 through the report of the Committee of Convocation, 
 and we find no reference whatever to the appoiniment of 
 examiners. So far as we can discover, the boards of 
 study will not have the right to suggest, still less to 
 elect examiners. In fact, their power in the matter of 
 examinations at all, as well as that of the faculties, 
 seems merely consultative. What, then, if the examiners 
 remain completely independent of the teachers, and are
 
 THE OlCsIUM GATHERUir. 21 
 
 instructed to bear in mind the past standard of the 
 present university and the interests of the " county 
 colleges " ! That would be a solution of the difficulty 
 indeed ! but one hardly likely to meet with the approval 
 of the London teachers. How far the present scheme 
 may in general be said to have that approval, it would be 
 perhaps difficult to determine. In the conferences held by 
 the sub-committee with various groups of teachers, it is 
 certain that divergent views were often expressed ; but 
 we have reason to believe that no votes were ever taken. 
 The scheme as it stands, then, represents rather the 
 opinion of the sub-committee than that of the Associa- 
 tion at large definitely expressed. 
 
 Probably the warmest advocates of the present scheme 
 would admit the necessity of its being thoroughly 
 criticised ; and if we have not hesitated to draw atten- 
 tion to what seem to us fatal errors, it arises from our 
 desire that, if we are to have a London university at all, 
 it may be something of which Londoners may not 
 be ashamed. Whatever happens, let us not block the 
 way with another imwieldy institution, which can never 
 be that which it lays claim to be — a genuine university. 
 The past has hampered us with one such, let us save the 
 future a second. 
 
 That criticism is far easier than creation is trite enough 
 and true enough, and our readers may natm-ally ask 
 what better suggestions we ourselves have to make. To 
 enter into them on the present occasion at any length is 
 impossible, but we hope to do so later elsewhere. Suffice 
 it to say here that we hold the only possibiUty, at present, 
 for the creation of a genuine teaching university consists in 
 the foundation of a " local side "to the present university. 
 Such side to be quite independent of the examinations 
 and regulations of the present university, which will con-
 
 22 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 tinue to exercise the functions it has always possessed. 
 The official heads of the present university may be those 
 of the new side ; but, so far as teaching and examining 
 are concerned, these must be in the hands neither of the 
 old Senate nor of Convocation, but of bodies chosen 
 by the teachers of the new "local side." For 
 the formation of this new "local side" we see 
 no bodies in London beyond the medical schools 
 and University and King's Colleges, which offer 
 really academic elements. These could provide a 
 medical faculty unrivalled in the country, and the 
 beginnings of by no means despicable arts and science 
 faculties. With such beginnings these faculties might 
 appeal to the public purse, and draw to themselves and 
 to the London University those teachers who, far more 
 suited to academic functions, are at present endeavour- 
 ing to draw normal schools and technical colleges out of 
 their natural course into that university sphere to which 
 they do not properly belong. We stand behind none in 
 our desire for a genuine university to stir up the intel- 
 lectual life of our great city, and to fill its teachers and 
 researchers with a much-needed esprit de corps, but we 
 do protest against its place being usurped by a second 
 corporation which in no way tallies with the true ideal 
 of an academic body.* 
 
 [*Both these schemes were eventually rejected, but many of the 
 objectionable features of the "Association" scheme still form 
 essential features of the Albert Charter.]
 
 III.— THE IDEAL UNIVERSITY FOR 
 LONDON.* 
 
 The action of Convocation in rejecting the scheme put 
 forward by Lord Justice Fry's committee may be 
 regarded from two quite distinct standpoints. On the 
 one hand, Convocation may be looked upon as a body of 
 gentlemen knowing nothing about academic matters or 
 the wants of London teachers, and, therefore, naturally 
 inclined to crush any scheme of university reform as 
 liable to limit their own prerogatives. Or, on the othe.x 
 hand, we may regard Convocation as having quite 
 suflQcient knowledge of academic matters to come to the 
 conclusion that the scheme before it was not calculated 
 to further the establishment of a real teaching university 
 for London. t Which of these alternatives we are to 
 accept depends on the line which may be adopted by 
 Convocation on December 8. We can hardly think it 
 will treat seriously the vague and extraordinary scheme 
 propounded by Mr. Magnus t ; but if Convocation quietly 
 shelves the whole matter, we shall be compelled to regard it 
 as an obstacle in the way of educational progress, and shall 
 trust to reform taking place over its head. Such a view of 
 Convocation at the present moment would, perhaps, be pre- 
 mature, and, we hope, unjust. Many of its members have 
 been students of the London colleges or medical schools, 
 and have the welfare of those bodies as much at heart as 
 
 * The Academy, November 28, 1885. 
 
 [t Convocation has ultimately demonstrated itself an obstacle 
 to academic progress of any kind.] 
 [J Now Sir Philip Magnus.
 
 24 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 that of the existing university. It is thus not unlikely 
 that they should know something of the pressing needs 
 of higher education in London. We prefer then at 
 present to adopt the second alternative, and trust that 
 Convocation will not reject every scheme of reform, but 
 has only rejected the present on account of its unsatis- 
 factory character. There can be little doubt that the 
 whole movement has been too hurried. Before clear 
 conceptions had been formed of metropolitan needs and 
 possibilities, a scheme was brought before Convocation 
 which was neither calculated to win the confidence of 
 teachers, nor to excite the enthusiasm of the public — 
 both necessary factors for a reform of so great im- 
 portance. We cannot help thinking, although it 
 may be venturesome to suggest it, that Convoca- 
 tion would best assist the cause of university 
 teaching in London at this juncture by a simple 
 resolution to the effect that, while recognising the para- 
 mount importance of creating a teaching element in the 
 university, it regards no scheme as sufficiently ripe to 
 warrant immediate action. Such a motion would allow 
 that time for suggestion, criticism, and discussion which 
 is really necessary, if there is to be any unanimity 
 among the workers in this cause — if there is to be any 
 chance of a well-thought-out, effective scheme being 
 ultimately carried. There must be time also for the 
 creation of a public opinion on this matter. It is very 
 significant of its present practical non-existence that 
 hardly a single London newspaper has thought it worth 
 while to devote an article either to the Association 
 scheme or to that of Lord Justice Fry's committee. Pre- 
 mising, then, that there is not much likelihood of imme- 
 diate practical action, we shall devote the remainder 
 of this article to the questions : — (1) What theoretically
 
 THE IDEAL. '25 
 
 should a teaching university in London be ? (2) How far 
 is such a teaching university possible having regard to 
 existing institutions ; how far can it be harmonised with 
 them ? If the remarks that we may make succeed in 
 drawing forth expressions of opinion from some of the 
 many who must be competent to judge in academic 
 matters, this article will have more than fulfilled its 
 object. In endeavouring to throw some light upon the 
 answers which must be given to the questions we have 
 proposed, we shall abide by the following principles, upon 
 which we have insisted jn earlier articles : — 
 
 (1) No professional corporation, no technical college, 
 no purely theological seminary, no night-school need 
 be considered in the theory or the possibility of a teach- 
 ing university in London. These bodies may fulfil in- 
 valuable functions, but they are not academic. 
 
 (2) The only existing bodies which need be considered 
 are the present university, University College, King's 
 College, and the leading medical schools. 
 
 For the purposes of the present article we shall place 
 entirely on one side the medical faculty of the proposed 
 university, because it is a subject on which we are not 
 competent to enter. We may note, however, that the 
 organisation of the 'medical faculty as suggested by Sir 
 George Yo-ung's Association was essentially good, in 
 that (a) it recognised that the medical students of the 
 proposed university must have studied in its colleges or 
 schools ; (b) it limited those schools to certain institutions of 
 known reputation ; whereas, in the other faculties, no 
 such limitation was really enforced. 
 
 Without indulging in historic niceties, it is not un- 
 profitable to remind our readers that the term " univer- 
 sity " did not arise from the idea of a school in which cell 
 things were taught, nor did it arise from the idea of a
 
 26. THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 body which embraced all the teachers of a given district. 
 The universitas was essentially a corporation — it was the 
 universitas magistronmi et scholarmm — a recognised body 
 of teachers and students to whom the Pope or a prince 
 had given special privileges and a legal status. The 
 union of teachers and students working to a common 
 end, which is essentially involved in the mediaeval 
 2tniversitas, is the best possible ideal which can be 
 formed even in the present day of a true university. The 
 common end is intellectual development. This in- 
 tellectual development involves not only the influence of 
 teachers upon students, but of students upon teachers — 
 namely, the mental growth which takes place even in 
 the most developed mind as it assists the growth of others. 
 This end of a real university, therefore, demands as its 
 functions : (1) the spread of old, and the discovery of 
 new knowledge — teaching and research ; (2) the closest 
 possible contact between teacher and taught. The 
 collegiate system of our old universities was essen- 
 tially calculated to provide the second function : 
 owing to various causes, which are matter for history, 
 the first had fallen somewhat into decay. The new 
 statutes, while undoubtedly resuscitating the first, have 
 done much to injure the second by striking a blow at 
 the common collegiate life of teachers and taught. 
 
 The practical ends of life require in some cases an 
 outward and visible symbol of a man's intellectual power. 
 This symbol is given in a rough and ready way by the 
 process of graduation. Graduating humanity, calilbrat- 
 ing its intellectual power is not the end of a university ; 
 but for the sake of practical life teaching bodies have 
 undertaken this rough process of calibration, and in 
 doing so have employed the old method by which a 
 scholar was raised from the ranks of the taught to those
 
 THE IDEAL. 27 
 
 of the teachers. This process has in England been 
 generally an examination in old knoNvledge, in Germany 
 an exhibition of the students' power to gain new ; 
 both methods have their value, and need not for 
 our present purposes be compared. But if this gradua- 
 tion is to be of any worth, it must be entrusted to the 
 teaching body. If we were choosing a mathematical 
 master, and had nothing but graduation to go upon, why 
 should we naturally give the preference to a Cambridge 
 over a London man ? For the very obvious reason that 
 we may suppose in the one case that the man has come 
 under the influence of a school of teachers, who, what- 
 ever their faults, have contributed largely to make 
 English mathematics what they are ; while in the second 
 case we only know that the graduate has written 
 satisfactory answers on one or two occasions to a series 
 of questions at Burlington House. It is the character 
 of the teachers, not of the examination, which 
 renders the graduation of value. We do not hesitate to 
 trust the Cambridge or Oxford teachers with this 
 really secondary power of graduation. If a teach- 
 ing university is to be created in London, such 
 power must be given without question to its 
 teachers. Those teachers, if only care be taken to 
 appoint strong men, are unlikely to lower their own 
 body in the eyes of the outer world by giving their 
 degrees too cheaply ; their own reputation depends upon 
 it. When they need help, they will summon it from 
 outside, as the custom at Oxford and Cambridge has 
 been of late years. To assert that it is objectionable 
 that teachers and examiners should be taken from the 
 same body is, first, to give examination an absurdly 
 prominent position, and, secondly, to insult your teachers. 
 If you have not confidence in them, turn them out ; or if
 
 28 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 that be not possible, choose better men on the next 
 occasion. Public opinion can very easily be brought to 
 bear when once a public institution like the proposed 
 teaching university is started. If our theoretical view of 
 what a university should be have any solidbasis, we are led 
 to the two following conclusions : (1) The students must 
 be brought into intimate relation with the teachers ; (2) 
 the teachers must have the power of graduation. It is 
 idle to oppose these conclusions with some such vague 
 phrase as Lehrfreiheit und Lernfreiheit ! because free- 
 dom in the latter case may mean the licence not to learn, 
 but to " cram." It neglects above all the important 
 factor in intellectual development which arises from 
 bringing teacher and scholar together. If a university 
 is to fulfil its aim — to do yeoman service in the cause of 
 knowledge — it must bring a body of men of all ages 
 together, keep them together, and create an esprit de 
 corps, which historically has always been a condition 
 necessary to any group of men who are working to a 
 great common end. 
 
 There arises, however, a point which seems to have 
 been somewhat neglected in the discussions which have 
 taken place over the proposed university. If it is to take 
 its stand beside the other great universities of the country, 
 it must be able to command the best men ; and this it 
 can only do, if it has the power of the purse. This power 
 of the purse is not only required for the mere object of 
 paying its men, but for giving them the means of fulfilling 
 their mission. The ideal university in London must 
 have laboratories, libraries, and possibly a press which 
 shall be the equals of those attached to any university in 
 the world. It may not be necessary or practical to 
 attempt the creation of all this in the next ten or even 
 twenty years, but it must be kept in mind. Above all, it
 
 THt; IDEAL. 29 
 
 is idle to shirk the fact that the proposed university will 
 have to make a demand on the beneficence of private 
 individuals, or on the public purse. At the same time it 
 is consoling to reflect that if public-spirited individuals 
 are not often found in the nineteenth century and in our 
 metropolis, yet that there exist considerable semi-public 
 funds which might reasonably be called upon to contri- 
 bute towards this wholly public good. 
 
 As for the method on which the proposed university 
 shall govern itself, that is a very minor matter indeed. 
 Once insm-e that you have got first-class teachers, and 
 such only, then they will easily adapt themselves to any 
 organisation, or adapt any organisation to themselves. 
 Faculties, appointing boards of study, and members of a 
 governing council or senate, such as are suggested in the 
 scheme of Sir George Young's Association, are good or 
 bad, will work or not work, just in accordance with the 
 class of men you get upon your faculties. If your 
 faculty is an omnium cjatherum, then it will not work ; if 
 it is composed of the recognised academic teachers of 
 our ideal university, then it will work, even excellently. 
 It is the men, not the forms, which are important in this 
 matter, at all events at the present stage of its develop- 
 ment. We must insure that the university of the first 
 city of the world shall be able to procure and to retain 
 first-class men. 
 
 Here for the present we must leave our first question 
 as to the theoretical nature of the proposed university. 
 We may smn up our results in the following four powers 
 which we believe to be essential : — 
 
 (1) Power of teaching and of learning. 
 
 (2) Power of graduation. 
 
 (3) Power to obtain and to retain first-class men. 
 
 (4) Power to assist scientific and scholarly research.
 
 bO THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 By the " power of teaching and of learning " we under- 
 stand the i30wer to regulate that union of teachers and 
 students which we believe to be necessary for the develop- 
 ment of both ; the pursuit of the same studies by old 
 and young together for a certain number of years (the 
 "academic period") is the essential universitas magis- 
 trorum et scholarium. 
 
 "We will now make some suggestions towards answer- 
 ing the second, the practical question : How is it possible 
 to approach this theoretical university having regard to 
 the existing institutions? For this purpose we shall 
 use the term " existing college " to include University 
 and King's Colleges, and possibly the medical schools, 
 but to exclude all other existing bodies. " Existing 
 university " and " proposed university " carry their own 
 meanings. The two great points to be borne in mind 
 are the work which the existing university and the 
 existing colleges have done in the past. However far 
 the existing university is from the ideal universitas 
 magistrorum et scJiolarium, it has done work which can- 
 not be ignored ; and the idea of establishing a second 
 university in London, if not impossible, ought, at 
 present at least, to be avoided. On the other hand, it 
 must be remembered that University College was 
 established on the basis of a London university ; 
 and that, notwithstanding the essentially unfavourable 
 circumstances under which it has had to labour, it has 
 always endeavoured to work from the university rather 
 than from the collegiate standpoint. Tliose who know 
 how its best teachers have almost invariably been carried 
 off by richer institutions understand what it has had 
 to struggle with. What need to point to such striking 
 examples as those of Sylvester and Henrici, Burdon 
 Sanderson and Michael Foster, Seeley and Masson?
 
 THE IDEAL. 31 
 
 Obviously the power of retaining first-class men, in this 
 case the power of the purse, has not been with University 
 College. Yet, while the services of this college for 
 university education have been great, far beyond that of 
 any other body in London, it would be idle to base the 
 scheme of the proposed university on this college alone. 
 Throw in King's College, which the course of history has 
 evolved, and still, if London were properly aroused to 
 the importance of university education those two 
 colleges would not suffice for its needs. Last session, 
 in all the faculties, there were 1,250 students at Uni- 
 versity College. In a city of four millions at least 8,000 
 or 10,000 students might be looked for. We might 
 reasonably hope that the two existing colleges would be 
 supplemented by at least two others to the south-west 
 and north-east of the metropolis. Out of the chaos of 
 institutions at South Kensington it might, in course of 
 time, be possible to evolve a great college with university 
 aspirations. The north-east of London will probably 
 have to wait long before its needs in this direction are 
 supplied ; but, with the growth of the popular desire for 
 education, it is hard to say that the need will never be 
 supplied. With three or four such colleges as these, 
 each in itself a miniature university, we have the elements 
 out of which our proposed university may be constructed. 
 Till other colleges, however, are called into being, we 
 must content ourselves with those which exist. How 
 can they be combined with the existing university so 
 as, in some degree, to fulfil our ideal ? It is evident that, 
 if it be needful to bring teacher and student together 
 for an "academic period" — that if graduation be a 
 symbol of the student having received a "university 
 education " — it is quite impossible to associate the 
 London teachers in the examining work of the existing
 
 32 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 university. That is the point v^^hich the Association 
 scheme and the scheme of Lord Justice Fry's committee 
 hopelessly failed to grasp. The London teachers have 
 no special business with examining all the world ; nor 
 would it, as we have before said, be fair to the county 
 colleges. The existing university will, and must, con- 
 tinue to examine in its present fashion ; but there is 
 absolutely no reason why it should not graft upon its 
 present functions that of a local teaching side. Here 
 it seems to us that the conflict of interests between 
 the existing university and the existing colleges may be 
 assuaged. The existing university would retain its posi- 
 tion and even increase its importance ; but, in addition 
 to being a national examining body, it would become a 
 genuine local university. The teaching side of the London 
 University would be composed of the staff of the various 
 component colleges ; and there is no reason why the 
 scheme of faculties and boards of study, as suggested by 
 Sir George Young, should not form the basis of its 
 organisation. The council or executive body of the 
 teaching side would then be composed partially of repre- 
 sentatives of the existing university, partially of repre- 
 sentatives of the governing and professorial bodies of the 
 colleges. The existing university would grant degrees 
 to the students of the colleges on the results of examina- 
 tions of their own students, organised by the faculties, 
 with what assistance from outside might seem to them 
 necessary. In such a scheme as this, the first two 
 powers we have enumerated above as essentials of a 
 real university would be assured for the proposed teach- 
 ing side of the existing university. 
 
 It cannot be expected, however, that the existing 
 university would grant its degrees to the students of 
 the teaching side, unless it had some voice in the choice
 
 THE IDEAL. 83 
 
 of the college teachers. It would be necessary that the 
 governing foody of the existing university should have an 
 authoritative voice in the election of the professors in the 
 constituent colleges. We cannot understand how there 
 could be any real opposition to granting the existing 
 university this authority, for its only object would be to 
 insure the election of the best possible man. It could 
 not be in any way opposed to the real interests of the 
 colleges. 
 
 We now reach the two further powers which are especially 
 necessary for our proposed university — the power of 
 obtaining and retaining first-class men, and the power to 
 assist scholarly and scientific research. How is our 
 proposed teaching side to be provided with these powers ? 
 Both, of course, mean an appeal, in some form or 
 another, to the public purse. But for what purpose is 
 the public purse to be requisitioned ? After some 
 thought we believe that the foundation of a certain 
 number of well-paid " regius professorships" would, to 
 a great extent, fulfil the first object of obtaining and 
 retaining first-class men. There has been a considerable 
 outcry on the part of the colleges against any such 
 suggestion ; but we think that, with certain modifications, 
 the scheme is essentially a good one, and one at which 
 the colleges need feel no alarm. The outcry and the 
 alarm have arisen from the belief that the "regius 
 professors " would draw away students from the ordinary 
 professors, and so affect incomes which depend entirely 
 on students' fees. There need be no fear of this, if the 
 duty of the "regius professors" were teaching of the 
 more advanced kind; but, be this as it might, our co)i- 
 ception is that the "regius professorships" should be 
 looked upon as the bighest offices and prizes on the 
 teaching side. If, on a vacancy occurring, there were a 
 
 c
 
 34 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 really able man in any one of the colleges, he would be 
 elected to the vacant regms professorship. Only in the 
 absence of such a man would it be necessary and 
 advisable to strengthen the teaching side of the mnversity 
 from outside. Thus the existence of the professorships 
 would bo the very means by which the colleges would 
 retain the services of first-class men. They would be 
 prizes worth waiting for. To bind the elements of the 
 proposed teaching side more closely together, an arrange- 
 ment similar to that introduced at Cambridge by the new 
 statutes might well be adopted — namely, to the governing 
 body of each college a certain number of the regius pro- 
 fessors should be attached, so that they might be 
 brought into close union with the teaching staff of that 
 college. Our readers will clearly understand that no 
 college would be considered as having a right to so 
 many, or even any regius professorships ; only the 
 occupants of such chairs would bring their influence to 
 bear in college politics. 
 
 As to the final power with which we would endow our 
 proposed teaching side — the power to assist scholarly 
 and scientific research — we believe that when once such 
 an organisation as we have sketched was called into 
 being, it would be possible for the teaching side to 
 appeal to the public for the funds inevitably necessary for 
 laboratories, libraries, and a press. At first such funds 
 might well be used to increase existing facilities; but later, 
 with the ever-widening work of the new teaching side, fresh 
 accommodation would be wanted, and fresh possibilities 
 appear. Once settle upon an organisation with which 
 the existing university and the existing colleges are 
 satisfied, and, we believe, their united influence well- 
 directed could extract nearly anything from the public 
 and the State. If these bodies will onlv u)nte for
 
 THE IDEAL. 35 
 
 common action and for a common scheme, all is possible 
 for them ; and we feel sure that the general public would 
 not show the present indifference to any well-considered 
 proposals which those united bodies might put forth. 
 Such a scheme as we have endeavoured to suggest in 
 very broad outline does not, we think, bear the stamp 
 of the impossible ideal about it. We might have drawn 
 an interesting picture of a universitas magistrorum et 
 scholarium, with its lectures and its laboratories, its 
 libraries, its syndicates, and its press, all in full swing ; 
 such a picture would, however, be of little use at the 
 present time, when the all-important point is really to 
 investigate how the apparently conflicting interests 
 of the existing university and the existing col- 
 leges may be to some extent reconciled, so that 
 these bodies may work together towards supplying what 
 all recognise as a distinct want in London — namely, 
 university education as well as national examination. 
 We believe that the solution of the problem lies in the 
 foundation of a teaching side to the existing university, 
 which shall, in fact, absorb the colleges, and open up foi- 
 them, as well as for the university, a fresh life — not re- 
 modelling its old functions, but endowing it with a new 
 function. The possibility of carrying out such a scheme, 
 or any other, depends entirely on the extent to which 
 indiA^duals are ready to sacrifice their own love of power 
 and their conception, albeit often one-sided, of their own 
 interests.
 
 IV. -THREE NEW SCHEMES.* 
 
 Since our last article on this subject (November 28, 1885) 
 the movement, or rather movements, for the establish- 
 ment of a real university in London have certainly gained 
 in consistency and definiteness of pm'pose. It is even 
 beginning to dawn upon the public mind that it is a 
 matter of vital interest to London itself. An evening 
 journal, whose steady political hysteria is accompanied 
 by an intermittent academical fever, has had the honour 
 of grasping before its contemporaries that the educa- 
 tion of the less wealthy majority in London may 
 be of as much interest to its readers as the study 
 of English literature by the more well-to-do minority 
 at Oxford. To render higher education in London 
 accessible to that majority, to keep such education 
 in a state of the highest possible efficiency, and, if 
 practicable, fulfil Prof. Huxley's dream of a continuous 
 and fairly easy set of stepping-stones from Board School 
 to University, must be aims in which the greater London 
 public has a very real interest. The incubus under 
 which academical education in the metropolis suffers, 
 whether in the colleges, the medical schools, or at Bur- 
 lington House, has been invariably of the same kind — 
 the interference of laymen, of educational dilettanti, in 
 purely academic matters. Various well-meaning gentle- 
 men have felt it their function to devote what time they 
 could spare from legal or journalistic occupations, from the 
 consulting-room or the governmeait office, to mismanaging 
 the higher education of London. The statement may 
 *Thc Acadcmj, April IG, 18 7.
 
 THREE NEW SCHEIIES. 37 
 
 sound sweeping, but it is none the less true. Imagine a 
 committee of academical teachers sent down after lecture 
 hours to draw up a code of procedure for the Courts of 
 Justice, or to dictate the line of action to be followed by 
 a newspaper editor, and we have a source of confusion 
 more obvious but not more hopelessly real. The 
 management of academical interests by laymen 
 is a thing unheard of in the country where higher 
 education is most efficient. It has been reduced to a 
 shadow at Oxford and Cambridge, where it is nov,' 
 almost solely manifested in the return to Parhament of 
 members who, whatever else they may be, are not the 
 educational authorities of the House. It has arisen and 
 remained in London only, owing to the peculiar circum- 
 stances of the case, as an incuhiis on all academic pro- 
 gress. The effect of Bm'hngton House on the medical 
 teachers of London is evidenced by the recent action of 
 the Eoyal Colleges of Surgeons and Physicians. The 
 effect of the same institution on the science and arts 
 teachers is shown in the movement of University and 
 King's Colleges to obtain a common charter as a teach- 
 ing university. How hopelessly even those concerned 
 with primary education may mistake the wants and 
 determination of academic teachers is characteristically 
 exhibited by the writer of an article on the London Uni- 
 versity in a recent number of The Quarterly Revieiv. He 
 apparently believes that the scheme of reforms proposed by 
 a Committee of the Senate (appointed April 14, 18S6) would 
 fully meet the exigencies of the case, and place the higher 
 education of London on its true basis. 
 
 Let us examine a little more closely the three schemes 
 at present under discussion, upon which the London public 
 will in due time have to express its definite opinion. 
 
 The first scheme, to which we can only briefly refer,
 
 38 THE NEW rXIVERSITY. 
 
 is that of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons and Physicians. 
 By this scheme a charter would be granted to the Col- 
 leges, empowering them to confer medical degrees. They 
 Avould, in fact, be constituted a medical university — let 
 us call it, as some one has suggested, the University of 
 Westminster. It is obvious that a great number of 
 apparently cogent objections might be raised against 
 this proposed University of Westminster. A uni- 
 versity in itself denotes a great deal more than a purely 
 medical education. The value of a university degree to 
 a medical man has, to a very considerable extent, de- 
 pended on the fact that it connoted a certain academic 
 culture, something more than a definite period of clinical 
 instruction. At first sight there appears no provision for 
 this general academic education in the proposed West- 
 minster University. The next point to be raised is 
 whether the colleges intend to grant degrees to all 
 comers, like Burlington House, or only to those students 
 who have passed through regular courses in the London 
 schools ? The strength of the movement depends 
 entirely on the objection of the London medical teachers 
 to their present subjection to Burlington House. It is 
 essentially an attempt to emancipate those teachers from 
 the control of the London University. If the medical 
 schools of London really believe that the emancipation 
 will be best obtained by putting the examinations in the 
 hands of the Eoyal Colleges, where the schools exercise 
 indirectly, if not directly, a great influence, then it does 
 not seem the function of the non-medical teachers to 
 criticise the scheme. Theoretically more perfect arrange- 
 ments can easily be imagined ; practically the Royal 
 Colleges represent a weight of opinion and influence 
 which is invaluable to the movement, and is comparable 
 with that of Burlington House itself. Provided the pro-
 
 THREE NEW SCHEMES. 39 
 
 posed University of Westminster be acknowledged by 
 its promoters as nothing more than a single faculty — 
 the medical one — of a wider academic scheme for 
 London, there seems absolutely no reason why the 
 Eoyal Colleges, and other teaching bodies in London 
 should not loyally co-operate and unite their ener- 
 gies to obtain a common university charter. If, on 
 the other hand, the scheme of the Eoyal Colleges 
 involve the conferring of degrees on all comers by 
 examination only, if it does not insist on local 
 courses of study, and also on some general academic 
 education, whether scientific or literary, then it will 
 undoubtedly and properly collapse before the opposition 
 it is sure to meet with. 
 
 The second scheme at present under discussion is that 
 proposed by the committee under " Minute 113" of the 
 Senate of the existing University. Both the committee 
 and its proposals are extremely characteristic of Biuiing- 
 ton House. To fully grasp the meaning of the scheme, 
 we must remind our readers that University College vvas 
 originally founded as the " University of London," and 
 that only on the establishment of King's College did it 
 receive its present name. The function of examining 
 for degrees was then invested in the body now known as 
 the " University of London." The friends of both col- 
 leges apparently welcomed, at that time, the shortsighted 
 pohcy which placed the degree-granting power in a body 
 having no real connection with the teaching institu- 
 tions. The sole object of the new examining body 
 could only be to prove itself a success by the number of 
 candidates for its degrees. It paid no attention to the 
 special wants of London, or to those of any local teach- 
 ing centre ; but, by endeavouring to embrace a wide 
 range of students, produced a code of examination
 
 40 THE KEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 which crushed all individuality in teaching, and neg- 
 lected all special local wants. That such a code was 
 of assistance to private students and small colleges as a 
 directive to study may pass without need of proof. At the 
 same time the excellence of the examinations must 
 always be measured by the average students' text-books 
 Any attempt to vary the subjects, or to include newly 
 worked fields in the topics for examination, not un- 
 naturally raised a protest from those students whose 
 opportunities of enjoying the higher class of teaching 
 were limited. Of course, throughout the examinations 
 there has been no attempt to meet the wants of London 
 students. The authorities of the University never came 
 into contact with the students, nor knew in the least 
 what professions or employments they intended to 
 pursue, and so never adapted the degree-examinations to 
 the special educational needs of the metropolis. There 
 would have been nothing absolutely irrational in this 
 had not the so-called University practically claimed, 
 owing to a misnomer, the monopoly of degree-granting 
 in London. The effect of this monopoly on the higher 
 education of London has been very disastrous. Most of 
 its teachers are to a great extent dependent on the fees of 
 students ; and the general public, as well as the dis- 
 pensers of all kinds of offices, have what is too often an 
 absurd prejudice in favour of a degree. The livelihood 
 of the teacher has thus depended to a great extent on 
 his lecturing down to the London examinations, and 
 anything beyond that could hardly find an audience. It 
 is perfectly true that certain departments of study which 
 paid little attention to the University examinations, such 
 as general medical education, the preparatory scientific 
 training of engineers, and fine art teaching, have been 
 successful ; but this has been to a great extent due to
 
 THREE NEW SCHEMES. 41 
 
 the fact that they suppHed definite local wants — local 
 wants which the cosmopolitan examining body was 
 unable to meet. The incuhus of Burlington House 
 having at last produced a movement for a teaching 
 university, it might have been hoped that the Senate 
 would see the impossibility of forcing one and the same 
 set of examinations upon all teachers and upon all classes 
 of students, whether they had received academic training 
 or had not. Had the existing University attempted to meet 
 the local needs of London by forming out of the London 
 colleges and medical schools a local teaching side, with 
 practically independent examinations, there would have 
 been no need for the present agitation. Listead of any 
 scheme of this kind the committee of the Senate pro- 
 pose to add to the existing University four faculties drawn 
 from the teachers of so-called associated colleges. These 
 associated colleges are to be selected from colleges and 
 teaching institutions si7?^aiecZ in amj i^art of tJte United 
 Kingdom. Beyond the fact that each faculty will elect 
 two members to the Senate, the power of the faculty is 
 pm'ely consultative, whether directly in the expression 
 of its own opinion, or indirectly in the election of a con- 
 sultative boards of study. Any scheme more hopelessly 
 incapable of furthering the ends of academic teaching in 
 London can hardly be conceived. It is perfectly obvious 
 that the local wants of London cannot be efficiently 
 supplied by drawing teachers from Birmingham, Notting- 
 ham, or even Manchester, to consult upon them. The 
 essence of a real university is a local body of men in almost 
 daily contact, and able to meet frequently in consultation 
 on committee and board. Try and picture what the efficiency 
 of Oxford and Cambridge would be were their separate 
 colleges scattered up and down the country ! Yet this is 
 actually the scheme with which the lay rulers of the
 
 42 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 so-called University propose in order to satisfy the educa- 
 tional needs of London. It shows only too clearly how 
 hopelessly the committee is out of touch with the London 
 teachers, and how strangely crude are its notions of 
 academic efficiency ! But there is after all a slight 
 consciousness that such a scheme will not fulfil the just 
 demands of London for university education ; the com- 
 mittee recommend that power be procured for the Univer- 
 sity to accept grants and bequests for the establishment of 
 professorships and lectureships, and the furtherance of 
 regular and liberal education and of original reasearch. In 
 other words, the committee practically confesses that a 
 university ought to teach, and in so far acknowledges the 
 justice of the movement for a teaching university in 
 London ; but, instead of endeavouring to organise the 
 existing teaching bodies into a local university, it pro- 
 poses to start an independent teaching institution of 
 its own. Considering that the "furtherance of regular 
 and liberal education and of original research " has been 
 the aim of the London teaching bodies for years past, 
 and that they have been absolutely cramped in this 
 endeavour by the so-called University, there is some- 
 thing nigh humorous in this acknowledgment of the 
 committee that the University has hitherto done nothing 
 for regtdar education or original research, and now 
 proposes to take that work in hand. It is true that 
 the clause is modified by the provision that no pro- 
 fessorship or lectureship is to be established which is 
 likely to interfere with any teaching given in 
 University College, or to injure the " reasonable pro- 
 spects of that college." "We hardly know why University 
 College is singled out for this honour, which at best 
 sounds like a suggestion that Burlington House is con- 
 tent that the work for its elementary examinations shall
 
 THREE NEW SCHEMES. 43 
 
 still be conducted by the local colleges ; but that it will 
 itself undertake the higher forms of teaching and the 
 pleasing occupation of " original research." As for the 
 " reasonable prospects " of any London college, they have 
 been pre-tty much what the Burlington House system has 
 made them, and would scarcely admit of the same interpre- 
 tation by the Colleges and the University. We have said 
 enough, however, about this scheme of the " Committee 
 on Minute 113 " to show that it cannot possibly satisfy 
 the legitimate demands of Lo.ndon, its teaching colleges 
 or its medical schools. 
 
 We now reach the third and last practical scheme 
 which is under discussion — namely, the joint application 
 of University and King's Colleges for a charter on the 
 basis of a teaching university. Let us endeavour to 
 consider the arguments for and against such a pro- 
 posal. In the first place, there cannot be a doubt that 
 the freedom from Burlington House control would at 
 once give an impulse to the intellectual life of the 
 Colleges. The teaching would rise to a higher standard, 
 and develop in new directions. As it was expressed in 
 a document recently issued by some members of the 
 staff of University College, such a teaching university, 
 based on the existing Colleges, "would be able — as a 
 body of active teachers engaged in common work and in 
 full acquaintance Avith the needs and circumstances of 
 London — to meet the requirements of London in regard 
 to degrees, and to courses of study leading to degrees, more 
 efficiently than any other body. Free from alien control 
 in regard to such courses of study, it could develop 
 special currictda, and offer degrees in such subjects and 
 on such terms as its teachers knew, from their contact 
 with London life, would be useful and adapted to the 
 special needs of the metropolis."
 
 44 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 There is small doubt that such a change, while largely 
 increasing the number of students attending the Colleges, 
 would very much strengthen the teaching element. This 
 increase of general prosperity ought to admit of the 
 Colleges establishing a certain number of scholarships 
 carrying free education to the annual pick of the School 
 Board students, and so give the ladder Prof. Huxley has 
 repeatedly insisted upon from the State schools to the 
 university. Indeed, the terms of the proposed charter 
 might well insist upon the provision by the new uni- 
 versity of Prof. Huxley's " ladder " as a condition of the 
 grant. The linking of graduates to those who have 
 spent their energies in nourishing them — to their true 
 alma mater, rather than to a noverca prohans who treats 
 them as numbers and fee-givers only — would go a long 
 way towards increasing the prosperity of the existing 
 Colleges, and the public recognition of the services of the 
 new university. That the Colleges at present do not 
 obtain the undivided allegiance and support of their own 
 olumni is too often shown by the part such alumni take in 
 action absolutely hostile to the real interests of higher 
 education in London. They exhibit a strange affection 
 for the noverca prolans who gave them a badge, neglect- 
 ing the alma mater who trained them for the contest. 
 
 The objections that can be raised against this third 
 scheme vary much in weight. The charge that the 
 proposed university would command no respect is one 
 that it is easy to make and hard to disprove without 
 trial. It seems to us that the value put upon its degrees 
 would depend entirely upon the respect held for its 
 teaching. The low scholastic value at present enjoyed 
 by London degrees is largely due to the fact that they 
 do not necessarily connote a real training under academic 
 influences. This would be supplied in the proposed
 
 THREE NEW SCHEJIES. 45 
 
 scheme. It would tlieu depcucl on the efficiency of the 
 teachers, and on the distinctions gained by the graduates, 
 whether in due course of time the degrees of tlie new 
 corporation would obtain a generally recognised value. 
 The second objection to which we may refer has far 
 greater weight, namely, that University and King's 
 Colleges would be, in fact, claiming a monopoly. Sto 
 far as the faculties of arts and science are concerned, 
 there do not, indeed, exist any other bodies attempting, 
 on a like academic basis, the same work in London. If 
 a duly equipped college should at any time arise, pro- 
 vision ought to be made in the charter for its admission. 
 In the matter of the medical faculty, however, there is 
 absolutely no ground upon which these Colleges can 
 claim a privilege not shared by the other medical schools 
 of the metropolis. When the evening journal to which 
 we have before referred speaks of the two Colleges 
 granting medical degrees, it must be either very ignorant 
 of existing facts or else purposely blind to them. Effi- 
 cient as undoubtedly are the medical schools of University 
 and King's Colleges, they can lay claim to no precedence 
 in the granting of medical degrees. If such claim be 
 included in the scheme of the proposed charter, the 
 scheme will meet with just as great a failure as that 
 of the Eoyal Colleges, if the latter intend to move for a 
 general degree granting power, and not for the construc- 
 tion of a local medical university. 
 
 The real solution of the problem seems to lie in the 
 united action on the part of the four Colleges, the con- 
 struction of the faculties of arts and sciences being left 
 to University and King's Colleges, that of the faculty of 
 medicine to the Colleges of Surgeons and Physicians. 
 This scheme should meet with the approval of the 
 medical schools, as well as of the science and arts teachers
 
 46 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 ill Gower-street and the Strand. The united influence 
 of these bodies ought to be sufficient to obtain the 
 required charter ; and that charter once obtained tliere 
 can be small doubt that the higher education of London, 
 freed from the trammels of Burlington House, would 
 make rapid progress in extent and efficiency. 
 
 In such a scheme, however, full power ought to be 
 taken by the university for effective control over the 
 constituent colleges, especially in the matter of professorial 
 appointments, and of expenditure on laboratories and 
 buildings.
 
 Y.— THE ROYAL COMMISSION 
 
 It will be difficult for any of the petitioners or counter- 
 petitioners — still less for those who have solely at heart 
 the interests of higher education in London — to draw 
 much comfort from the report of the University Commis- 
 sioners. The Commissioners, indeed, agree in one or 
 two important principles, which it is desirable to re-state 
 here as a preface to our further remarks. They may be 
 thus summed up : — 
 
 (1) The existing university, so long as it is a mere 
 examining and degree-giving body for all comers, is not 
 a London university in any practical sense. 
 
 (2) The general case for the establishment of a teach- 
 ing university in London is made out. 
 
 (3) Any body which is to undertake the functions 
 and duties of a teaching university for London must 
 be composed, so far as its teaching elements are 
 concerned, of institutions within the metropolitan area. 
 Any body not so constituted, would not be what is 
 wanted. It would not be a teaching university in and 
 for London. 
 
 In these three principles all the six acting Com- 
 missioners appear to have entirely concurred. When, 
 however, the question arose as to how these principles 
 were to be carried into practice, a hopeless divergence of 
 opinion seems to have manifested itself. The legal 
 members of the Commission appear to have found in- 
 superable difficulty in the idea of two universities (a real 
 
 * The Academy, June 22, 1889.
 
 48 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 one and a nominal one) located in Londou ; and they accord- 
 ingly suggest a scheme for the modification of the 
 existing imperial examining board. To this scheme we 
 propose to return shortly. The three members of the 
 Commission whose lives have been devoted to teaching 
 or to the advance of knowledge, and who have had real 
 experience of academic life and its necessities, while 
 feeling the objections which may be urged against the plan 
 of having two universities in London, were not disposed 
 to attribute so much importance to these objections as 
 their colleagues. They quietly allow the body of the 
 report to be occupied with a detailed account of the 
 modifications suggested for the existing university by 
 their more hopeful colleagues, and then drily remark : 
 " But the scheme won't work ! " " We acquiesce in the 
 attempt, but it will be a miserable failure." This, at 
 least, seems to us the only interpretation to be put on the 
 note appended to the report by Sir William Thomson, 
 Sir G. G. Stokes, and Mr. J. E. C. Welldon. The crucial 
 words are : — 
 
 " Considering that the London University has long 
 since ceased to be in any sense a teaching university, and 
 has become merely an examining board ; that in this 
 capacity it has established a high reputation, and is 
 doing a useful work for the whole empire ; and, consider- 
 ing the very large number of candidates who present 
 themselves for the various examinations leading up to a 
 degree, we doubt the possibility of effectually combining 
 the functions of an examining and of a teaching as well 
 as an examining university in the University of London, 
 and on this account, we should liave preferred the estab- 
 lishment of anew teaching university for London, leaving 
 it to the London University to continue to discharge its 
 present functions."
 
 THE ROYAL COMMISSION. 41) 
 
 If we analyse the objections conveyed by this note, 
 they amount, we think, to the following : — 
 
 (i.) A teaching university is essentially local, and can- 
 not undertake, as well as its own teaching and examining 
 work, the stamping of thousands of external students 
 with the required trade-mark. 
 
 (ii.) The true functions of an imperial examining 
 board are likely to be injured by association with those 
 of a local teaching university. 
 
 The three academic Commissioners carefully refrain 
 from saying that the new university, which they would 
 prefer to see established, is that sketched by the draft 
 charter of University and King's Colleges. It may well 
 be questioned whether that scheme is the ideally best. 
 What one would wish to see would be a university with 
 the same State support, with the same social and 
 scientific status, and with, on broad lines, the same con- 
 stitution, as those of Berlin or Leipzig. A despotic 
 government might sweep just so much as is worth 
 having — which would certainly not be all — of University 
 or King's Colleges into the foundations of such a uni- 
 versity. But we have not a government of this type, 
 nor do we ever strive in this country for the ideally best 
 in matters of education. The merit of the joint scheme 
 of the colleges is that, although it is in itself only third 
 or fourth rate, it leaves open a highway for something 
 much better in the future. Once subject, without 
 restriction, the little academic influence and less 
 academic spirit in London to the examination Jug- 
 gernaut at Burlington House, and both will disappear 
 beyond resuscitation. The joint scheme of the 
 colleges would have kapt it alive — possibly in a retired 
 and shabby condition — till such time as London should 
 feel conscious of the shame which attaches to a capital 
 
 I)
 
 50 THE NEW INIVEKSITY. 
 
 with the largest population but tlie least organised pro- 
 vision for its higher education of any in Europe. 
 
 Let us now turn to the scheme which, while occupying 
 the bulk of the report, appears to have been really 
 approved by only a moiety of the Commissioners. To 
 understand this scheme, it is necessary to go back some- 
 what to the history of the movement for a teaching 
 university in London. In May, 1884, an '• Association 
 for Promoting a Teaching University for London " was 
 founded. This Association included among its members 
 many of the teachers of University and King's Colleges, 
 but the scheme drawn up by the founders of that 
 Assoiiation was never put to the vote of its members. 
 Several teachers resigned, and it was owing to the 
 almost universal opinion among the teachers of University 
 and King's Colleges that the Association scheme was not 
 calculated to further academic education in London that 
 the governing bodies of those colleges took action, 
 which resulted in the joint petition. The Association 
 scheme, however, owing to the leisure and pertinacity of 
 its promoters, had already taken root in a new' direction. 
 It had captivated the imagination of Lord Justice 
 Fry, and he drew up. proposals for the modification 
 of the existing university, which extended the metro- 
 politan omnium gatherum of the Association into an all- 
 England mixtum compositum. The Commissioners (p. 
 xii., 19 and 20) seem to have been under the impression 
 that the colleges might reasonably have waited before 
 presenting their petition till the existing university had 
 finished its deliberations on the suggestions of the Asso- 
 ciation. But it was the conviction that the Association 
 scheme was impracticable, which really hastened the 
 petition, and the publication of alternative proposals. 
 It is needful to bear this in mind, as the Commissioners
 
 THE ROYAL COMMISSIOX. 51 
 
 appear to have considered that something on the Asso- 
 ciation lines must necessarily be acceptable to the College 
 petitioners. 
 
 It is Lord Justice Fry's scheme which has been taken 
 by the Commissioners as the basis of their proposed 
 modification of the existing university. But it is that 
 scheme shorn of the features which would have made it 
 acceptable to the great mass of the degree clientele of 
 Burlington House. The Commissioners, true to the 
 principles we have stated at the head of this article, limit 
 the teaching institutions to the metropolitan area, and 
 create the consultative faculties, and select the academic 
 members of the Senate from this area. They see clearly 
 enough that to accept Lord Justice Fry's mix turn conqjo- 
 situm is to render the Teaching University for London a 
 farce. But they have hardly thought of the outcry — 
 the verj- just outcry — which this will raise in Birming- 
 ham, Bristol, Nottingham, and elsewhere. " It is not 
 reasonable," they say, " that the country colleges should 
 have a negative voice upon the enlargement of the 
 present university for teaching purposes, especially con- 
 cerning the metropolis." This is truth — the truth almost 
 of platitude. But, on the other hand, it is equally un- 
 reasonable that the London teachers should alone have 
 a voice in the determination of examinations for which 
 the majority of candidates undoubtedly come from out- 
 side London, largely from the country colleges. The 
 statement of the Commissioners that the nominees of 
 the Crown and of Convocation will prevent " any 
 practical injustice being done to candidates for degrees 
 who may come from country colleges, or from no colleges 
 at all " — either means that the London teachers are to 
 have only a nominal influence over the examinations, or 
 else that the Connnissiouers totally failed to grasp the
 
 52 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 true spirit of a teaching university. "Would it be fair to 
 compel the Oxford student to enter for the Cambridge 
 examinations ? What would be the result ? Obviously 
 another Correspondence College or a circle of Cambridge 
 crammers round Oxford drawing the students away from 
 their recognised teachers. Every university that is 
 worthy of the name has its idiosyncrasies, its peculiar 
 lines of strength and weakness ; and its examinations v/ill 
 be moulded on those lines. It is entirely unreasonable 
 to expect the students of a totally different teaching in- 
 stitution to follow its development and methods. The 
 sole result would be the destruction of all independent 
 teaching, the disheartening effect which a "syllabus" 
 based on pp. 1-945 (omitting pp. 615-721) of the current 
 text-book invariably produces. Yet the text-book 
 syllabus is all that is possible for a university which 
 examines every comer. The Commissioners have certainly 
 not recognised what a storm their proposals will raise in 
 the country colleges, or else they are still devotees of the 
 syllabus shibboleth. 
 
 It is the absolute impossibility of combining the 
 degree-examinations of a really great and therefore 
 individual, teaching university with those of an imperial 
 examining board which appears to have been quite 
 apparent to the academic, but entirely unappreciated by 
 the legal, members of the Commission. Their profession 
 we may reasonably suppose teaches them to pay no 
 regard to persons, and to fit every divergence of circum- 
 stance so far as possible under one and the same prece- 
 dent. To say that the nominees of the Crown might 
 safely be trusted to act with justice to students from all 
 parts of the United Kingdom and from the colonies is 
 to say that the nominees of the Crown w^ould stop 
 the legitimate development of the teaching university.
 
 THE ROYAL COMMISSICN. 53 
 
 Suppose the university to become the seat of, say, 
 an original school of philosophy, then, in justice to the 
 outsiders, the degi'ee examinations would have to remain 
 uninfluenced by this fact. We may be quite sure Cam- 
 bridge would never have become the first mathematical 
 school in the kingdom under a restriction of its teaching 
 element — made in deference, let us say, to the fact that 
 its examinations were open to the students of the Birk- 
 beck Institute and our fellow-subjects from St. Kits. 
 It is the statement of § 34 : " The final examination for 
 degrees ought, in our judgment, to be the same for all 
 candidates, whether taught in constituent or associated 
 colleges, or institutions of the University of London or 
 elsewhere " — which renders the whole scheme of the 
 legal moiety of the Commission nugatory. It is a state- 
 ment which could hardly have been made had the over- 
 whelming evidence against it been placed before the legal 
 mind with less academic obscurity than is currently 
 reported to have been the case. 
 
 But a still more serious objection to the proposed 
 scheme lies in the fact that it does not give the Senate 
 practically any control over the colleges. If the teach- 
 ing university is to be a reality, there must be real 
 organic union between the constituent colleges and the 
 university. The university ought to have a substantial 
 voice in the appointment of the more important 
 teachers in each faculty. To throw the matriculation 
 and intermediate examinations into the hands of the 
 constituent colleges, as the Commissioners propose, is 
 thoroughly bad in principle. It is conceivable that the 
 colleges would commence an unhealthy rivalry in the 
 cheapening of the earlier degree stages. Such standards 
 as are necessary must be fixed by the university as a 
 whole, but by the university as representing even more
 
 yi THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 strongly than the Commissioners propose the authorised 
 teachers. Tlie danger we have indicated is not imaginary. 
 A witness from one of the colleges is said to have gravely 
 asserted that the present pass B.A. examination — from 
 tlie teachers' standpoint one of the most pitiable of 
 examinations — was far too hcmliov the majority of their 
 students. 
 
 It is not a loose union between the existing university 
 and the colleges which is wanted, but absolute absorption 
 of the better and more efficient portion of the colleges 
 into a real university. The Commissioners seem to have 
 held that the colleges could play the part of those at 
 Oxford or Cambridge with regard to the new body. 
 They do not seem to have recognised that the London 
 colleges at present combine two elements — the one 
 directed to collegiate training, and the other attempting 
 to do real university work. A glance at the syllabus and 
 class examination papers will show that in the latter 
 field the work done is on as high, in many cases on a 
 higher, level than that of the Scottish universities, and 
 some at least of the scientific laboratories produce work 
 which will bear comparison with university work any- 
 where. It is this latter element which we desire to see 
 freed from the existing trammels, but this can only be 
 by actual absorption into the proposed university, and 
 not by reducing its functions to those of the colleges in 
 the older universities. 
 
 To the constitution of the Senate as proposed by the 
 Commissioners — which is practically Lord Justice Fry's 
 scheme modified by enlarging the teaching influence — we 
 do not think the colleges ought to take more than minor 
 exceptions. It gives to Convocation a disproportionately 
 large share of influence ; but as the older universities 
 have ultimately succeeded in depriving the " country
 
 THE KOYAL COMMISSI 3N. 55 
 
 parson " of real power, we have no doubt that the cor- 
 responding London academic busybody — the barrister 
 with spare time — would ultimately vanish from the uni- 
 versity council-room. We say that we do not think the 
 colleges ought to take grave exception to the scheme ; 
 we mean by this, were it proposed as the first step 
 towards a teaching university, and not as a scheme for 
 a body to deal with the existing examinations. Now, is 
 there no possibility of such a compromise ? Why should 
 not the existing university apply for powers to establish 
 a teaching side on the lines suggested by the Commis- 
 sioners, leaving its present work to be carried on entirely 
 independently on the old lines, with as much supervision 
 by Convocation of the open examinations in favour of 
 "self-educated students" as may seem good to that body. 
 It would at first be unnecessaiy perhaps to differentiate 
 all or perhaps any of the existing degree examinations ; 
 but such differentiation would come as the teaching 
 university developed on its own individual lines. In 
 return for such concessions to the teaching element, the 
 colleges ought to grant substantial rights in the election 
 of their teachers to the new Senate. Indeed, it would be to 
 the interests of academic teaching in London if the colleges 
 were more or less gradually absorbed by the new body. 
 The result would be that their influence and buildings 
 and endowments would ultimately become organic 
 parts of a real university in London, and not merely 
 coUegiate constituents. A repetition of the struggle 
 between the colleges and university which has so checked 
 the progress of the older universities is hardly desirable, 
 especially when the chief object of the college — social 
 life and discipline — are not possible in a university which 
 does not propose to establish a residential system. The 
 creation of a teacliing side to the existing university by
 
 THE NEW UNiVERSITY. 
 
 the foundation of an additional Senate, whose Crown 
 niembers might or might not be members of the older 
 Senate as should seem good to the existing university, 
 does seem a way out of the deadlock. But it must 
 involve a power in the new Senate to modify old, and call 
 into existence new examinations so far as concerns the 
 needs of its own students. In return, the colleges ought 
 to grant real control over the appointment of their 
 teachers and other safeguards for their efficiency to the 
 new Senate. If they are genuinely in earnest in their out- 
 cry for a teaching university, there ought to be no 
 difficulty about this. It is, indeed, the highroad to the 
 development of the existing university into the alma 
 mater of genuine teaching universities distributed over 
 the kingdom. It opens up to it an enormous field for a 
 new and better influence. 
 
 Both the colleges and the existing university must be 
 prepared to give and take. But this can only be possible 
 by a better feeling arising between them. The fault in 
 the past has doubtless been on both sides ; but this much 
 is obvious, that teachers who for years have been pre- 
 paring London students for degrees have had absolutely 
 no method of approaching the London University, unless 
 they chanced to be the rare exceptions who are London 
 graduates. The barrister who, twenty years ago, took a 
 pass LL.B. degree can move in Convocation that the 
 existing B.Sc. examination is too easy or too hard, but the 
 hapless teacher is left to nurse his contempt for the 
 examining university without even the safety-valve of a 
 voice in Convocation ! The Commissioners have said 
 that there is practically no university in London at all ; 
 a moiety of them have said that Burlington House can 
 call into existence a real university, the other moiety 
 doubt it. Would it not be possible for the existing
 
 THE ROYAL COMMI:SION. 57 
 
 university to attempt, at least, informally, to arrange 
 with the colleges some practical way out of the deadlock ? 
 That is what we ask, and what we are inclined to think 
 the general public will ask. 
 
 Of the medical side of the matter we have said nothing. 
 The Commissioners report adversely to the scheme of 
 the Royal Colleges, and recommend a "cheapening" of 
 medical degrees. It sounds rather pitiable, and looks 
 like a conflict for fees between the Edinburgh and 
 London schools ; but that is a matter for the medicals 
 themselves to settle. Perhaps they will discover in time 
 that the outside public has, after all, distinguished 
 between a London and a Scottish M.D. Personally 
 regarding ^sculapius as a man whose chief function is 
 to cheer us up by bright conversation when in a depressed 
 state of mind, we should prefer to call in an M.D. 
 Cantab., that he might talk " auld lang syne."
 
 VI.— THE SECOND SCHEME OF THE 
 LONDON UNIVERSITY SENATE.* 
 
 The Senate of the London University has put forward a 
 " Eevised Scheme" for the reorganisation of the uni- 
 versity, which will shortly come before Convocation for 
 approval ; and it is high time that some public notice 
 should be taken of the lines upon which it is proposed 
 to reconstitute the existing university system. 
 
 Unfortunately, the English, and especially the London, 
 public has small appreciation of what higher education 
 and sound intellectual training really denote. It will 
 subscribe thousands of pounds for Polytechnics, without 
 the least clear understanding of what those institutions 
 are intended to accomplish — whether they are to incul- 
 cate cleanliness by aid of swimming baths, to train 
 apprentices in the folding of cretonnes, or to teach short- 
 hand, chess, and the rudiments of drawing on the South 
 Kensington plan. But for the education and training 
 of those citizens whose knowledge and thought are to 
 leaven the community, for the teaching of the teachers, 
 for the preparation of that staff of scientists, 
 specialists, leaders of industry, and representatives of 
 culture in and outside the learned professions, upon whom 
 the welfare of the nation so largely depends — for these 
 objects the greater public has no sense whatever. Nor 
 is the reason far to seek. The universities in England 
 * The Academy, INIay 2, 1891.
 
 SECOND SENATE SCHEME. 59 
 
 have always beeu class institutions ; their enormous 
 endowments have never served as nets to catch talent and 
 ability from all classes of the community ; and to this 
 day there is no obvious and direct road from the Board 
 school to the university. It may be the merest fraction 
 of a percentage of Board school scholars whose talent is 
 sufficient to render it a gain to society that they should 
 find a regular ladder to secondary education and then to 
 the universities. But for this fraction, a regular ladder, at 
 least from secondary education to the university, is entirely 
 w'anting. For this reason, among others, the universities 
 fail to appeal to the imagination of that democratic 
 public which is more and more extending its control 
 over local and central politics. It is true that the 
 various societies for the extension of what is termed 
 "university teaching" have made strenuous endeavours 
 to popularise the name, at least, of " university teaching." 
 But useful as their work has been, the placing in Cam- 
 bridge or Oxford of half a dozen artisans for a few 
 weeks in the vacation cannot nationalise those places 
 like the presence of half a hundred suns of artisans 
 enjoying the complete course of academic instruction and 
 participating in the ancient endowments would. Nor, 
 in our opinion, can any course of " university extension," 
 however long continued, replace the steady years of work 
 and devotion to one occupation which we associate with 
 the idea of an academic training. It may do most 
 useful, nay, yeoman service; but without the laboratories, 
 museums, libraries, the persistent daily study, it cannot 
 claim to replace university life. "University extension" 
 has more of the university spirit about it than the 
 examining board at Burlington House, because its first 
 object is to teach ; but it, nevertheless, is quite incapable 
 of supplying the place of a great teaching university in
 
 60 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 Loudon, which the democracy shall appreciate, and 
 which shall not hang its head in very shame before the 
 like institutions in Berlin or Vienna. University extension 
 is a valuable accessory, but it cannot supply what is 
 needed in London. Nevertheless University extension, 
 largely owing to the energy and persistency of its 
 London secretary, has succeeded in reaching people's 
 imaginations, while the higher scheme has fallen flat. 
 Some attempts to form a ladder from the Board 
 school to University College failed, apparently owing 
 to the apathy of its Council ; and the London Col- 
 leges, till within the present year, have done nothing to 
 render themselves popular with our modern democracy. 
 They have been, rightly or wrongly, looked upon as rather 
 expensive institutions for the education of the middle ■ 
 classes; and their appeal to the County Council for 
 assistance was not unnaturally rejected, while grants 
 were made to both the London Society for University 
 Extension and the City and Guilds' Committee. 
 
 It may be asked how far the revised scheme of the 
 Burlington House Senate goes in the way of providing a 
 really great teaching university for London— something 
 which can appeal to the imagination, not only of 
 teachers and taught, but of the population among which 
 they live ? We can only answer — absolutely nothing. 
 Nor was it to be expected that it would. Its failure - 
 was foreseen by all the teaching element on the Koyal 
 Commission. A Senate largely composed of gentlemen 
 who have had no experience of academic life such as it 
 is at Oxford or Cambridge, or in the continental uni- 
 versities ; who through long years have associated the 
 name " university " with examinations, and not with the 
 idea of teaching ; wlio have tried to negotiate with a 
 dozen conflicting interests and please them all, while
 
 SECOND SENATE SCHEME. CI 
 
 virtually retaining power in their own hands — was not a 
 body which could produce a satisfactory scheme for a 
 great teaching university. As a teaching scheme their 
 plan is a pitiable failure, containing in it only one germ 
 of possible good. We cannot too often repeat that the 
 fundamental purport of a university is to teach, to edu- 
 cate its scholars through its professors, and its professors 
 themselves by aid of the laboratories and means of re- 
 search which it places at their disposal. Now the 
 scheme at present put forward by the Senate bears on the 
 face of it all the signs of having been produced by a body 
 which has lived in an examining and not an academic or 
 teaching atmosphere. It is a gigantic and complex 
 scheme for the redistribution of examining power, and 
 not for the provision of wider and more efficient teaching. 
 It is no wonder that such a scheme was rejected by the 
 professorial bodies of King's and University Colleges, in 
 the latter case by a unanimous vote. Even in the 
 Council of the latter College a modified approval was only 
 carried by the casting vote of the President, or, as it 
 might otherwise be expressed, by the vote of a member 
 of the London University Senate. Now it is the profes- 
 sorial element in the London Colleges, not their councils, 
 who would really have to carry through the committee and 
 faculty work of the new scheme so far as it concerns 
 . university teaching in arts and science ; and its unani- 
 mous rejection by the college teachers is a point which 
 Convocation and the outside public ought to bear clearly 
 in mind when they are considering the Senate's pro- 
 posals. 
 
 Those proposals may be considered under three head- 
 ings — first, as to the manner in which they deal with the 
 London colleges ; secondly, as to the manner in which 
 they deal with the provincial colleges ; and, thirdly, as
 
 62 THE NEW I'NIVERSITY. 
 
 to how far they provide any real teaching university for 
 London. In the first i)lace, as to the London colleges. 
 These colleges have a certain claim on the public ; for 
 years they did pioneer service in the matter of academic 
 education for London, but a certain proportion of their 
 teaching at present is of an elementary character ; and 
 in other cases, principally from the need of proper labora- 
 tories and appliances, their instruction is probably not as 
 efficient as at certain special institutions — in particular, 
 the City and Guilds Central Institution. There is an alter- 
 native future open to these colleges ; either they must raise 
 themselves to the highest academic level, or they must con- 
 tent themselves with the preparation of students for the 
 pass and lower degrees of the proposed university. The 
 I'evised scheme of the University Senate practically takes 
 the latter view of their future. It proposes to give the 
 teachers of the London Colleges control of the pass ex- 
 aminations in arts and science, so far as concerns their 
 own students. It reserves the honours examinations. 
 The instruction at these colleges would become, more 
 even than it is at present, of a pass character ; and this 
 must ultimately involve the reduction of the teaching 
 to the standard of poll-men, and the teachers to the 
 well-known type of poll-lecturers. This may be a useful 
 function for these colleges. As their councils appear to 
 have accepted a scheme which places the honours 
 examinations out of touch with the college courses and 
 teachers, these councils presumably think it their most 
 suitable function. But even in this mattt*' of redistri- 
 buting the examining power for a poll-degree, King's and 
 University Colleges cannot hope for a monopoly. For the 
 degrees given for the sciences preparatory to engineering, 
 the City and Guilds Central Institution by its equipment 
 and teaching has now an equal right to admittance, and,
 
 SECOND SENATE SCHEAIE. G3 
 
 therefore, may justly claim representation on the faculties. 
 In fact, so soon as the scheme appears in its true light 
 — as a redistribution of examining power, and not as 
 the organisation of a teaching body — there is no legiti- 
 mate ground for excluding from the faculties any Loudon 
 body which is capable of preparing students for a certain 
 level of poll-degree. The moment the London Colleges 
 accept as their function this lower standard of academic 
 teaching, they must be prepared for the admission of any 
 number of London constituent colleges. So far as the 
 ultimate source of authority is concerned — the future 
 Senate — these colleges would have twelve members in a 
 total of fifty-two, assuming, indeed, the faculties of arts 
 and science to be solely constituted from these colleges, 
 a position they could hardly maintain indefinitely. 
 
 As the Senate reserves to itself the right to appoint 
 professors and lecturers, not necessarily attached to the 
 colleges, and to assign them representation on the facul- 
 ties, we have the germs of an honours school apart from 
 the colleges; and the reduction of the colleges to groups 
 of teachers preparing for pass degrees becomes more and 
 more their evident future. This may or may not be to 
 the pubhc advantage ; but it should certainly be borne 
 in mind, when discussing the scheme, that the future 
 teaching university will not arise from the colleges, but 
 from the professors and lecturers whom the Senate re- 
 serves the right to appoint. The sop thrown to the 
 colleges in return is the power to pass students for poll- 
 degrees. 
 
 Turning in the next place to the provincial colleges, 
 we find that they contribute eight members to the 
 ultimate governing body of the new university. On the 
 Senate, therefore, they will have small power, unless, 
 with a view to obtaining proper regard for local interests,
 
 64 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 they make themselves obstructive, which they will 
 certainly be justified in doing. The proposed Senate, 
 indeed, is simply a conglomeration of the representatives 
 of half a dozen different interests, which have nothing 
 in the least in common. What, for example, have the 
 representatives of the London medical schools and the 
 President of the Council of Legal Education to do with 
 the teaching of arts and science, say, in Sheffield ? But 
 the provincial colleges have really little to fear. So 
 soon as they arrive at a certain degree of strength, the 
 parliamentary influence of their local representatives will 
 soon provide them, either in groups or individually, with 
 charters as independent universities. The case of the 
 London Colleges is different : they will have bound them- 
 selves once for all to Burlington House, the local energies 
 of which will increase as its provincial supplies of 
 examinees diminish. Meanwhile, a provincial college 
 may gain that greater control over the education of its 
 own poll-students w^hich is connoted by the power of 
 discussing the schedules of examination with other 
 colleges scattered over the length and breadth of Eng- 
 land. The expense in time, energy, and railway fares 
 will soon lead to a vigorous movement for home rule. 
 
 Lastly, in this elaborate scheme for the redistribu- 
 tion of examining power, the medical side of which we 
 have not even referred to, what is there of a real teach- 
 ing university ? In the first place, we venture to say, so 
 far as the colleges are concerned, nothing. The college 
 professors will be quite independent of the new uni- 
 versity. There is no provision in the scheme for putting 
 the election of the college teachers in the hands of the 
 new university committees. The college laboratories 
 and the college work will be beyond the control of the 
 university authorities. To speak, therefore, of these
 
 SECOND SENATK SCHEME. 65 
 
 colleges as an integral part of the university is simply 
 absurd. A professor the university does not appoint, a 
 laboratory the university lias no control over, are not, for 
 practical purposes a part of the university at all. We shall 
 again have a governing board with nothing to govern, a 
 university without professors and without equipment. 
 The only germ of hope for a real university in the whole 
 scheme lies in the last clauses, which reserve the right to 
 the Senate to hold real property for the purposes of the 
 university and for the establishment of professorships 
 and lectureships. How long, however, will it take to 
 establish and endow a real university in this way, 
 especially in the face of the active opposition and 
 competition of the colleges ? 
 
 The scheme seems to us hopelessly unworkable. The 
 already overburdened teacher, in order to carry out some 
 development of teaching which may have a bearing upon 
 university examinations, will have to see it safely through 
 college faculty, college senate, and college council ; then 
 he will have to carry it through university board of study, 
 university standing committee, and, possibly, university 
 senate. His whole energy, which ought to be devoted to 
 teaching and research, will either be absorbed in the 
 round of committee, or he will disregard the new 
 university in toto. Both alternatives are equally un- 
 desirable. The Senate of the university, on the other 
 hand, if it considers anything desirable in London 
 teaching, will have to see it discussed by university 
 standing committees, faculties, and boards of study, by 
 college councils, senates, and faculties ; ultimately, per- 
 haps, to be rejected by a teacher over whom it has no 
 control, and in whose selection it has no voice. 
 
 We can only repeat, in conclusion, what we have 
 stated in chapter iii. p. 32, that what is needed in 
 
 E
 
 66 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 London is the establishment of a teaching side to the 
 existing University, practically independent of the Senate 
 which conducts the imperial examinations in Burlington 
 Gardens, and the absolute absorption by this teaching 
 side of the plant and staff of the London Colleges. In- 
 efficient lecturers ought to be gradually replaced or 
 pensioned off ; all new appointments ought to be in the 
 hands of the ultimate governing body of the teaching 
 side ; while the complete control of laboratories, equip- 
 ment, lecturers, and endowments ought to belong to one 
 single body, so soon as such a body can be firmly estab- 
 lished. Such a reconstruction would give us a teaching 
 university in London, a university starting with some 
 half a million in endowments and buildings, and capable 
 of making a legitimate appeal to the public for further 
 aid. A university, it would be, with something to 
 develop, and with power to command respect. It, and 
 it alone, would be the rightful heir to such funds as the 
 local London bodies may have in the future to dispose 
 of — above all, to whatever, in the course of the next ten 
 or twenty years, may be available from the Gresham 
 Trust for the further development of university teaching 
 in London.* 
 
 * The second scheme of the University Senate was rejected bj* 
 Convocation, and therewith the futility of the majority report of 
 the Royal Commission was amply demonstrated. A series of letters 
 to Nftture in May and June, 1891, form an interesting prelude to 
 the discussion of the Alhert Charter by the Privy Council. (Sec 
 our Appsndi.r C.)
 
 / 
 
 VII.— THE ALBEET CHAETEE, SIE 
 GEOEGE YOUNG'S SECOND SCHEME. 
 
 The promoters of this cha-rter have only themselves 
 to blame for the ridiculous position into which they have 
 brought the question of academic education in London. 
 We have, during the whole discussion of the last few 
 years, maintained the position that what is really needed 
 in London is a university on the lines of Berlin or Edin- 
 burgh. The professorships ought to be the best in Eng- 
 land, and the chief posts, at any rate, might remain in the 
 gift of the Crown ; the laboratories and libraries ought to 
 be the best equipped in the kingdom, and the university 
 ought to draw students and investigators not only from 
 the five millions of London, but from the greater Britain 
 over the seas. Such a university would not only be able 
 to retain in London men like Burdou Sanderson, Seeley, 
 Gardiner, Sylvester and Lankester, but it would bring 
 others there. We should not have the spectacle of 
 Glasgow offering greater attractions than the metropolis, 
 or of Oxford stealing our best teachers when they have 
 won an external reputation. We should not have a 
 city richer, perhaps, than any other in historical records, 
 without an historical seminary, an historical school, or 
 even a teacher who has done first-class historical work 
 We should not have one of the chief Oriental powers of 
 the world with an Oriental scliool in its metropolis, the 
 professors of which are unpaid, and the students of 
 
 * The Academy, December 19, 1891. (See Appendix C.)
 
 68 THE KEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 which are only conspicuous by their absence. A really 
 great scheme would have brought the support of external 
 scholars, and have raised some enthusiasm among those 
 who have the interests of learning, and not self-adver- 
 tisement, at heart. Into such a scheme, existing 
 institutions might have been thrown as into a melting- 
 pot ; but their councils and teachers would have had no 
 claim to a controlling voice in its management, and only 
 an equitable right that the new arrangement should not 
 interfere suddenly and arbitrarily with the livelihood of 
 the existing staff. If it be said that such a scheme is 
 impossible, that it would require the alteration of acts 
 and charters, the reply is that Parliament has often 
 reconstituted far more complex relations, and that the 
 proposed Albert Charter ought from the parliamentary 
 standpoint to be more impossible than any such scheme 
 would be. 
 
 The Albert University terms itself a teachmg university, 
 and therefore presumably will have teachers. Who then 
 are these teachers ? So far as the faculties of arts and 
 science are concerned, they are the teachers of University 
 and King's Colleges, with possibly " power to add to 
 their number." Now there is at King's College a most 
 strong religious test — a test which, if it were published 
 in the form in which it was put only six or seven years 
 back, and for aught we can say to the contrary is still 
 put to-day — ought to be the death-blow to the Albert 
 Charter. A university which does not appoint its own 
 teachers, but whose teachers are appointed for it by the 
 councils of the colleges and under such restrictions as 
 tlie charters of these colleges may impose, ought to, and 
 we believe will, find itself from the parliamentary stand- 
 point an utter impossibility. No member, however 
 Tory his predilections, will in* the face of the
 
 THE ALBERT CHARTER. 69 
 
 modern electorate have a woid to say in favour of a 
 university, of which one-half the members in the faculties 
 of arts and science are appointed under a stringent 
 religious test. Such a university, however unsectarian 
 one of its constituents may or might be, can only be 
 described as sectarian. 
 
 But the Albert University, should it come into exist- 
 ence, will not only be sectarian, it will be pettifogging 
 It will start with no funds, no laboratories, nothing but 
 examinations. If it be said that its funds and labora- 
 tories are those of the colleges, the sufficient reply 
 is that over these funds and laboratories, as over 
 the teachers, it will have absolutely no control. It 
 will not regulate the one nor appoint the other. In a 
 university controlled by these colleges, we are not likely 
 to see extra-collegiate professors of the highest status 
 appointed, or funds devoted to their support. There is 
 nothing in the proposed charter which willjtend to keep 
 the best men in London, still less to bring them there. 
 It elevates the teachers of those colleges, as teachers of 
 those colleges and not as individual scholars and men of 
 science, to a position to which they can lay no claim. 
 Many of them would do the highest honour even to a real 
 metropolitan miiversity ; but for this university their 
 individual capacity, not their collegiate appointments, 
 ought to qualify them. The Albert University is not 
 placed above the teachers of the two colleges, but the 
 teachers of these colleges will largely control the univer- 
 sity ; the door is thus opened to any society or institution, 
 which employs the very same teachers or teachers of like 
 calibre, to claim for itself an administrative voice in the 
 new university. If a portion of the w^ork of the colleges, 
 either in day or evening classes, is of the same character 
 as that undertaken ' by the Birkbeck or Polytechnic
 
 70 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 Institutions by aid, possibl}', of the same teachers, why 
 should not tliese institutions also have a voice in the con- 
 trol of the university ? If the promoters of the Albert 
 Charter had modelled a university on German lines the 
 reply would be easy to give ; but the Albert Charter can 
 give no reply to this question, because its principal 
 clauses are not devoted to the reconstitution of academic 
 teaching in London, to the elevation of that teaching far 
 above the level of Civil Service classes and Burlington 
 House B.A. degrees, but to the methods in which 
 teachers, themselves independent of the university, can 
 still be endowed with the power of granting degrees. 
 
 The pettifogging character of the proposed university 
 has brought a rapid nemesis on its promoters in the form 
 of the London Society for the Extension of University 
 Teaching, or, rather we ought to say, of a group of its more 
 energetic supporters. Not a stone has been left unturned 
 by the extensionists to demonstrate that the proposed 
 university is utterly bad, unless university extension 
 lecturers and the University Extension Society be ad- 
 mitted " as a college" to the proposed university. Claims 
 have been made for the London University Extension 
 which are utterly unwarranted by either the character of 
 its work, or by the type of its students. We admit fully 
 the useful character of imiversity extension lectures ; 
 they have stimulated thought and study in many minds ; 
 but to assert that their teaching is academic, or that they 
 lead to research in themselves (as one journal has 
 recently done), only shows how hopelessly ignorant the 
 world of political newspaper editors are either of what 
 learning and research mean, or of what university ex- 
 tension lectures really accomplish. Those who have had 
 experience, not only of extension teaching, but of real 
 university work, arc those to whom we must appeal on
 
 THE ALBERT CHARTER. 71 
 
 this point ; aucl their judgment, so far as our investiga- 
 tions go, is unanimous. Extension lectures are a valu- 
 able form of popular education, but no more in them- 
 selves academic training than reading a popular science 
 series is a scientific education. But, as we have said, the 
 pi'omoters of the Albert Charter have brought this 
 journalistic storm on themselves. Instead of promoting 
 the highest academic organisation, they were led by a 
 shabby ideal of a university, and now they are 
 threatened with the lowest results. There was nothing 
 in their scheme to raise anyone's enthusiasm, and they 
 have been left practically without a supporter in 
 the press. Their schecne, as remodelled by the com- 
 mittee of the London Extension Society, becomes a 
 gigantic night-school with peripatetic teachers and the 
 inevitable magic lantern. This may be a popular idea of 
 a university in the minds of radical members of Parlia- 
 ment; but for anyone who values higher education, it 
 is pitiable. We have not a word to say against the 
 university extension lecturers, many of them are trained 
 teachers and original workers, lecturing, however, under 
 great disadvantages to popular audiences. As one 
 recently said* : " My lectures can only be an outrage to 
 science." But it is xiot the bulk of these lecturers who 
 claim incorporation in any teaching university for 
 London. It is the restless activity of certain " Exten- 
 sion" enthusiasts who, in their strong belief in its future, 
 have lost all sense of its true limits and all real apprecia- 
 tion of academic education. University extension con- 
 notes a university to extend itself, to employ its spare 
 powers in popular teaching; but that the University 
 
 * Another was heard to observe that he " was fully aware that a 
 joke had to be made every minute-and-a-half to keep up the in- 
 terest of the audience."
 
 72 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 Extension Society has a claim to any control of univer- 
 sity organisation in Loudon would be absurd, were it 
 not so plausible a democratic cry. The democracy has 
 yet to learn that to educate itself by extension lectures 
 or otherwise, it must first educate [its educators ; and 
 this cannot be done by extension societies, Birkbeck 
 institutions, or pettifogging universities. 
 
 Were the Albert Charter to be dropped, probably no 
 one would mourn but its promoters ; even were it 
 dropped on the ridiculous pretext that it did not include 
 the London Society for University Extension, we should 
 not complain. London had better wait another ten or 
 twenty years for a great university than be endowed 
 with a pettifogging degree-giving corporation, which 
 cannot attract the first teaching power in the country to 
 its side. The real danger lies in the possibility that 
 the promoters of the charter may seek power to modify 
 it in the direction of the recent press outcry. The 
 Albert Charter is bad enough ; but the Albert Charter 
 jjIus the London Society for the Extension of University 
 teaching means the perpetuation for long years of 
 academic confusion and of low standards of learning in 
 the teaching work of the metropolis. 
 
 By all means, let the scheme be withdrawn ; but let it 
 be withdrawn on the grounds that the proposed univer- 
 sity would be sectarian and would be totally unworthy 
 of the greatest city of the world, not on the ground that 
 it does not embrace a private society, doing no doubt 
 excellent popular work, but not work of an academic 
 character. To withdraw^ it on this ground is indeed " an 
 outrage on science" and learning, which could only 
 occur in a land where educational ideals are ill under- 
 stood and the press and platform ever open to the noisy 
 champions of chimeras.
 
 YIII.— AKGUMENTS USED IN FAVOUR 
 
 OF THE TEST AND 
 
 FOR THE ADMISSION OF UNIVERSITY 
 
 EXTENSION.* 
 
 I. — Letter of Peofessoe G. C. W. Waee. 
 King's College, London, December 21, 1891. 
 To those who, like myself, supposed that the battle of 
 the Teaching University had been fought and won. 
 Professor Karl Pearson's attitude is rather a rude 
 surprise. He appears on the scene after the battle, 
 executing a war-dance on his own account (if I may so 
 describe his communication in last vfeek's' Acadevnj). 
 So far as I can follow this somewhat wild and vague 
 performance, the particular object of Professor Pearson's 
 hostility is King's College, and, if I understand him 
 rightly, that anachrouous institution is to be rejected as 
 dross, while University College and some other (anony- 
 mous) bodies are to be fused " as in a melting-pot " into 
 the facsimile of a German University. 
 
 This sublimely cool proposal, at the eleventh (perhaps 
 I ought to say the thirteenth) hour, to exclude (and 
 consequently extirpate) King's College is drastic enough 
 to satisfy that heroic educational reformer, the Emperor 
 William ; and, indeed. Professor Pearson's programme 
 
 * The letters below criticising our seventh section appeared 
 in The Academy, December 26, 1891, and January 2, 1892.
 
 74 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 generally appears to me to carry with it tlie tremendous 
 postulate of a German invasion and annexation of 
 England. For, short of that, it is quite incredible that 
 our Legislature, in the teeth of the Privy Council, will 
 take leave of English common sense and, instead of 
 allowing the university to grow and develop itself from 
 the solid nucleus of the two London colleges and the 
 medical schools, endeavour to manufacture it mechani- 
 cally " in the melting-pot " on an alien model. 
 
 However, I am only concerned with one feature of this 
 University of Weissnichtwo. The gateway of that ideal 
 institution is to be ornamented, it seems, with our scalps, 
 as a warning and a lesson to the Church of England ; 
 and within the university museum — in its chamber of 
 ecclesiastical horrors — will be exhibited a particularly 
 terrific instrument which Professor Pearson fancies he has 
 inspected in our college, to wit, a " test" so " stringent," 
 he says, as to be utterly impossible in any modern 
 university. 
 
 Well, as the proverbial philosopher in " Miss Decima " 
 
 says, 
 
 " A little truth, however small, 
 Is better than no truth at all." 
 
 The very small ingredient of fact in this description is 
 that we professors of King's College have subscribed our- 
 selves ' ' members of the Church of England ' ' ! This 
 does, of course, exclude Nonconformists as such, but 
 that is all. Whether this restriction should be continued 
 is an open question ; and Professor Pearson has a perfect 
 right to demand, if he pleases, that King's College shall, 
 on that ground, be wiped out of the charter, provided his 
 argument is founded simply and solely on the denomina- 
 tional character of the college, which the declaration in 
 question is merely intended to preserve.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS TEST. 75 
 
 As for that argument, Professor Pearson will be aware, 
 if he has read Sir George Young's authoritative letter on 
 the subject, that it was in deference to the Noncon- 
 formists themselves, and at the instance of Mr. Miall, 
 that new foundations on a denominational basis were 
 permitted at Oxford and Cambridge. 
 
 But, as Professor Pearson appears to found a further 
 argument on the actual "test" in force, I must be allowed 
 to say that his infuriated utterance conveys an absurdly 
 wrong impression of the formula just mentioned. It is 
 not a " test " at all, in the sense which the term bore at 
 the old universities previous to the reform of 1871. 
 
 For my own part, I should decline now, as I did then, 
 to accept any such test as the so-called " Protestant 
 Declaration " w^hich was enforced at my own college 
 (Trinity), or to subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles, because 
 I hold that a Protestant layman has a right which he 
 ought not to forego (above all if he is a teacher) to 
 absolute liberty of conscience, that is, intellectual inde- 
 pendence in the matter of religion. 
 
 G. C. W. Waee. 
 
 II. — Letter of Me. J. Spencer Hill. 
 
 National Liberal Club, Dec. 21, 1891. 
 All those who wish the new Teaching University of 
 London to be really worthy of its opportunities will be 
 glad to know that all the professors of the two colleges 
 are not content with the narrow scheme which has been 
 promulgated in their behalf, and they will thank Professor 
 Pearson for the clearness and vigour with which he has 
 brought out the grave de6ciencies of the proposed 
 " Strand and Gower-street University." Many of them 
 will also hope much from his courageous attempt to lift 
 the whole matter on to a higher level, and will be ready
 
 76 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 to join hands with him in hastening to its practical 
 accomphshment the noble ideal of a teaching university 
 for London which he has set forth. 
 
 At the same time, it seems unfortmiate that Professor 
 Pearson should be so evidently either afraid, or scornful, 
 of the democratic elements in our higher education, and 
 that he should have been unable, or unwilling, to make 
 bis ideal university comprehensive enough or broad 
 enough to include those elements — elements the import- 
 ance of which will tend rather to increase than to diminish. 
 If in good truth this incompatibility were inevitable, 
 then in one essential particular a teaching university 
 in London such as Professor Pearson has sketched would 
 be as open to criticism as the "pettifogging" scheme 
 which Dr. Wace and Sir George Young hope to be able 
 to impose upon us. But Professor Pearson's apparent 
 assumption — that the university ideal which he lays 
 down and that which is in the minds of those " exten- 
 sion enthusiasts ' ' who have a strong belief in its future 
 are opposed and contradictory — is, I contend, quite un- 
 founded. The two may rather be looked upon as 
 different aspects of the same ideal. While, on the one 
 side, the ideal teaching university of London should be 
 freed from collegiate restrictions, and should be great 
 enough to provide the highest teaching and to retain the 
 best teachers; on the other side, it should, as the " ex- 
 tension enthusiasts " contend, be wide enough and broad 
 enough to enable all classes of the inhabitants of London 
 to attend such lectures. Nor need there be any difficulty 
 in continuing a high standard of academic instruction 
 with a frank acceptance of the democratic conditions 
 which are necessary in a democratic age. Of these 
 conditions the necessity of providing evening in- 
 struction is imperative ; and indeed tliere seems to be no
 
 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION. 77 
 
 reason but custom why uui\'ei'sity professors should 
 invariably lecture in the day time. Professor Pearson's 
 vision of a gigantic night-school with its peripatetic 
 teachers, however much it may be open to academic 
 sarcasm, need not imply an inferiority of academic 
 teaching, and is — until some ideal readjustment of the 
 hours of labour, until some better method be discovered 
 — the only means of opening the doors of academic 
 instruction to that class of students, which must always 
 be a large one in London, who have to carry on their 
 higher education paripas&n with the earning of their daily 
 bread. This is indeed the only way that I can see of 
 educating academically our democracy ; and it seems 
 rather putting the cart before the horse to expect, as 
 Professor Pearson puts it, the democracy first to educate 
 its educators and then to educate itself. 
 
 The active workers in the Extension movement are as 
 determined as Professor Pearson to countenance no depre- 
 ciation—the standard of degrees is low enough, in all 
 conscience, already — and they cannot admit his charge 
 that they " have lost all sense of its true limits and all 
 real appreciation of academic instruction." It is, on the 
 contrary, because they are so entirely possessed b}^ the 
 value of a high standard of university teaching that they 
 wish it to be brought as close as possible to those classes 
 who at present are debarred from it ; and it is because 
 they are so entirely conscious of the present shortcomings 
 and deficiencies of the University Extension movement, 
 unsupported as it now is by academic recognition, that 
 they are anxious to see its scope widened, and its work con- 
 solidated, by that control and that guidance which only a 
 real teaching university can provide. And the nearer the 
 new Teaching University of London approaches Professor 
 Pearson's ideal, the stronger will be their determination to
 
 78 THE NEW UMIVERSITY. 
 
 share in its privileges ; and in spite of Professor Pearson's 
 scorn they are still inclined to think that a worse danger 
 might befall the new university than the admission of the 
 University Extension movement to some voice in the 
 direction of its policy, some share in the adaptation of 
 its resources to the educational advancement of our 
 democracy. 
 
 J. Spencer Hill, Hon. Treasurer 
 
 Chelsea University Extension Centre. 
 
 III. — Letter op Professor C. H. Herford. 
 University College, Aberystwith : Dec. 27, 1891. 
 Professor Pearson's vigorous advocacy of an ideal Teach- 
 ing University for London has elicited from representatives 
 of existing institutions two protests, differing widely in 
 point of view, in tone, and, as it seems to me, in value. 
 With Professor Warr's somewhat querulous and inconclu- 
 sive letter I have here nothing to do. His attempt to mini- 
 mise the force of the theological test of his college, which 
 " does indeed exclude Nonconformists, but that is all"; 
 and his effort to discredit fundamental reform by an 
 appeal to that time-honoured sanctuary of insular preju- 
 dice — " English common sense " — may well be left to the 
 care of Professor Pearson, who has peculiar skill in mani- 
 pulating such curiosities. But I should like to say a word 
 upon the weighty letter of Mr. Spencer Hill, which cer- 
 tainly seems to me to suggest a feature in which Professor 
 Pearson's ideal university calls for enlargement if it is to 
 satisfy, not merely " English common sense," but an en- 
 lightened perception of the differences between English 
 and German society at the present day. 
 
 Now, I by no means yield to Professor Pearson in 
 admiration for the universities of Germany, nor could I
 
 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION. 7 9 
 
 easily reckon what I personally owe in scholarship, 
 method, and stimulus, to frequent residence, casual or 
 prolonged, at one or other of them. I w-as once asked 
 by a travelled and highly accomplished Cambridge don, 
 far above the average in familiarity with foreign affairs, 
 whether a man could study anything at Berlin which he 
 could not study equally well at Cambridge. The ques- 
 tion, put by such a man, revealed to me the distance 
 which we have yet to travel before the university of 
 Professor Pearson's ideal comes fairly within the purview 
 of the plain man, uutravelled and unaccomplished — the 
 man of " English common sense." It is not merely 
 that the range of studies is vastly greater ; that — e.g., 
 Egyptology, which with us begias when the university 
 course ends, is there a busily cultivated Facli ; that 
 French and German, and English itself, are taught with 
 a comprehensiveness for which there is here not so much 
 no talent as no scope. x\s machinery for training original 
 workers, the German, and indeed the French, univer- 
 sities have admittedly no rival in ours. 
 
 In part this is due to the greater rarity among us of 
 strong scientific impulse, of fundamental curiosity — in 
 spite of the extraordinary sporadic developments of it 
 which from time to time occur. In part, however, it is 
 due to the greater abundance among us of the less vital 
 and vivid form of the same impulse, which we know as 
 the demand for culture. The more widely diffused want 
 has gained control of our universities, and organised 
 their teaching for its own satisfaction. No one familiar 
 with academic and non-academic society in England and 
 Germany will deny that they are separated by a far 
 wider gulf in the latter than with us ; in other words, 
 that while the demand for tlie highest teaching is with 
 us at present far smaller, the demand for a kind of
 
 80 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 teaching below the highest, yet relatively high, is far 
 wider. Moreover, while the former difference may be 
 expected to diminish with om' own growth in scientific 
 aim, the latter may be expected to increase, in so far as 
 the cultivated home, which is the peculiar sphere of that 
 second demand, is essentially the product of the culti- 
 vated womanhood, and thus, indirectly, of that higher 
 education of women, in regard to which Germany now 
 lags behind not only England but the greater part of the 
 civilised world. Even yet, though an occasional cry may 
 be heard there for the privileges of Newnham and Girton, 
 it is lifted up forlornly in the wilderness, unechoed by 
 the mass of women, and unheeded by the mass even of 
 liberal and progressive men. 
 
 Now with these differences any new university in 
 England has assuredly to reckon. It is the distinction 
 of the London Society for the Extension of University 
 Teaching that it has reckoned with them already, and 
 "extended" university teaching before there was, in 
 strictness, a teaching university to extend. The society 
 has from the first claimed by its title to participate in 
 the functions of a teaching university. A teaching 
 university is now to be founded ; and it not unnaturally 
 presses the claim. Far be it from me to ignore the 
 differences which must separate occasional from con- 
 tinuous work. As one, however, who has repeatedly 
 made acquaintance, as examiner, both with the work 
 done for this society in the department of literature, and 
 with that done for the highest honours examinations in 
 the same department at Cambridge and Oxford, I should 
 like to say that the difference strikes me as by no means 
 immeasurable. I have repeatedly looked over three 
 hours' papers written by young women in London 
 suburbs which would by no means have disgraced the
 
 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION. 81 
 
 Cambridge tripos for mediaeval and modern languages ; 
 and I will venture to say that not a few com-ses of 
 lectures have been given for the society which candidates 
 for that tripos would have been fortunate to hear. 
 
 I am not, of course, suggesting that the two classes 
 of students are of equal, but only that they are of 
 commensurate rank. Their paths can only in rare 
 instances coincide. But both classes, and those 
 who teach both, gain indefinitely by not being wholly 
 sundered, though very likely less than they would 
 lose by being indiscriminately mixed. Let them be — 
 not fused but — kept in touch by forming parts of a com- 
 prehensive organisation, devoted not to separate ends 
 but to distinct aspects of the same end — the deepening 
 and broadening of knowledge — requiring for its realisa- 
 tion different instruments under the same guidance. By 
 all means let the function of " university extension " be 
 distinguished from that of " university teaching " in the 
 strict sense. But it is one thing to distinguish, and 
 another thing to isolate ; and the vigorous performance 
 of the higher function does not at all exclude the equally 
 vigorous performance of the lower in another part of the 
 organism. The German university is a wonderfully 
 potent, but structurally a simple, instrument. To 
 differentiate the type for the service of our more complex 
 wants is not to degrade it, and may even, with wise 
 management, enrich and strengthen it. 
 
 C. H, Heefobd,
 
 IX.— AEGUMENTS AGAINST THE TEST 
 
 AND THE ADMISSION OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION TO THE 
 
 NEW UNIVEESITY.* 
 
 Twenty years or so ago there was an enthusiastic and 
 youthful graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, who on 
 being elected to a fellowship at that college, declined to 
 sign the test tended to him. His action helped the great 
 movement which freed our national universities from 
 denominational control ; and now the Churchman, the 
 Nonconformist, the Jew, and the Agnostic may be found 
 with their feet under the same combination table, soften- 
 ing each other's asperities and learning to understand 
 that difference of opinion is itself an intellectual stimulus 
 in academic life. t appears from Professor Warr's 
 letter that the aforesaid enthusiastic and youthful 
 graduate was not moved to his action by the fact that 
 the Nonconformist, the Jew, and the Agnostic were 
 excluded from participating in many of the advantages 
 and privileges of post-graduate life, but that he was 
 really fighting the cause of the Churchman who did not 
 heartily accept the Articles of his Church. Even on this 
 narrower ground his conduct was public-spirited ; and 
 anyone who had described his conduct as " infuriated," 
 and arising from " hostility " to this or that corporation, 
 
 * The Academy, January 9, 1892.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS TEST. 83 
 
 would surely have been putting himself in a ridiculous 
 position. It would, perhaps, be impossible to convince 
 Professor Warr that I am not in an "infuriated " con- 
 dition, and that I bear no " hositility " to King's College. 
 Did he know me, however, a little better, he would be 
 quite sure that I hold only one thing more foolish than 
 being in a fuiy against any institution, and that is to 
 charge another, with whose opinions I do not agree, of 
 such an absurd mental condition. I think, in a matter 
 like that of a metropolitan university — which, to my 
 mind, is of national importance — it would have helped 
 our discussion had Profsesor Warr adopted a slightly 
 more academic and logical form of argument. 
 
 The reader of Professor Warr's letter might possibly 
 believe — that I, after all was arranged to everybody's satis- 
 faction, had suddenly commenced an attack on the pro- 
 posed charter — the real fact being that I have consistently, 
 in and out of season, condemned that charter from its very 
 inception (see Appendix C). To my mind the Council of 
 University College has sadly forgotten the traditions which 
 in the old days gave life and vigour to that college, by sup- 
 porting in any way a charter of this retrograde character. 
 The college was established as a protest against sectarian 
 education, and it is painful to see it giving its support to a 
 sectarian university. Is University College to hand over the 
 teaching and examining in divinity to the sole control of 
 the King's College professors ? Ye shades of Brougham, 
 Hume, and Grote ! Professor Warr cites Sir George Young 
 with regard to denominational colleges at Oxford and 
 Cambridge ; but both Professor Warr and his authority 
 seem to have forgotten the distinction at both Oxford 
 and Cambridge between the colleges and the university. 
 No university professors and officers at those univer- 
 sities are appointed by a denominational institution
 
 84 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 having a definite test. The only university officers 
 appointed by the colleges as such are possibly the 
 proctors; but if Keble or Selwyn Colleges really take 
 their turn on the rota for selecting proctors, then I am 
 inclined to think it is a breach of the Tests Act. The 
 university professors and officers are chosen by boards 
 appointed by the university, and, except in the case of 
 the divinity professors, there is not the least question of 
 religious test, Sir George Young's " authoritative letter " 
 thus seems to have no bearing v^hatever on the proposal 
 to create a university of which one half of the professors 
 and teachers in the faculties of Science and Arts are to 
 be selected under a test which excludes " Noncon- 
 formists as such," to say nothing of a Huxley, a Clifford, 
 or a Sylvester. My " sublimely cool proposal " is not 
 " to extirpate King's College," but to point out that a 
 college which occupies an absolutely anomalous position 
 among the university colleges of the country cannot 
 become a constituent part of a great metropolitan uni- 
 versity until it has reformed itself. So far from believ- 
 ing that University College alone could constitute a 
 university for London, I should not hope for much from 
 University College, together with a reformed King's Col- 
 lege, unless they ultimately placed the appointment of 
 their teachers and the control of their buildings in the 
 hands of the new University Senate — unless, in fact, 
 they went into that "melting-pot" which apparently 
 Professor Warr looks upon in much the same manner as 
 Peer Gynt looked upon the button-moulder's ladle. 
 
 One word more as to Professor Warr's letter. He 
 says that it is now the thirteenth hour, that all is nicely 
 settled, that " It is quite incredible that our Legislature, 
 in the teeth of the Privy Council, will take leave of 
 English common sense," &e., &c. Now I hold " common
 
 THE RELIGIOUS TEST. 85 
 
 sense " to be a name often used for moral and intellectual 
 inertia ; and I think that if anything were calculated to 
 stir up members of Parliament to a sense of the real 
 issues involved, it would be a perusal of this delighful 
 sentence. Here is a matter which is of primary im- 
 portance for the metropolis — I believe, for the nation — in 
 the carrying out of which it is peculiarly needful to insure 
 that no new privileged body shall block the road for 
 future reorganisation of the higher education of four or 
 five million people ; and we are told that Parliament is 
 to be controlled by the Privy Council. In other words 
 the Privy Council can create a university on the narrowest 
 educational lines, and with a denominational basis, and 
 Parliament must then waste its time several years hence 
 in passing a new Tests Act, and possibly reconstituting 
 the whole scheme. Why ? Because it must not now 
 move in the teeth of the two or three Privy Councillors 
 who profess to have heard all interested parties. Professor 
 Warr believes I am "executing a war dance" on 
 my own account ; he can hardly be acquainted with the 
 feeling of many distinguished external scholars and 
 scientists with regard to this insignificant university, and 
 with the parliamentary opposition which there is increas- 
 ing evidence that it is sure to meet with. 
 
 In reply to Mr. Spencer Hill and Professor Herford, 
 there is much that might be said, and but httle space to 
 say it in. In the first place, let me say that I consider 
 that the ideal London University ought to take powers 
 to teach in whatsoever manner and wheresoever within 
 the metropolitan boundaries seems good to it, and to 
 confer such distinctions on the taught as it pleases. I 
 doubt whether the Albert Charter is framed so as to con- 
 vey these powers ; it depends entirely on whether the word 
 " college " is to be interpreted of a group of teachers, or
 
 86 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 of a group of buildings. But to admit the desirability 
 of these powers being included in any real university 
 system is not inconsistent with asserting that the Albert 
 Charter will be worse than it is, if the proposals of the 
 London Society for the Extension of University Teaching 
 be adopted as modifications. I believe with Mr. Spencer 
 Hill that a real university ought to have power to " con- 
 trol " and " guide " the Extension movement ; I hold, in 
 the language of the Royal Commissioners, that it would 
 be excellent for the Extension and various other teaching 
 bodies of a lower grade to be " co-ordinated under a 
 university as their natural head." But I object entirely 
 to what Prof. Herford terms the " lower function " 
 controlling the " higher function," or to " university 
 extension " having, jj;er se, a large control over uni- 
 versity teaching in the true sense. The higher may con- 
 trol and guide the lower ; but the lower will look to its 
 own ends, and, if it be not held in bounds, ultimately 
 extinguish the less popular, but none the less necessary 
 steady academic teaching and research. But it may be 
 said, is there any real danger of this ? I reply certainly, 
 if this pitiable Albert Charter is modified in the direction 
 of the proposals of the London Extension Society. 
 Those proposals amend the word " college " in the 
 charter by substituting for it " college, society, or insti- 
 tution "; and they strike out the word "buildings," 
 which occurs in the condition of admission of any 
 college. I hold that if the charter were thus amended, 
 no reasonable person could suppose that the " society 
 without buildings " thus referred to could mean anything 
 but the London Society for the Extension of University 
 Teaching, and that with the amended charter it would 
 be impossible to resist its admission into the new univer- 
 sity. The effect of this admission, as the charter runs,
 
 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION. 87 
 
 would be to make every teacher appointed by tliat 
 society ipso facto a member of the faculty of Arts or of 
 Science, and therefore place him on exactly the same 
 footing as any permanent London teacher with regard 
 to the control of the new university. The Extension 
 teachers are drawn principally from Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, are often not even residents in London, and their 
 chief sympathies would naturally be with their own 
 extension work. I believe that the faculty of Arts would, 
 with the amended charter, be practically under the com- 
 plete control of the Extensionists, and for this reason I 
 assert that the proposals of the London Extension 
 Society can only tend to a degradation of academic stan- 
 dards and ideals. The Council of that Society may be 
 unaware of what the results of their proposals would be 
 were they carried into effect ; but when I am told, as I 
 was the other day, by a great Extension authority, that 
 " what we want is a democratic university in London," 
 and " that the best intellects will always be drafted off 
 to Oxford and Cambridge," then I feel pretty conscious of 
 the danger which a weak university like the Albert Charter 
 proposes to constitute will run, if the Extension be co-ordi- 
 nated loith, but not under it. I believe that a university of 
 real importance in London would take over the organisa- 
 tion and staff of the Extension as it stands ; but that is 
 a completely different matter from admitting a body which 
 has not the highest academic standards to a dominant 
 position in a weak university. 
 
 My letter has run to too great a length already, but I 
 must add a few words as to the shibboleth of a " demo- 
 cratic university " which some of our Extension friends are 
 raising. I am told that I am working for a " class 
 university " and neglecting the " democratic conditions 
 of a democratic age." So far from this being the fact.
 
 88 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 some years ago I carried with some difficulty through the 
 Senate of University College a proposal to annually 
 select a certain number of boys from the Board 
 sohools, give them a secondary education in the College 
 school (if they had not already secondary scholar- 
 ships), and ultimately provide them with an academic 
 education in the College. I wanted thereby to bring the 
 College into touch with the democracy. It is true that 
 this proposal was shelved somewhere between the Council 
 and the School Board ; but none the less it marks what 
 I consider the true democratic side of academic educa- 
 tion, i.e., the drafting into the university of the best 
 intellects of all classes, and giving them that steady per- 
 sistent training which I believe can only be very distantly 
 approximated to by occasional night lectures. Mr. 
 Spencer Hill asks why we cannot have academic teaching 
 at night for that large class ' ' who have to carry on their 
 higher education pari passu with the earning of their 
 daily bread." I reply that there are not two per cent, 
 of men or women who work all the day who are capable 
 of the intellectual exertion required for steady thinking 
 work at night. I am not speaking without some experience 
 of evening audiences and of the extent to which one can 
 profitably tax, not the two per cent., but the average human 
 intellect. I hold that the two per cent, had better at once 
 be drafted by scholarships and sizarships into the regular 
 academic courses. Here is the real point — perhaps two per 
 cent, of Extension students are really capable of the 
 highest work, and they should be especially provided for. 
 The remainder do, no doubt, good work, but it is not 
 academic ; they have not, in many cases, even the 
 secondary education which would enable them to profit 
 by real academic teaching. 
 Lastly, Professor Herford gives a testimonial to the
 
 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION. 89 
 
 Extension Society for the " young women in the London 
 suburbs," who do papers in literature which would not 
 disgrace the Cambridge Mediaeval and Modern Language 
 Tripos. Professor Herford speaks as an examiner. Now I 
 chanced to be a member of the Board of Modern and 
 Mediaeval Languages at Cambridge when the schedule 
 of that Tripos was drawn up, and I remember the battle 
 that was fought in Cambridge on the question whether 
 the modern French and German literatures were to be 
 considered subjects providing a sufficient training for the 
 university to give degrees upon. It was decided in the 
 negative; and I remember how, in particular, the 
 schedule was framed so that a thorough training was 
 demanded in Old High, Middle High and Low German, 
 Gothic or Icelandic. I do not know how far the Tripos 
 has fallen from its high estate since then, but I know 
 what the aim of the Board which di-ew up the original 
 schedule was. The next point is that I have thrice 
 lectured for the University Extension Society on German 
 literature in the London suburbs, and that I have care- 
 fully examined the literature syllabuses of Extension 
 lecturers of recent years. I therefore can with some 
 confidence say that the teaching provided by the Exten- 
 sion Society would not enable any " young woman in 
 the subm^bs " to reach the standard of the Cambridge 
 schedule as we originally laid it down. I believe no 
 instruction in the grammar and philology of the Teutonic 
 languages would attract classes of fifty to one hundred 
 people in the suburbs, but at any rate it has not been 
 attempted. Yet without such instruction I deny the 
 efl&ciency of any education in language, or at any rate 
 its claim to be academic in character. If Professor 
 Herford's young women exhibited, as he says, a high 
 standard of knowledge, I have no doubt he will find on
 
 90 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 investigation that they had received philological train- 
 ing — possibly at Cambridge itself — before enlivening the 
 monotony of suburban life by attending Extension 
 lectures. All praise to the Extension lecturers that they 
 can attract thoughtful and energetic people ; but it does 
 not follow, because they do good work, they are on that 
 account to largely control the future of university educa- 
 tion in London. 
 
 If the " Extensionists " desired to throw out the 
 charter, I for one would work with them ; but they 
 desire to amend an inefficient charter by adding them- 
 selves to it. That is what I term the degradation of the 
 academic ideal in London ; and as Professor Warr has 
 not convinced me that the King's College test (which I 
 not only " fancy I have inspected," but have received in 
 the flesh) is a possibility for a modern university, so Mr. 
 Spencer Hill and Professor Herford fail to persuade me 
 that the " democratic university " of the future will be 
 an enlarged Extension Society. 
 
 [A further defence of the claim of the " University Extension " 
 to be included in the Albert Charter will be found in The Academy, 
 January 16, 1892. But it is too long for insertion here. The 
 following extract from a letter (Tlie Times, February 1, 1892) of 
 Prof. W. Ramsay with regard to the University Extension Movement 
 confirms the views expressed above : — 
 
 " I propose, with your permission, to deal with the opposition 
 from the ' University Extension Society,' on the ground that their 
 students are excluded from Albert University degrees. Supposing 
 the contention to be correct, let us examine their claims. The so- 
 called University Extension undertakes to supply lectures to 
 districts in which there is a demand for instruction. To create 
 such a demand, a short course of popular lectures (say three) is 
 delivered in the district; voting papers are distributed among the 
 audience, certain available subjects being specified ; and the 
 subject of the course is determined by the number of votes. The 
 local arrangements and the payment of a stipulated sum to the 
 lecturer are undertaken by a local committee. When the course,
 
 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION. 91 
 
 usually consisting of ten lectures, is over, the subject of the next 
 course is again determined by popular vote. This vote may be in 
 favour of a continuation course, or may demand a course on a 
 totally different subject. The students attend a class held after 
 each lecture, and may be examined if they wish by an outside 
 examiner at the end of each course. Tliose who pass a certain 
 standard receive certificates. These courses are given in various 
 districts of London, and at different hours of day and evening ; 
 hence the audience consists of two distinct social classes, one class 
 represented chiefly by ladies and school-children, the other by 
 clerks and employes in offices and shops. The cost of the lectures 
 is defrayed by the lecture tickets and by local subscriptions ; the 
 expenses of management by a central fund, also dependent on 
 voluntary effort. Whether the scheme does good is not the ques- 
 tion ; whether it is university work is doubtful, and for the follow- 
 ing reasons :—{!) The nature of the course is decided by popular 
 vote, and hence their sequence may be (and usually is) without 
 meaning. (2) Certain studies require preliminary knowledge of 
 mathematics and languages ; no attempt is made to insure such 
 preliminary knowledge in the audience, and hence almost all 
 science subjects must be taught in the most elementary fashion . 
 (3) The lecturers have to show their capacity by attracting num- 
 bers, and hence they are necessarily selected from among good 
 popular lecturers ; if they do not succeed in tickling the popular 
 fancy they are failures, however capable otherwise. (4) It is rare 
 for a large number of an audience to succeed so well in mastering 
 the beginnings of a subject so as to acquire a sufficient voice to 
 influence the decision for the next course. 
 
 " In stimulating intelligent curiosity, in directing reading, 
 and in pointing the way to some more continuous method of 
 instruction, such courses are useful, but at present, whatever may 
 be done in the future, they are not university teaching. This is 
 acknowledged by many of those who ought to know best — viz., 
 by several members of their joint board, who appoint lecturers and 
 superintend examination, and also by many of their lecturers to 
 whom I have spoken. 
 
 " I conclude that the university extension courses are of a kind 
 inadequate for degrees ; that there is no guarantee of preliminary 
 training ; that they are in most cases too elementary, in others too 
 special, for the purpose."]
 
 X.— SIE GEOEGE YOUNG'S DEFENCE 
 
 OF THE TEST 
 
 AND OF THE ALBERT CHARTER. 
 
 I. — First Letter of Sir George Young.''' 
 
 London, Jan. 12, 1892. 
 I DO not propose to follow Professor Karl Pearson and 
 Mr. Spencer Hill in the discussion of the objections they 
 have raised, from points of view diametrically opposite, 
 to the constitution which has been settled for the new 
 Teaching University in London. Professor Pearson's 
 plan, for a German University governed by a committee 
 of professors appointed by the Crown, and Mr. Hill's, for 
 a congeries of educational institutions of all sorts, with 
 examinations for degrees open to the world, or at all 
 events to all the attendants on lectures in any of them, 
 have both been for years under discussion, and have been 
 advocated, no doubt, by high authorities. But where 
 Professor Eay Lankester, on the one hand, and Sir 
 Edward Fry on the other, have already failed, it is improb- 
 able that Professor Pearson and Mr. Hill would succeed. 
 Indeed, the one practical point evident is, that each 
 would do his utmost to defeat the proposals of the other. 
 The purport of what follows is rather — following out 
 the ideas of Professor Herford's able paper — to point out 
 some of the fields of work which may be occupied by the 
 new University, and to invite through the medium of The 
 Academy, their consideration by experts, with a view to their 
 
 * The Academy, January 16, 1892.
 
 SIR GEORGE YOUNg's VIEWS. 93 
 
 approach by the future administrators of the University, 
 with as much previous consideration as possible, and with 
 the least possible delay. I do not gather that Professor 
 Herford, in echoing some of the objections made by others, 
 speaks from a personal study of the Charter ; and I 
 believe that a careful examination of it will show him 
 that ample provision has been made for the developments 
 which he advocates, and for others as well. With the 
 misapprehension under which Mr. Hill and others labour 
 in regard to the provision made by the Charter for Uni- 
 versity Extension, I propose to deal in the forthcoming 
 number of TJie University Extension Journal. 
 
 The first care of the administrators of the University, 
 after taking in hand the cui'ricula for the faculties of Arts, 
 Science, and Medicine, will probably be the formation of 
 the faculty of Law. The Lords of the Council disapproved 
 of the proposal that this should be postponed, and 
 required the matter to be taken in hand at once. Sir 
 Horace Davey has moved the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn 
 to vote £100,000* towards the establishment of such a 
 faculty in the University. If this motion is carried, or if 
 it is decided that the present school of law of the Inns of 
 Court should apply for admission as a " College of Law " 
 in the University, the question will be on the way to 
 receive a satisfactory solution. Some considerable de- 
 velopment or subdivision will be required of the chairs 
 at present existing in the school of law of the Inns of 
 Court ; and the school of the Incorporated Law Society 
 should be, beyond question, amalgamated with it. Chairs 
 for branches of legal study which are less intimately 
 
 * [The writer was probably unaware that, so far from Lincoln's 
 Inn having £100,000 to dispose of, it was only two or three years 
 ago, by the Report of the Royal Commission, more than a third of 
 this sum in debt. — K. P.]
 
 94 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 connected with the practice of the profession may be 
 estabhshed either in this school or at one or both of the 
 University Colleges, at each of which, in fact, there have 
 always existed two or three chairs of Law. But duplica- 
 tion of chairs should in this, as in other matters, be as 
 far as possible avoided, until the growth of the school 
 renders it impossible for one professor to do all the work. 
 It is hoped that the endowment left by the late Mr. 
 Justice Quain may shortly be made available for a chair 
 of Comparative Law. 
 
 The evidence given by Professor E. Stuart Poole before 
 the Eoyal Commission points to the establishment in the 
 University of a school of archaeology in close connection 
 with the British Museum. The Yates Professorship at 
 University College, the best endowed chair it possesses, 
 has ever since its establishment been held by officials of 
 the Museum ; and the present holder, who has generously 
 devoted the revenues of the chair to the strengthening of 
 the school by the employment of readers, at his own 
 expense, in different branches of the study, has given a 
 signal example of the spirit in which the leading teachers 
 of London are prepared to approach the work of founding 
 the University. 
 
 Another development that has been suggested is an 
 " Ecole des Chartes" in connection with the Eecord 
 Office. The almost traditional connection of the chair of 
 History at King's College with the Eecord Office seems 
 to point to King's College as a suitable locality for this 
 school. 
 
 A fourth branch of University activity will, perhaps, 
 be the training of teachers, for which the two great day 
 schools of University College and King's College are 
 ready to supply the place of normal schools. No better 
 qualified founder could be selected than the head master
 
 THE KELIGIOUS TEST. 95 
 
 of University College School, who is also Dean ot the 
 College of Preceptors. 
 
 Other similar suggestions might be noticed : but what 
 precedes is enough to show the spirit in which these and 
 others are likely to be received. Let me, in conclusion, 
 ask your readers to be on their guard against a mis- 
 apprehension. The charter as settled is not the 
 University ; it is not even the foundation of the University 
 in any educational sense. It is a general commission to 
 the administrators of it to go forward and make the 
 University : it is a skeleton constitution for its ad- 
 ministrative and consultative bodies, and a collection of 
 restrictions imposed, for various reasons, upon its action. 
 The work of the promoters, in which they have had a 
 considerable measure of success, has been to keep the 
 Commission as general, the constitution as simple, 
 and the restrictions as unimportant as possible. The 
 initiative in educational matters is reserved for members 
 of the educational profession, engaged, not in education 
 generally, but in University education ; and organised, 
 not on the basis of separate institutions, but of separate 
 faculties. The governing power is reserved to a single 
 body carefully composed, on which no institution or 
 interest will have an absolute majority, and on which 
 experts, engaged in the actual work of the University, 
 will have sufficient representation, and considerable 
 voting power. The conditions under which University 
 teaching is now given in London have been accepted, and 
 the best has been made of them. Scope is given for 
 alteration, both in the educational and in the institutional 
 arrangements ; and the two great colleges which did the 
 whole of the work of promoting the charter have con- 
 tented themselves with an infinitesimal share of direct 
 power in the University. Let those w^ho cavil suggest
 
 96 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 their own plans, if they please ; but they will find it 
 difficult, at this stage, to suggest any which have not 
 already been fully considered, and rejected on their 
 merits, in favour of the plan as settled. May it be hoped 
 that The Academy will, in future, take a more kindly 
 interest than is represented by Professor Pearson's 
 articles in that which will be, in the course of a few 
 weeks, the " University in and for London." 
 
 George Young. 
 
 II. — Eeply to Sir George Young's First Letter.* 
 
 London, Jan. 16, 1892. 
 
 Sir George Young is an excellent strategist, or he 
 certainly would not have carried the Albert Charter so 
 far as he has done. Yet I do not think the readers of 
 The Academy are likely to be misled by the " red herring " 
 he seeks to draw across the track of the opposition. Let 
 us discuss, he says in effect, the possibilities of the new 
 charter — for the Albert University, be it for good or bad, 
 will "in the course of a few weeks be the university in 
 and for London." I believe that, for good or bad, the 
 will, not of the Privy Council, but of the House of 
 Commons is the suprema lex of this country ; and, as 
 Liverpool, Manchester, and Leeds are speaking out 
 strongly and unitedly against the charter, it has still a 
 crisis to pass through, which I do not stand alone in 
 hoping may prove fatal to its present form. 
 
 Sir George Young does not attempt to meet the strong 
 arguments raised against the charter, namely : 
 
 (1) That it destroys the catholicity of learning by in- 
 troducing a religious test into university life. 
 
 (2) That it gives the university no control over the 
 
 * The Acadeviy, January 23, 1892.
 
 SIR GEORGE YOUNG's DEFENCE. 97 
 
 appointment or dismissal of its teachers, but leaves these 
 powers, as well as the charge of laboratories, libraries, 
 Sec. in the hands of independent and largely unacademic 
 bodies, whose actions {c.[/., in the ejection as a teacher 
 of F. D. Mam-ice, and in the rejection as a student o 
 Miss Bradlaugh) have not invariably inspired confidence. 
 
 (3) That it does not create a university which, either 
 by its dignity or its command of funds, will attract the 
 best men to the metropolis. 
 
 (4) That, briefly, it creates a new examining body, but 
 not a university worthy of the capital of a great empire. 
 
 Instead of meeting these arguments. Sir George Young 
 holds out as a counterblast what good things the 
 administrators of the new university propose to do. 
 He tells us what the " first care of the administrators 
 of the university " will be. As these administrators, 
 with the exception of the Principal of King's College 
 and the President of University College, are unnamed 
 in the charter, and are at present undetermined, it is 
 somewhat early in the day to settle what their " first 
 care" will be. Only a few weeks ago, when some of the 
 promoters of the new university talked (presumably for 
 tactical purposes) about M.D. degrees being granted to 
 licentiates of the Eoyal Colleges on the result of a 
 purely medical examination, they were brought to book 
 by the remark that " promoters " and " administrators " 
 are not necessarily identical. Sir George Young, therefore, 
 can only talk at present about what he, as a promoter, 
 ho2)es the new university will do. Let us see the advan- 
 tages which are to counterbalance the vital defects under 
 which the charter suffers. In the first place, we are told, 
 curricitla y^iU be settled for the faculties of Arts, Science, 
 and Medicine. In other words, the first problem is 7iot 
 the selection of efficient teachers and the provision of 
 
 G
 
 98 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 proper equipment for their teaching, but the determina- 
 tion of the schedules upon which the university proposes 
 to grant degrees. No statement could more clearly 
 bring out the fact that the new university is essentially an 
 examining and not a teaching institution. Sir George 
 Young's next remarks apply to the faculty of law. 
 Here, I think, so far as he speaks of the Inns of Court, 
 he is building castles in the air. In the first place, I do 
 not believe there is any disposition on the part of the 
 benchers of those Inns to see their school of law 
 absorbed into the Albert University ; and, in the second 
 place, it would be a mistaken policy if they did. The 
 Inns of Court are professional bodies and largely draw 
 their students from Oxford and Cambridge ; the graduates 
 of those Universities will hardly consent to stand after 
 their academic course in a worse position than under- 
 graduates in the faculty of law of the Albert 
 University. In other words, the school of law of the 
 Inns of Court must be postgraduate and national, and 
 not undergraduate and local. I do not imagine that the 
 graduates of Oxford and Cambridge would readily become 
 students of the Albert University, even if it were a more 
 dignified institution than it promises to be. As to Sir 
 Horace Davy's £100,000 scheme, I see no reason why the 
 benchers of Lincoln's Inn should feel more enthusiastically 
 for the Albert University than for a University based on 
 a sounder academic ideal. 
 
 Turning next to archaeology. Sir George Young cites 
 the excellent work which Professor R. Stuart Poole has 
 been doing at University College. He does not state, how- 
 ever, that this has been done without the incentive of the 
 Albert University, but he does casually give the real 
 reason why a strong man has been able to do it — namely, 
 because his chair is the "best endowed in University
 
 SIR GEORGE YOUNG 8 DEFENCE. 9 
 
 College." Sir George Youug ought rather to have told 
 us how the Albert University will enable the holders of 
 many other chairs not thus endowed to rise above the 
 level of overworked and underpaid academic drudges. 
 He does not explain how the new examining body will 
 hold out to scholars and scientists London posts in the 
 least comparable wuth the professorial chairs of Berlin 
 or Edinburgh ; nor how it will save a mentally and 
 physically overwrought teacher from despair, if he has 
 to take a six months' rest. What inducement does it 
 offer to a sane man to retain, if he can possibly help it, 
 a chair in London ? 
 
 Lastly, I may refer to Sir George Young's proposed 
 historical school in connection with King's College. He 
 does not hint that the teachers in this new school would, 
 until King's College be reformed, be compelled to take a 
 religious test, and would further be appointed by a 
 denominational body quite independent of the university. 
 Nor even with teachers so appointed does he show how 
 the new university would hinder Oxford from robbing 
 King's College of historians like Professor S. R. Gardiner, 
 and of economists like Professor F. Y. Edgeworth. 
 
 I have said enough, perhaps, to indicate that there is 
 nothing in Sir George Young's letter to induce the ojppo- 
 nents of the charter to relax for one moment their efforts 
 to procure its rejection or modification. His schemes, 
 however good in themselves, are not peculiar to the 
 Albert Charter. Should the rejection of that charter be 
 frustrated by a practically party vote of the House of 
 Commons, then it will be time enough to try and make 
 the best of a very bad business. 
 
 Mr. Spencer Hill will, I hope, not think me discourteous, 
 if I say that for the time being Sir George Young's
 
 100 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 strategy seems more dangerous to the academic future of 
 London than even University Extension run wild. 
 
 Kael Pearson. 
 III. — Sir George Young's Second Letter.* 
 
 London, Jan. 26, 1892. 
 I will give Professor Pearson an answer to his " strong 
 arguments," not because he is an authority on matters 
 of administration, but because he is a distinguished 
 scholar, and a valued teacher of University College. It 
 must, however, be short, and I must take the liberty of 
 ignoring his acrid rhetoric. 
 
 He says (1) " that the charter destroys the catholicity 
 of learning (!) by introducing a religious test into uni- 
 versity life." Negatur. The introduction of religious 
 tests into University life is a matter of long standing ; 
 no new or additional element of the kind is introduced 
 by the charter into the university life of London, and 
 the influence of the University as constituted may be 
 expected to operate in the contrary direction. (2) "That 
 it gives the University no control over the appointment 
 or dismissal of its teachers, but, &c." Various means 
 are adopted in different universities to ensure the ap- 
 pointment of fit persons as professors, and it is by no 
 means necessary that these appointments should lie with 
 the principal governing body. Although there is no 
 provision that this body may dismiss Professor Pearson, it 
 would not be without means of inducing him to withdraw, 
 if [per impossihile) he should fail of efficiency in the duties 
 of his chair. (3) " That the University will not have 
 the dignity or command of funds to attract the best men 
 to the metropolis." Dignity is matter of opinion ; funds 
 cannot be provided by charter; indirectly the charter 
 will operate beneficially in both respects, (4) " That 
 * The Academy, January 30, 1892.
 
 SIR GEORGE YOUNG'S DEFENCE. 101 
 
 it creates a new examining body, but not, &c." A new 
 system of examination it was intended to create, on 
 principles opposed to those of the separate examining 
 University ; but it also creates a good deal more, as has 
 been sufficiently shown in The Academy. 
 
 It does not seem to me necessary that I should answer 
 your correspondent who considers that " the more diverse 
 the objections made against an adminstrative proposal, 
 the stronger becomes the argument against it." I took 
 my description of the plan I supposed him to be 
 advocating from the document formally communicated 
 by the University Extension Society to the Council of 
 University College. It consisted of amendments to the 
 charter, the practical effect of which I have given, I 
 believe, with exactness. What the effect may be of the 
 proposals made in Mr. Hill's last letter,* I cannot 
 undertake to discuss, since they are not stated with 
 sufficient accuracy for adminstrative purposes ; but in 
 practice they would probably work out to the same 
 general effect. George Young. 
 
 IV. Eeply to Sir George Young's Second LETTER.t 
 
 London, Jan. 30, 1892. 
 A FEW last words, and, so far as I am concerned, this 
 controversy must close. Sir George Y'oung is not the 
 first person to mistake the bitter logic of facts for " acrid 
 rhetoric," and I fear he will learn too late that the wise 
 "administrator" would have bent before the coming 
 storm. Had the promoters of the charter admitted its 
 defects, we might have seen Parliament petitioning Her 
 
 * This letter is not reprinted (see The Academy, Januarj- 23, 
 
 1892), as it again deals solely with the claims of the University 
 
 Extension and the minor institutions for night teaching. What 
 
 needs to be said on this point will be found in our Chapters ii. and ix. 
 
 1 The Academy, February G, 1892.
 
 102 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 Majesty not to grant the charter unless it be substantially 
 modified. But when one of them writes that the " intro- 
 duction of religious tests into university life is a matter 
 of long standing ; no new or additional element of this 
 kind is introduced by the charter into the university life 
 of Loudon " ; then it is clear that all Parliament can be 
 urged to do is to condemn unconditionally a charter 
 whose promoters have not greater insight into modern 
 needs than is expressed by these sentences. 
 
 Sir George Young must surely believe that academic 
 life has a clearly marked growth, and that surviving 
 types are practically the fittest for the wants of the age. 
 In founding a new university, are we not to be guided by 
 the experience of the past ? Now, the origin of tests in 
 the older universities was, as Sir William Hamilton has 
 shown, a product of that mastery of the colleges over 
 the university which reduced Oxford and Cambridge in 
 the second quarter of this century to a nigh impotent 
 condition so far as learning was concerned. The amazing 
 growth of these two universities in the last twenty years 
 — their rebirth, so to speak — is chiefly due to the re- 
 asserfcion by the university of its true position, to its largely 
 taking upon itself the work of teaching, and its gradual 
 reduction of the colleges to a subordinate position. The 
 passing of the University Tests Act, 1871, fitly marks the be- 
 ginning of the new epoch. That Act freed learning from the 
 trammels of any kind of dogma ; and only those who know 
 the private opinions of Oxford and Cambridge scholars 
 can judge how many of the most distinguished teachers 
 and researchers at present in those universities would 
 have been excluded by the ancient regime. Hitherto there 
 has been no university life in London ; a movement has 
 been started to create it, and when a charter is drafted 
 which allows a test to be administered to half the
 
 SIR GEORGE YOUNG's DEFENCE. 103 
 
 teachers in the Faculties of Science and Arts, we are 
 told that " the introduction of religious tests into univer- 
 sity life is a matter of long standing." Yes, just as long 
 standing as the mastery of the colleges over the university 
 at Oxford or Cambridge ! The granting of monopolies 
 by the Crown is also "of long standing," but both 
 monopolies and religious tests have disappeared from 
 modern life ; and Sir George Young will find it hard to 
 cite the case of any first-class university — outside Eussia 
 — where tests are imposed, except in the faculty of 
 theology ! To re-introduce them is contrary to all the 
 progress of the last twenty years, and certainly will 
 introduce a "new and additional element," — i.e., one 
 which exists nowhere else — into London university life. 
 A college estabhshed for denominational purposes may, 
 of course, set what tests it pleases ; but if it does so, it 
 cannot form a fit body to make appointments to a 
 university staff. Yet such it is according to Sir George 
 Young ! "To ensure the appointment of fit persons as 
 professors," he writes, "it is by no means necessary that 
 these appointments should lie with the principal govern- 
 ing body." Perhaps not; but the history of the older 
 universities sufficiently indicates that it is fatal to the 
 university to be absolutely controlled by its colleges in 
 this or any other respect. 
 
 A greater administrative authority than appears among 
 the promoters of this charter, a man ripe in academic 
 experience and having the history of university life at 
 his fingers' ends — I mean Sir William Hamilton — states 
 the following among principles which " have been 
 universally and exclusively approved in practice. Pre- 
 cisely as they have been purely and thoroughly applied, 
 have universities always risen to distinction ; precisely 
 as they have been neglected or reserved, have universities
 
 104 THE NE^V UNIVERSITY. 
 
 always sunk into contempt," viz., " nothing tends more 
 directly to lower, in the eyes of the patron and of the 
 public, the importance of an academical patronage, 
 consequently nothing tends more to enervate and turn 
 off the credit or discredit attached to its acts, and to 
 weaken the sense of responsibility felt in its discharge, 
 than the right of appointing professors in general, or, 
 still more, of appointing to individual chairs, being 
 thrown in as an accidental, and consequently a minor, 
 duty, to be lightly performed by functionaries not chosen 
 as competent to this particular duty, but constituted for 
 a wholly different purpose. But with its patronage is 
 naturally conjoined, as an inferior function, the general 
 superintendence of a university ; academical curators 
 and patrons should, in fact, be the same." 
 
 Sir George Young's scheme divorces them and places 
 the patronage in the hands of the college councils, bodies 
 " constituted for a wholly different purpose." The 
 interests of the colleges and the university will not be 
 at one, and the former will have the mastery. 
 
 Let me point tliis out clearly. I and eighty per cent- 
 of my collegiate colleagues were appointed for certain 
 duties which we may or may not undertake efficiently. 
 Those duties involve teaching of a very laborious and 
 elementary kind, much of which is not at all academic 
 in character. Now this eighty per cent, of teachers is 
 thrust without further ado on the new university. We 
 may or may not do our collegiate work with profit to our 
 students, but what is quite clear is that neither by 
 scientific nor literary reputation are we the type of men 
 that the university of the capital, if it were worthy of 
 he nation, would select as its teachers. The other 
 twenty per cent, shall pass muster. Is the university to 
 " nduce us to withdraw " ? If it does, it may get more
 
 SIR GEORGE YOUNG's DEFENCE. 105 
 
 distinguished men, but such men will haixlly undertake 
 the elementary collegiate teaching. At the very outset, 
 if the Albert Charter were to be granted, the interests of 
 the colleges and of the university would clash, and it is 
 the latter which would go to the wall. I again assert 
 that a university of w^hich eighty per cent, of the teachers 
 are below the true standard of a great metropolitan 
 university must be wanting in dignity. Its teachers 
 will live for the colleges and not for the university. I 
 agree with Sir George Young that a charter cannot 
 directly provide funds, but I assert that it can directly 
 control, if wisely drafted the expenditure of existing 
 funds. One of the great defects of London higher teaching 
 is the competition of rival institutions, which squander on 
 duplicate professorships, and on two or three small labora- 
 tories, what ought to provide a single efficient teacher and 
 at first-class equipment. There is nothing in the new 
 charter which will prevent this in the future. It distinctly 
 asserts that the colleges are to be completely autonomous. 
 Finally, Sir George Young admits that the funda- 
 mental feature of the new university is the creation of 
 a new examining body. He adds that it also creates a 
 good deal more, "as has been sufficiently shown in the 
 Academy.'" He must assume that the readers of the 
 Academy are all using his own roseate magnif5'ing glasses. 
 The history, if not of the next few weeks, then of the 
 next few years, will, I fear, show him that universities 
 cannot be created without regard to the experience of 
 the past, the wants of the present, or the probable de- 
 velopment of the future. Karl Pearson. 
 
 The above letters indicate how absolutely Sir George Young has 
 failed to demonstrate that the institution of a test in a modern 
 University is consonant with the spirit of the age. They also show 
 that until the Charter is modified so as to give the University con- 
 trol over the appointment of its teachers, it is hopeless to look upon 
 the new University as fulfilling in any way the conditions for 
 healthy future development.
 
 XI.— IS A NEW UNIVEESITY EEALLY 
 WANTED IN LONDON?- 
 
 The answer to this question depends entirely on how we 
 define the word University . If we mean by the word a 
 corporation for examining and granting degrees, the 
 answer can only be no. We do not want another degree- 
 granting body, except in so far as degree-granting is, 
 owing to popular prejudice, a sine qua non of academic 
 training. 
 
 Now there exist in the United Kingdom four classes of 
 corporations styled " universities " — namely, (1) the 
 body in which the teaching and examining are both 
 carried on by the university itself — this is the essential 
 feature of the Scottish universities ; (2) the body which 
 carries on the examining, and not only gives no control- 
 ling voice to teachers, but is practically indifferent as to 
 their existence — to this type belongs the so-called 
 University of London ; (3) the body which solely 
 examines, but which allows the teachers of certain 
 colleges to largely control the schedules of examination 
 — this is the essential feature of the Victoria University ; 
 (4) the body which both teaches and examines, but 
 allows much of the work of teaching to be conducted by 
 colleges over which it has comparatively small control — 
 this is the peculiar characteristic of Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge. In these universities, however, the teaching is 
 falling more and more into the hands of the lecturers 
 
 * The Tall Mall Gazette, February 1, 1892.
 
 IS IT REALLY WANTED ? 107 
 
 and professors appointed by the University, and the 
 work of the colleges is being more and more confined to 
 the lower grades of academic instruction. 
 
 Now the university of type (2) is already provided for 
 in London, and the university of type (4) may be said 
 to be impracticable. To constitute a new institution 
 with fully equipped laboratories and a staff of professors 
 and lecturers adequate to a metropolitan university, at 
 the same time relegating the colleges in London to the 
 lower grades of academic work, may be said to be 
 financially impossible, if it were not also financially un- 
 sound. It would be to simply waste, instead of to turn 
 to a better account, the large endowments both in 
 buildings and funds of the two London university 
 colleges. These colleges do not correspond to Oxford 
 and Cambridge colleges ; in both laboratories and 
 libraries they are equipped on the scale of small 
 universities, and many of their professorial endowments 
 would form the substantial nuclei of stipends which 
 would retain for London the best teachers in many fields. 
 The crucial question, therefore, in the founding of a new 
 university is : What is the best use which London can 
 make of the existing endowments and equipments which, 
 so far from belonging to private associations, are really 
 as much national as the endowments of Oxford and 
 Cambridge ? 
 
 Thus of the types of university in this country, we 
 have the Victoria and the Scottish types as the only 
 possible models for a London university. The former 
 is the mistaken plan upon which the promoters and 
 drafters of the Albert Charter have worked. The Victoria 
 University is essentially an examining board — in part, it 
 is true, controlled by teachers, but having no feature of 
 resemblance whatever to what any intelligent foreigner
 
 108 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 would understand by the term " university." It allows 
 practically complete autonomy to its colleges, and it has 
 absolutely no control over the appointment of teachers, or 
 the proper equipment of laboratories. It is solely local 
 patriotism which maintains a high standard of teaching 
 in Manchester, Liverpool, or Leeds, and this local 
 patriotism is for the present entirely wanting in London. 
 No newspaper fosters it ; scarcely a single writer speaks 
 without a sneer of the London teaching bodies. The 
 Albert Charter has closely followed the scheme of the 
 Victoria University in preserving the autonomy of all the 
 colleges to be now or hereafter admitted to the new 
 university. It leaves in the hands of councils — which 
 are uncontrolled by the light of any well-informed or 
 really interested public opinion — the selection of the 
 principal teachers in the faculties of arts and science. 
 It leaves to the university itself no authority over the 
 colleges which might hinder a suicidal competition for 
 students, or prevent these colleges from rivalling each 
 other by the construction of small laboratories in prefer- 
 ence to united effort at specialisation and localisation. 
 It is not even, so far as the two colleges are concerned, 
 an attempt at organising, economising, and strengthening 
 teaching efficience. Like the Victoria University, it 
 largely frees certain groups of teachers from the control 
 of an alien examining body, but it makes no provision 
 that the teachers thus freed shall be worthy of a metro- 
 politan university. So long as the Albert Uuiversity is 
 looked upon as a mere examining body. Sir George 
 Young and its promoters can speak lightly of the question 
 of the test at King's College (see Sir George Young's 
 letter to The Daily Neios, January 18). Stonyhurst 
 College, he tells us, might even now seek admission to 
 the Victoria University. An examining board has only
 
 IS IT REALLY WANTED ? 109 
 
 to be impartial to all classes of examinees, and there has 
 been no suggestion as yet that the King's College con- 
 tingent of examiners would be other than absolutely 
 just in this matter. But if we are dealing with a 
 teaching and not an examining university, snch as the 
 promoters assert the Albert Charter will constitute, then 
 the existence of a religious test is an all-important 
 matter. It excludes in all cases nearly one-half of the 
 available candidates, and in many cases the best men. 
 From the educational standpoint, then, the test is 
 absolutely unacceptable. Either the Albert Univers ty 
 is to be a teaching university — and then it starts hope- 
 lessly handicapped — or it is purely an examining board, 
 in which case it will release Gower- street and the 
 Strand from that "old man of the sea," Burlington 
 House, but will not in the least have supplied the need 
 for a genuine university in London. The model o the 
 Victoria University must be futile in London, where the 
 constituent colleges are closely situated competing institu- 
 tions, which are to remain absolutely autonomous — tha 
 is, without any central control which would insist upon 
 an economy of staff and of laboratory equipment. Thus 
 we are finally left with the model of the Scottish 
 University as the only known British type of University 
 which seems feasible in London. Do we want such a 
 University in the metropolis^ and if so how can it best 
 be reached ? 
 
 In the first place, what would such a university do 
 for the taught ? To answer this we must know who are 
 likely to be the students. The Standard tells us that the 
 London undergraduate " must ever be a stranger to the 
 joys and the inspiration of University life." The young 
 men who want a liberal education in the conventional 
 sense "go to Oxford or Cambridge, and show their
 
 110 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 sagacity in so doing so." Now the views thus expressed 
 are essentially those of a class — the class whose pecuniary 
 means enable it to send its sons and daughters to the 
 banks of the Cam or Isis. There are many parents with 
 incomes not admitting of this who wish to give their 
 children an academic education while they live more 
 economically at home. It may be asserted that all the 
 intellect of this class which would profit by a university 
 training is really drafted by scholarships and sizarships 
 into the older Universities. But this is very far from the 
 fact. In the first place, to gain an Oxford or Cambridge 
 cholarship generally means an expensive preliminary 
 education ; and, in the next place, some of the best minds 
 only develop under academic training itself, and are often 
 deadened by the preliminary cramming for examinations. 
 The strong intellect, like the strong tree, is often slowest 
 in its growth. In a city of five millions there must be 
 enough of this class to people a university on the largest 
 scale. The traditions of this class are not those of Oxford 
 and Cambridge, they are far more those of the lads who 
 flock to the Scottish universities ; they are the class who 
 will have to work for their living, and no teachers, how- 
 ever good, will be thrown away upon them. To these 
 students ought in practice to be added the best intellects 
 from the Board schools by supplementing the present 
 system of secondary scholarships by a further system of 
 bursaries to the metropolitan university. Ab matters 
 stand at present, all lads seeking to follow a professional 
 career find their progress aided by the possession of a 
 degree, even if it be only the examination stamp of Burl- 
 ington House. The pursuit of this degree drives them 
 from the more original and independent teacher to the 
 current text book or coach. The essential need of the 
 London student is therefore access to good teachers with
 
 IS IT REALLY WANTED ? Ill 
 
 full equipment of teaching ; but, owing to the social value 
 at present (perhaps erroneously) set upon degrees, it is 
 needful that contact with a first-class teacher should 
 not handicap a student for his degree-examination. Hence 
 the first need of a real university for London is to pro- 
 cure good teachers and to free them from the control of 
 an alien examining body. 
 
 This is the want of London from the standpoint of the 
 taught. From the standpoint of the teacher, on the 
 other hand, London offers more than any other city in 
 England. It has the best libraries, the most complete 
 museums, the most extensive historical collections of 
 perhaps any city in the world ; it is the seat of the 
 principal learned societies, and is the centre of English 
 intellectual and artistic life. It offers the possibility of 
 as good a circle of students as the Scottish universities, 
 and students less fettered by traditions of class and of 
 conduct than the older English universities. It would 
 be to the advantage of London to draw to itself the 
 leading teachers in all branches of science and literatm^e ; 
 it would be to the advantage of such teachers to be 
 located there. On both grounds a new university is 
 wanted in London ; one that will bring the best men to 
 London, and will place them in a position to do their 
 best work free from the control of any alien examining 
 body. The sole type of university which appears capable 
 of accomplishing this is a professorial university on the 
 Scottish or German lines, but such a university the 
 Albert Charter wholly fails to create. Instead of pro- 
 viding for the necessarily gradual absorption of the 
 colleges into the university, it leaves their autonomy 
 intact, and creates solely a representative examining 
 body on the lines of che Victoria University. Not the 
 representation of a number of independent and only
 
 112 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 partially efficiently equipped institutions, but their ab- 
 sorption into a new, more comprehensive, and better 
 organised scheme, must be the final goal of academic 
 reform in London. It may be quite impossible to fore- 
 cast a future when medical education in London will be, 
 even on the purely theoretical side, carried on with due 
 regard to economy and efficiency of both plant and 
 teachers. The medical faculty must be treated as some- 
 thing si(? (jeneria for long years to come, but in the faculties 
 of arts and science no charter can be efficient which does 
 not pave the way to the ultimate absorption of the 
 colleges by the university. The keynote to this absorp- 
 tion is the appointment by the university of all professors 
 and lecturers. Here it is that the religious test at King's 
 College at present blocks the way of all progress. Here 
 it is that the x\lbert Charter offers from the educational 
 standpoint no hope of a better future.
 
 XII.— WHAT 18 TO BE DONE NOW?* 
 
 At first sight it might seem that the sole thing now to 
 be done is to persuade ParHament to petition against the 
 charter and to successfully crush it. The opposition to 
 the charter has been increasing so rapidly during the last 
 few weeks that there is small doubt of the feasibility of 
 checkmating Sir George Young's project. But those who 
 do not desire, like the Convocation of the University of 
 London, to defeat all schemes for academic reform in 
 London ought to remember two things. First, that the 
 possibility of any scheme whatever being carried in the 
 immediate future depends very much on how the Albert 
 Charter is crushed ; and, secondly, that when a move- 
 ment is in full swing it requires far less expenditure of 
 energy to guide it into new channels than to stop it and 
 set it going again. It is important, therefore, that 
 Parliament should not merely petition her Majesty not 
 to grant the charter, but should petition her Majesty not 
 to grant the charter until certain modifications have been 
 made in it which may render the new university worthier 
 of the name it is to bear, and more capable of satisfying 
 the wants of her Majesty's loyal subjects in London. 
 With this end in view, we may briefly consider the modi- 
 fications which would render the Albert Charter, not that 
 of a model metropolitan university, but that of an insti- 
 tution capable of being developed along true lines of 
 academic progress. We can the better consider these 
 
 * The Pall Mall Gazette, February 2, 1892. 
 
 H
 
 114 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 modifications, if we deal briefly with the different sides 
 from which objections have been raised to the charter. 
 These are the following : — 
 
 (1) The opponents of all religious tests in a modern 
 university. 
 
 (2) Non-metropolitan corporations granting medical 
 degrees. 
 
 (3) Educationalists in and outside London. 
 
 (4) The Convocation of the University of London. 
 
 (5) The " University Extensionists." 
 
 I. — The Eeligious Test. 
 The opposition to the Albert Charter, arising from the 
 fact that it gives a large share in the control of the 
 university to a denominational college, is not only the 
 most serious from the Parliamentary standpoint, but, as 
 we have seen in the first part of this article, is one of the 
 chief educational defects of the proposed university. 
 There is but one way in which it can be met, and the 
 future of academic life in London largely depends on 
 King's College and the promoters of the Charter being 
 catholic enough to accept a fundamental modification of 
 the kind about to be suggested. The only admissible 
 principle is that no post in any college of the proposed 
 university which inso facto makes its holder a member of 
 the assembly of a faculty can be subjected to any 
 religious test whatever. In applying this principle, how- 
 ever, to the present condition of affairs some grace might 
 well be shown to the difficulties into which it would force 
 King's College. Any favour, however, shown to that 
 institution must be such as not permanently to handicap 
 the future of the university. The modification might 
 accordingly be framed in somewhat the following 
 manner : — On and after the first constitution of the
 
 WHAT IS TO BE DOXE ? 115 
 
 assemblies of the faculties the application of any test to 
 future candidates for a college appointment in the 
 faculties of arts, laws, science, and medicine shall dis- 
 qualify the holder of that post for membership of any of 
 these faculties. Such a modification would give time 
 to King's College to alter its constitution, while it would 
 permit of that college subjecting its Professors of Divinity 
 to any religious test that might seem in keeping with the 
 principles upon which the college has been founded and 
 supported. As the faculty of divinity by the charter 
 remains for the present, and probably for the future, in 
 abeyance, the denominational element would thus be 
 excluded from any present or ultimate preponderance in 
 the chief faculties. 
 
 II. — The Question of Medical Degrees. 
 The opposition of the Victoria University and other 
 degree-granting corporations to the Albert Charter has 
 been entirely created by a very foolish bid on the part of 
 certain promoters of the charter for the support of the 
 non-graduate section of the medical profession. This bid 
 consisted in an oiifer of an M.D. degree to licentiates of 
 the Royal Colleges on the basis of a medical examination 
 pure and simple, and without attendance at the scientific 
 courses of study which may be described as preliminaries 
 to the M.B. degree. Nothing more mistaken could well 
 have been suggested, and it was hardly to be wondered 
 at that it called forth a strong protest from other degree- 
 granting bodies. Luckily a very small modification in 
 the charter ought to suffice to appease this section of the 
 opposition. It is only needful to insert a clause that no 
 degree in medicine shall be granted to any person not 
 having passed through the course of preliminary scientific 
 study, and the corresponding examinations to be in future
 
 116 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 prescribed for the M.B. degree, in order to fully safeguard 
 other corporations from the ill results which would flow 
 from the administrators of the Albert University being 
 called upon to fulfil the pledges given by irresponsible 
 promoters. 
 
 III. — The Opposition of the Educationalists. 
 
 We have already pointed out that a model charter 
 cannot by any modification be made out of the "Albert," 
 but without starting the whole movement afresh a slight 
 hange would leave open the door to the control and 
 ultimate absorption by the university of any colleges 
 that may now or hereafter join the university. That the 
 university may obtain the mastery of the colleges all 
 that is needful is that the ultimate appointment of all 
 teachers should lie, not in the hands of college councils, 
 but of the university senate. The following modifica- 
 tion would attain this end : — 
 
 That, after the first constitution of the faculties, no 
 further appointment to college posts shall, ipso facto, 
 make the holder a member of the faculties of the new 
 university in arts, science, or law, but that the university 
 shall itself nominate to its own faculties. 
 
 This clause would ultimately invest the power of ap- 
 pointing teachers in the university itself, and would in 
 the end, perhaps, lead to that economy of staff and build- 
 ings, that localisation and specialisation of different 
 branches of university teaching, which would follow 
 at once could we ideally reconstruct the existing collegiate 
 arrangements. 
 
 Unless some provision is made for the immediate or 
 ultimate control of the university over its teachers and 
 laboratories, the Albert Charter can only be futile from 
 the standpoint of higher academic teaching. Fancy a
 
 WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 117 
 
 university which, if it had to appeal to the pubHc for 
 funds for a physical or chemical laboratory would have to 
 appeal for two laboratories at once, to iivoid raising struggle 
 and jealousy between two competing constituent colleges ! 
 Such a state of affairs either carries its own condemna- 
 tion, or it demonstrates that the Albert Charter has not 
 the least claim to constitute a teaclnnfj university at all. 
 The ultimate extinction of the constituent colleges is the 
 sole method of realising the Scottish or German system in 
 London. 
 
 IV. — Opposition of the Convocation of London 
 University. 
 This is the least serious of any form of opposition. 
 It arises partly from graduates of Burlington House, 
 who seek to " aggrandise " their own University by the 
 simple process of opposing all attempts at academic 
 reform in London, and partly from private tutors who 
 have reason to believe that, if the new University were 
 successful, students would prefer efficient teachers, fully 
 equipped laboratories, and no handicapping for degrees, 
 to private tuition and the Burlington House brand. The 
 very same day that Convocation carried a resolution 
 against the Albert Charter, its chief supporter also moved 
 and carried another resolution, to the effect that a 
 regulation of the B.Sc. Honours Examination in 
 chemistry — which requires a student to produce his MS. 
 book of laboratory work signed by the teacher, as 
 evidence of work done under the teacher's direction and 
 supervision — placed at a disadvantage the non-collegiate 
 candidates. In other \vords, Convocation is opposed to 
 any evidence, even in a subject like that of chemistry, 
 of efficient laboratory training on the part of a candidate. 
 It is not the Albert Charter in particular, but any scheme 
 for reorganising academic teaching in London, which
 
 118 THE NEAV UNIVERSITY. 
 
 will be opposed by Convocation. Convocation is not the 
 University of London ; it is not really the whole body 
 of graduates of that University, it is rather the group 
 of prehistoric meddlers and muddlers who believe that 
 a university can thrive if it bo governed, not by its 
 teaching and examining executive, but by those whom 
 the executive has stamped as taught. Such a group has 
 practically been relegated to the election of members of 
 Parliament at Cambridge, and the sooner it is reduced 
 to a like harmless function in London the better for 
 Burlington House. 
 
 V. — The Objections of the Extensionists. 
 The " Extensionists," unlike Convocation, are not 
 anxious to crush any scheme for a teaching University in 
 London, but they may readily defeat themselves, as well 
 as the present scheme, by the demands they are making. 
 If they succeed in throwing out the scheme on the ground 
 that they are not represented upon the new University, 
 they have got to reckon with the fact that the colleges 
 will not consent to be co-ordinated with the " Extension 
 Society," and then they can hardly propose to found 
 a university in association with, say, the Birkbeck and 
 Polytechnic Listitutions. There are, in fact, only four 
 bodies doing real academic work in London — namely, 
 University College, King's College, the Eoyal College of 
 Science, and the Central Institute. The two latter bodies 
 are excellent both as to teachers and equipment, but 
 they show no signs, officially or unofficially, of desiring 
 to enter the Albert or any other scheme. This is bad 
 for the new university, but it is not the fault of the pro- 
 moters of the charter. As for the Birkbeck, the various 
 mechanics' institutes, and ladies' colleges, they are doing, 
 no doubt, good work ; but the work is not academic. 
 Their typo of work is sufficiently indicated when we say
 
 WHAT IS TO BE DONE ? 119 
 
 that a teacher at one of the latter has been known to 
 lecture on mathematics, and on physics, and on classics 
 at or about the same time.* When the Extensionists 
 claim, therefore, not only for themselves but for such 
 institutions, representation on the new university, they are 
 desiring an omnium gatherum which would be simply gro- 
 tesque from the academic standpoint : see our Chapter ii. 
 But it must be remembered that hitherto the Council of 
 the London Society have not distinctly stated their pro- 
 gramme. Their non-official supporters first tell us they 
 are fighting for a principle, and then for a share 
 in the executive in conjunction with the Kegent -street 
 Polytechnic and various other miscellaneous bodies. So 
 far as the principle is concerned their opposition ought 
 to be met by a modification in the charter, namely, 
 the university ought to have power to teach by its 
 appointed lecturers in or outside the walls of a college in 
 such manner as it pleases, and to accept attendance at 
 such lectures as attendance at degree courses, when and 
 how it thinks fit. This power may be involved, but it 
 certainly is not clearly expressed, in the charter. It is 
 necessary, not only with regard to University Extension, 
 but with regard to future university teaching of the 
 highest class which it may be convenient to undertake 
 
 * An exception was taken to this statement on behalf of Bedford 
 College by the writer of a letter signed R. L. N. in the Pall Mall 
 Gazette of February 3, 1892. My statement was based on the 
 authority of students of that very College who in the past year had 
 learnt Mechanics, Algebra, Light and Heat, and Latin from the 
 same teacher. It further appears from the College circulars that 
 Greek, Political Economy, and Moral Philosophy fell to one teacher, 
 and Geology, Geography, and Botany to another. All these 
 teachers were doubtless qualified to teach what they really under- 
 took, but this melting together of chairs — a process unfortunately 
 commenced at the larger colleges— is a sure sign of the non- 
 academic character of much of the teaching.
 
 120 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 apart from the colleges. But, while the university should 
 take this power, it ought to be very careful that the uni- 
 versity extension w^ork to which it may give academic 
 status is very much above anything now accomplished by 
 the London Society. That society itself, especially as at 
 present constituted, ought not to be admitted to uni- 
 versity representation, but a university syndicate, as at 
 Oxford or Cambridge, might be instituted to carry on 
 and develop its work, while a Crown member or two of 
 the university senate might well be selected from those 
 having the confidence of the Extensionists and yet ad- 
 mitted academic experience. The best way to meet the 
 opposition of Extensionists, therefore, without reducing 
 the university into an omnium f/athemm, is to accept 
 their principle by taking powers for extra-collegiate 
 lecturing for degrees, to endeavour to co-ordinate their 
 society (and institutions of like calibre) wnc/e?* the university 
 and at the same time safeguard their interests by asking 
 the Crown to consult their President, Mr. Goschen, before 
 appointing two or three of the Crown members. 
 
 Here, then, are the suggestions which we believe ought 
 to satisfy all that is reasonable in the opposition to the 
 Charter. Parliament ought to be induced not to express 
 unqualified disapproval of the Charter, but to petition 
 against its being granted until it is modified by pro- 
 visions : 
 
 (i.) For the removal of the religious test ; 
 
 (ii.) For the ultimate appointment of all teachers by 
 the university itself ; 
 
 (iii.) For the granting of M.D. degrees only to such 
 persons as shall have gone through the full 
 medical curriculum of the university itself 
 after its establishment ; 
 
 (iv.) For wider powers of extra-collegiate lecturing.
 
 WHAT IS TO BE DONE '? 121 
 
 How these modifications are to be introduced into the 
 Charter may well be left to its ingenious promoters ; but 
 they are the least changes which ought to turn the coming 
 Parliamentary doom from an absolute to a conditional one
 
 XIII— GEESHAM COLLEGE, PAST 
 AND FUTUKE.* 
 
 The announcement that the Joint Grand Gresham Com- 
 mittee have expressed their wilhngness to co-operate in 
 the estabhshment of a teaching university for London, 
 provided it be called the Gresham University, is one of 
 considerable importancie, but at the same time the 
 promoters of the Albert Charter and their supporters in 
 the press have shown very great ignorance of the nature 
 of the Gresham foundation. It has been suggested that 
 Gresham College could "become the centre of the 
 university, the home of its council, with a considerable 
 voice in its government." But the college as it now 
 stands consists solely of a very inconvenient and small 
 lecture theatre, a professors' common room (at present 
 used for a variety of purposes), and a few tiny rooms 
 used by some of the existing professors as bedrooms. 
 The whole of it might be almost put inside the library of 
 University College or the chapel of King's College. 
 Clearly, then, the existing buildings of Gresham College 
 cannot be considered as a valuable contribution to the 
 new university. Neither can the present staff of pro- 
 fessors be looked upon as adding largely to the dignity of 
 the professoriate of the new institution. They were 
 selected for a certain type of popular lecturing, and if, 
 possibly, the best men that could be got for the money, 
 they still make no pretence to being men of light and 
 • The Pall Mall Gazette, Eebruary, 1892.
 
 GKESHAM COLLEGE. 123 
 
 leading in science or literature. Hence clearly it is not 
 Gresham College as it is, but Gresham College as the 
 City Fathers have the power to make it, that may be a 
 great factor in the future academic life of London. 
 
 Both the Corporation and the Company " sides" have 
 of recent years shown a great desire to develop the 
 resources of the college and make up for its somewhat 
 discreditable past history. If all has not been done 
 which would render the college " the third university 
 of England " (as it was called in early days), this has 
 largely arisen from the fact that the present committee 
 have only the resources which past trustees have handed 
 on to them ; they cannot be held responsible for the sale 
 of Gresham House with its grounds stretching from 
 Broad-street to Bishopsgate, nor for the burning down 
 of the Eoyal Exchange. The City companies have caught 
 something of the new educational spirit ; their work for 
 technical education, especially at the Central Institute, 
 is without qualification excellent, and there is no reason 
 to fear that the Joint Grand Gresham Committee will be 
 guided by lower ideals in assisting academic education in 
 London. But there are two points to be borne in mind : 
 the powers of that Committee are limited both by their 
 resources and by the conditions of the trust. The income 
 of the Gresham Trust is said to be only small at present, 
 but it will be much larger in the not very distant future. 
 It should be remembered, however, that the trust is 
 not solely for the establishment of certain lectures; it 
 involves or did involve originally a number of minor 
 charities. There were payments to various hospitals and 
 prisons in London, to the occupants of certain almshouses, 
 and to the Mercers' Company for feasts to the memory 
 of Sir Thomas Gresham. How far these provisions of 
 the founder's will are at present carried out only the
 
 124 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 trustees can tell us ; but clearly it is more proper to 
 speak of the Gresham Trust than of Gresham College. 
 The trust itself does not apparently fall under the 
 Charitable Trusts Act, 1853, and therefore any alteration 
 in the essential features of the trust would require an 
 Act of Parliament. It is very unlikely that such an Act 
 could be obtained which would sensibly modify for the 
 better the excellent scheme of Sir Thomas Gresham 
 himself. 
 
 The "intent and true meaning" of the will — which the 
 "Royal merchant" charges the Corporation and Company 
 to carry out, " as they will answer the same before 
 Almighty God " — is the establishment of a college in 
 London with professors giving daily lectures. The 
 trustees are to " permit and suffer seven persons by 
 them from time to time to be elected and appointed, in 
 Manner and Form aforesaid, meete and sufficiently 
 Learned to read the said Seven Lectures ; To have the 
 occupation of all my said Mansion House, Gardens, and 
 all other Appurtenances, for them and every of them 
 to inhabit, study and daily to read the said several 
 Lectures " — i.e., the trust is for research and teaching 
 work. Now it may be true that an Act of Parliament 
 was obtained by which the lecturers received an in- 
 creased stipend on condition of giving up their claims to 
 residence, but the "intent and true meaning" of the 
 will remains unaltered. It is a college not for occasional 
 lectures, but for regular daily teaching, which the founder 
 had in view. No one who has studied the original will, 
 or the early history of the college, when the trustees were 
 in a better position to appreciate the intentions of Sir 
 Thomas Gresham himself, can doubt that such was the 
 case. The early Gresham professors tell us that the 
 trustees on the very first appointments had deliberately
 
 GRESHAM COLLEGE. 125 
 
 enjoined them, and that they had freely consented to do 
 " what the pubHc professors in either university do." 
 Thus, while the lectures at Oxford and Cambridge were 
 twice a week, so they were in Gresham College, "but 
 the latter being designed as well for the use of citizens, 
 as of professed scholars, are read both in English and 
 Latin." Three lectures per week by each professor for 
 five terms, amounting to thirty weeks in the year, was 
 what the college started with, and names like those of 
 Henry Briggs, Isaac Barrow, Eobert Hooke, Edmund 
 Gunter, Sir Christopher Wren, John Woodward, and 
 Sir William Petty sufficiently indicate the high level 
 of men who first taught at Gresham College. With 
 the Eoyal Society located in the college, it was the 
 centre of the best teaching and research work in England. 
 There can be no doubt that in its early days Gresham 
 College did fulfil the " Eoyal merchant's " intent and 
 meaning. Why did the college then decay at the end of 
 the 17th century? In 1666 the Eoyal Exchange, one of 
 the sources of the Gresham Trust revenues, was burnt 
 down, and Gresham House was appropriated (quite 
 illegally) to the purposes of commerce. In 1699 even the 
 professors' salaries were not paid, but in 1700 the start- 
 ing of a Chancery suit by the professors remedied this. 
 Yet, even with the payment of the salaries, and Gresham 
 House once more devoted to its proper purposes, it was 
 impossible for Gresham College to thrive. Fifty pounds 
 and residence might be ample in Queen Elizabeth's reign ; 
 it was idle to procure " the best knowledge in every 
 faculty," the "men of most sufficiency" of the early 
 scheme. The professors dropped the two or three 
 lectures a week ; they lectured one day a week apiece, 
 and now they give only twelve lectures a year each. 
 About 1706 an active portion of the citizens tried to
 
 126 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 remedy this by pointing out to the trustees the clause in 
 Sir Thomas Gresham's will as to the daily reading of 
 lectures. But the professors then, as now, could not 
 devote their lives to the service of the college on the 
 basis of stipends calculated for the scale of living in 
 1575 ; they were compelled to give only a portion of their 
 time, and to follow other occupations. Fifty pounds a 
 year and board could not induce any first-class men to 
 lecture daily in term time, and the professors naturally 
 replied to the trustees' demands: " Were these the con- 
 ditions of holding a professorship, it would necessarily 
 introduce a course of superficial and trifling exercises, 
 since the trustees must make professors, as Jeroboam did 
 priests, out of the lowest of the people." 
 
 The condition of things at present is that the Gresham 
 professors yearly give twelve lectures each of a popular, 
 non-academic character to good-sized audiences, there 
 being no charge for admission. The more amusing the 
 lecture the greater will be the audience, and numbers are 
 the measure of success and efficiency. Let it be admitted 
 at once that Gresham College is doing a certain amount 
 of good work, and that this work is appreciated by the 
 Gresham audiences. But here the matter ends : neither 
 professors nor trustees can imagine that they are really 
 carrying out the " intent and meaning " of the founder — 
 the daily professorial teaching of the early history of the 
 institution. An Act of Parliament may, of course, 
 enable the trustees to remodel the college — to convert 
 it into a central council cliamber and an examination 
 hall for the new university, but such a reorganization 
 would not in thfe least fulfil the founder's intentions. 
 The daily professorial teaching by the "best knowledge 
 in every faculty " can be obtained without any Act 
 of Parliament by simple reorganization. Sir Thomas
 
 GRESHAM COLLEGE. 
 
 Gresham left no conditions in his will as to how and 
 when the lectures should be delivered or as to the fees 
 which might be charged, and the City and the Mercers' 
 Company have it in their power at all times to fix the 
 amount and quality of the lecturing done. The Joint 
 Grand Committee have, in the long history of the college, 
 on several occasions altered the times and frequency of 
 the lectures, and there is nothing to hinder their altering 
 the present inadequate system to-morrow. There is little 
 doubt that most of the present Gresham professors would 
 be willing to make way for a new system constituting a 
 reorganization of the college really approximating to the 
 founder's intentions. But Gresham College as a place 
 for daily professorial teaching cannot be replaced by 
 university offices and examination rooms without a grave 
 legal or (supposing an Act of Parliament passed) moral 
 breach of trust. What is wanted is that the highest 
 work of the new university should be undertaken in 
 the future by Sir Thomas Gresham's foundation. This 
 requires two things, stipends to attract the "best 
 knowledge in every faculty," and fitting lecture rooms 
 and laboratories. The Gresham professors ought to cor- 
 respond to the Eegius professors at Oxford or Cambridge. 
 Their buildings might, indeed, were it convenient, be 
 associated with the headquarters of the new university. 
 In recovering its old dignity, Gresham College would dignify 
 the new university ; the new university itself, with no 
 traditions, may possibly awaken Gresham College from 
 its long sleep; it will not honour it by making it the 
 headquarters of a brand new examining board. Gresham 
 professors as Eegius professors of the new university is 
 the true keynote to reorganization. Their number, 
 without any breach of trust, need not be limited to seven, 
 but as the subjects of the seven professorships covered
 
 128 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 the whole field of knowledge in Sir Thomas Gresham's 
 day, so the very widest meaning may be put upon the 
 individual seven to-day. Rhetoric may be taken to 
 embrace political economy ; divinity, the comparative 
 history of religions ; geometry, the whole field of mathe- 
 matics ; law, comparative law and the history of law ; 
 while music, medicine, and astronomy are wide enough 
 in their meaning already. Funds, we are told, will be 
 forthcoming in a few years, and buildings (for the present 
 Gresham College structure is of small use), where are 
 they to be found? Well, the Corporation and the City 
 Companies are wealthy, witness their excellent buildings 
 at South Kensington ; but the appropriate buildings 
 might be found even near at hand, without new expendi- 
 ture. They lie in another historic name with which that 
 of Gresham might well be associated — in the Charter- 
 house. The City has a great opportunity before it ; will 
 it help the Joint Grand Gresham Committee to carry out 
 the intent and meaning of the great Elizabethan Lord 
 Mayor, or shall the reorganization of Gresham College 
 mean the handing over of a good name to a doubtful 
 scheme and the provision of examination headquarters, 
 instead of a centre of " daily professorial teaching " in 
 the " Royal merchant's " well-loved city ?
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 A. — Extracts from the Act of Parliament with regard to King's 
 College. (King's College, London, Act, 1882.) 
 
 (5) The College shall contuaue as a body politic and 
 corporate, for the purpose of giving instruction in 
 the various branches of Literature and Science, 
 and the doctrines and duties of Christianity, as 
 the same are inculcated by the Church of England, 
 shall be taught in the College, under the superin- 
 tendence of a Principal and a Head-Master, Pro- 
 fessors and Tutors, and such other Masters and 
 Instructors as shall from time to time be ap- 
 pointed in the manner hereafter mentioned. 
 
 (12) There shall be a Council, consisting of the Governors 
 and the Treasm-er and twenty-four other members 
 of the College, and no person who does not de- 
 clare himself to be a member of the Church of 
 England shall be competent to act as a Governor 
 by virtue of his office, or to be a Life Governor or 
 a Member of the Council, or to fill any office in 
 the College except ProfessorshiiDS of Oriental 
 Literature and Modern Languages. 
 
 [The ex officio members of the Council are the Lord High 
 Chancellor, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, the Lord Chief 
 Justice of England, the Speaker of the House of Commons, the 
 Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, and 
 the Lord Mayor of London, besides various Church dignitaries. 
 Thus, if the Home Secretary be a Catholic, the Lord Mayor a 
 Jew, and the Lord Chief Justice an Agnostic, they are dis- 
 qualified from acting on the Council of the College, and, to 
 that extent, from acting as College representatives on the new 
 University.]
 
 130 THE NEW UNIVEKSITY. 
 
 B. — Extracts from the Albert Charter. 
 
 (10) The Council shall have full power to make, and 
 alter, or revoke, statutes for regulating all matters 
 concerning the University, and may exercise and 
 do all powers and things by this our Charter 
 granted or authorised to be exercised or done by 
 the University. Provided, first, that it shall not 
 be lawful for the University, in any case, by any 
 statute, or otherwise, to adopt or impose on any 
 person any test whatsoever of religious belief or 
 profession. . . . 
 
 [This clause of the Charter is nugatory, for the three 
 members of the University Council nominated by the Council 
 of King's College, London, probably half (foi;r) of the represen- 
 tatives of the Faculties of Arts and Science on the Council, as 
 well as half the members of the Faculties of Arts and Science 
 as at first constituted, will have a religious test imposed upon 
 them (see Appendix A), not, indeed, by the University, but by 
 the College, which admits them to University privileges.] 
 
 (25) A College in the University shall not in any way be 
 under the jurisdiction or control of the Council, 
 except as regards the regulations for the duration 
 and nature of the studies to be required of the 
 students of the College as a qualification for 
 University degrees or distinction. 
 [This clause, which hinders the University having any voice 
 in the appointment of its teachers, or control over their labora- 
 tories and equipment, is fatal to the educational success of the 
 new University.] 
 
 C. — The Albert Charter and a Professorial University. 
 
 In Nature for May and June, 1891, will be found valuable 
 contributions from Mr. Thistelton Dyer and Professor Eay 
 Lankester bearing on the proposed University for London. The 
 former (May 21) still believed that something might be done by 
 Burlington House in the way of establishing a teaching 
 University for London. The latter (May 28) advocated the 
 adoption of University and King's Colleges into a professorial 
 University, and criticised the notion that any real organisation
 
 APPENDIX. 131 
 
 of academic teaching in London conld proceed from Burlington 
 Gardens. Both were apparently unaware of the danger 
 to the future of University education in London, which was 
 brewing in the Privy Council. Tlie author, in the following 
 letter published in Nature (June 4, 1891), called attention to 
 the immediate danger due to the action of the promoters of the 
 Albert Charter, and urged an immediate and strenuous opposi- 
 tion to it. Unfortunately that opposition has only gathered 
 force after the hearing before the Privy Council. 
 
 Sir, I do not wish to criticise in the least Prof. Lankester's 
 valuable statement in your last issue, with which I entirely agree; 
 but I desire to point out that unless some energetic action is 
 taken verj' soon we are likely to be farther than ever from the 
 iedal which he has in view — namely, the establishment of a strong 
 professorial University in London. The only scheme at present 
 in the field is that put forward by the Coimcils of University 
 and King's Colleges in the proposed charter for an Albert 
 University. This scheme has never met with the cordial sup- 
 port of a large section at least of the teaching staff of University 
 College*, and for the very obvious reason that it does not 
 constitute a professorial University, but creates a new examin- 
 ing body on which the two Colleges will be, in the beginning at 
 any rate, largely represented. The Albert University Charter 
 would create a second Victoria University in London. Now 
 both Mr. Dyer and Prof. Lankester are agreed that we do not 
 want a federal University like Victoria in London ; but they 
 seem to foi'get that this pettifogging excuse for a University — 
 a scheme drafted by biureaucratic rather than academic minds 
 — is the only scheme in the field, and that, further, the Lord 
 President of the Cotmcil has determined to hear by counsel, on 
 an early day in June, what can be said for and agamst this 
 scheme. It is further rumoured that the Burlington House 
 Senate intends, after its recent discomfiture, to remain ab- 
 solutely neutral. The danger, then, that we shall have a 
 repetition in London of the difficulties of Manchester is a very 
 immediate one. Let me point out exactly the anomalies of the 
 Albert scheme. In the first place, it does not create a teaching 
 University, but a new examining body. The University as 
 
 * See Appendix D.
 
 132 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 such will have uo control over the appointment of the pro- 
 fessoriate either at University or King's Colleges, it will have 
 no funds to dispose of, and there will be nothing to prevent 
 rival second-rate teachers and teaching equipment instead of 
 first-rate central teaching and central laboratories. For 
 example, at the present time, putting aside the Central Institute, 
 we have some half-dozen second-rate physical laboratories in 
 London, but not a really first-class one worthy of a modern 
 University among them. So long as there is competi- 
 tion between the Colleges, so long as they possess a double 
 staff competing at every turn with each other for students' 
 fees, this is unlikelj^ to be remedied. Prof. Lankester 
 speaks of a union of King's and University, and talks 
 about their combined resources. The fusion of these two 
 Colleges would certainly' be the first stage to a true professorial 
 Universitjuu London, but there is nothing in the Albert Charter 
 to bring this about : it unites the two Colleges not for teaching 
 but for examining purposes. But what is still worse, while 
 these two Colleges will remain autonomous, the Albert Charter 
 proposes to admit any further autonomous bodies, the teaching 
 of which can be shown to have reached a certain academic 
 standard. These bodies will not be absorbed, but their inde- 
 pendent staffs will be represented on the Faculties and Senate. 
 Here we have in fact the University of London over again, — 
 at first composed almost entirely of the two Colleges, after- 
 wards embracing all sorts and conditions of institutions in 
 London, and ultimately open to every isolated text-book reader 
 in the universe. It cannot be therefore too strongly insisted 
 upon that the Albert Charter, if granted, will not call into exis- 
 tence a professorial University, but federate a group, and an 
 ever-widening group, of competing institutions for the piu'poses 
 of examination. If it sheds for a time any additional lustre 
 on the teaching staft's of the two Colleges — which I am much 
 inclined to doubt — it will not achieve, what most of us have at 
 heart, the establishment in London, at any rate in the germ, 
 of a great University in the Scottish or German sense. A 
 University, on the scale we hope for, would absorb the plant 
 of University and King's Colleges, of the Eoyal College of 
 Science, and of the Central Institute without the least diffi- 
 cultv. With the death or transference of existing teachers,
 
 APPENDIX. 133 
 
 whose pecuniary interests would have of course to be carefully 
 safeguarded, special branches of higher teaching and research 
 might be localised at these various centres, t and we thus 
 might reach in the future an efficient University organisation 
 in London. This may indeed be considered a merely ideal 
 future, but any scheme like the proposed Albert University, 
 which will only impede its ultimate realisation, ought to meet 
 with strenuous opposition from those who believe that a great 
 professorial University must sooner or later be established in 
 London. 
 
 The difficulty as to the granting of medical degi'ees will for 
 long be the stumbling-block of any scheme, but the true way to 
 surmoimt it seems to be that siiggested by Prof. Lankester — 
 namely, the complete divorce of the clinical teachmg at Uni- 
 versity and King's Colleges from the science teaching, and the 
 establishment of separate clinical schools at the existing College 
 hospitals on precisely the same footing with regard to the 
 University as the other medical schools. The preliminary 
 science teaching at the various medical schools might then be 
 safely entrusted to University readers, who might continue to 
 be, as they now largely are, peripatetic. These readers would 
 naturally belong to the Science Faculty of the new University, 
 and if largely paid by students' fees might be trusted to safe- 
 guard the "preliminary scientific interests" of the medical 
 schools. It seems to me, therefore, that some vigorous effort 
 ought to be made to obtain the modification of the Albert 
 University scheme in the sense indicated by the following 
 proposals : — 
 
 Proposals in re Teaching University. 
 No scheme for the constitution of a teaching University in 
 London will be satisfactory which does not : 
 
 1. — Place the appointment of the teaching staff, as well as 
 the control of laboratories, libraries and buildings m the hands 
 of a single executive body, hereinafter spoken of as the new 
 University Senate, or of bodies, such as Faculties or boards of 
 study, to which it may delegate its powers. 
 
 t Elementary teaching in many branches might for local conveni- 
 ence be still carried on at several centres.
 
 134 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 2. — Confer on the new University Senate the power of grant- 
 ing degrees in all Faculties, including that of Medicine. 
 
 3. — Give to the teaching staff an immediate representation 
 of one-third, and an iiltimate representation of at least one- 
 half, on the new University Senate. 
 
 These conditions would probably be best fulfilled by : 
 
 4. — The immediate fusion of the Councils of University and 
 King's Colleges, and the Council or Governing Body of any 
 other institution doing work of admittedly academic character 
 in London, which may be willing that its laboratories and 
 equipment should be placed under the control of the new 
 University Senate. 
 
 [This would remove any ground from the objection that the 
 two Colleges are claiming powers which they are not willing to 
 share with the Eoyal College of Science or the Central Institute. 
 It provides for these latter coming into the scheme on the same 
 terms, if that be possible.] 
 
 5. — The gi'anting of a Charter to a body consisting of these 
 combined Councils together with representatives of the teachers 
 in the combined institutions. 
 
 6. — The constitution of the new University Senate in the 
 following manner : — 
 
 A. Immediate constitution — 
 
 (1) The fused Councils of King's and University Colleges 
 
 or their representatives. 
 
 (2) The Councils of other academic bodies in London 
 
 willing to be absorbed, or their representatives. 
 
 (3) Representatives of the teachers to the extent of one- 
 
 third of the total niunber. 
 
 B. Ultimate constitution — 
 
 (1) University professors, either as ipso facto members 
 
 or as representatives of the body of professors. 
 
 (2) Eepresentatives of the Faculties {i.e. of the readers 
 
 and professors of each Faculty). 
 
 (3) Co-optated members, not to be selected from the 
 
 teaching staff. 
 And possibly,
 
 APPENDIX. 135 
 
 (4) Representatives of bodies willing to endow professor 
 
 ships in the new University, or to hand over to 
 the control of the University existing professor- 
 ships or lectureships, e.g. (a) the Corporation o 
 the City and the Mercers' Company as trustees 
 of Sir Thomas Gresham's estate ; (b) the Inns 
 of Court — pro\'ided these bodies are willing to 
 attach the Gresham Lecturers and the Reader- 
 ships instituted by the Council of Legal Education 
 to the new University. 
 
 (5) Representatives of the Medical Schools and Royal 
 
 Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons other than 
 those selected by the Medical Faculty. This 
 would only be a matter for consideration when the 
 power to grant medical degrees became actual. 
 
 7. — The transition from the immediate to the ultimate con- 
 stitution of the new University Senate in the following 
 manner : — 
 
 (a) By not fiUing up vacancies among the members con- 
 tributed to the new Senate by the existing College 
 Councils as such occur. 
 
 (6) By the increase of professorial members and repre- 
 
 sentatives of the Faculties. 
 
 8. — The suspension of the power to grant medical degrees 
 until such time as the Senate of the new University shall have 
 satisfied the Lord President of the Council that an agreement 
 has been reached ^\dth the Royal Colleges and the chief London 
 Medical Schools as to the terms on which medical degrees shall 
 be granted. 
 
 9. — Providing, on the repeal of the Acts of Incorporation of 
 University and King's Colleges which would accompany the 
 granting of the new Charter, special regulations for the control 
 of certain portions of the endowments, or of certain branches 
 of the College teaching, which it may not seem possible or 
 advisable at present to hand over without special conditions to 
 the management of the new Senate. For example, the Depart- 
 ment of Divinity at King's College.
 
 136 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 10. — Paj'ing due regard to the pecuniary interests of existing 
 teachers (many of whom depend entirely upon students' fees) 
 in the appointment of future University professors or readers. 
 
 11. — Offering those professors of the existing Colleges, who 
 might be willing to sm*render the title of College professor, 
 that of University reader, but not creating the occupants of 
 chairs in any of the existing Colleges ipso facto professors in 
 the new University. 
 
 In this mere sketch I have said nothing as to how faculties 
 and boards of study might be constituted, or as to how the 
 University should grant degreees, for these seem to me 
 "academical" problems, i.e., problems to be thrashed out by 
 the University itself when it is once incorporated. Objection 
 will be taken to much of the above by manj' individuals, but I 
 believe it foreshadows the dkection in which the only scheme 
 at present under discussion must be modified if it is to lead to 
 the ultimate establishment of a great teaching University in 
 London, and not to a mere organisation of teachers for exami- 
 nation purposes. 
 
 Karl Pearson. 
 
 D. — Opinions of some University College Professors against 
 the Albert Charter. 
 
 Mr. Thiselton Dyer's strong criticism of the defects of the 
 Albert Charter {Nature, July 2, 1891) drew expressions of 
 opinion from some of the most distinguished members of the 
 University College staff, which it is well to put on record here. 
 
 Mr. Dyer's criticism to which attention is drawn in the 
 opinions cited, culminates in the following words : 
 
 "Yet so great is the magic of a phrase, that the daily 
 papers in reporting the proceedings in the Privy 
 Council, describe the scheme as that of a Teaching 
 University. A University of the Scotch or 
 German type may have some claim to that 
 title ; but no federal University can ever possess 
 a valid one, for the simple reason that there will 
 always be a morphological distinction between 
 the Colleges which teach and the University 
 which examines and grants degrees."
 
 APPENDIX. 137 
 
 Professor Eay Lankester, whose connection with University 
 College had only terminated a few weeks earlier, writes 
 {Nature, JiUy 9, 1891) : 
 
 " The remarks of Mr. Thiselton Dyer iipon the draft 
 Charter of the Albert University have my fullest 
 conciuTence. I have never desired to see such a 
 University as is sketched in that Charter set up 
 in London by the side of the existing University. 
 The Charter, and the general scheme of its pro- 
 posals, never obtained the sanction of the 
 professoriate of University College whilst I was a 
 member of that body ; and many of us were as 
 active as circumstances allowed us to be in 
 opposing its federal principles and bureaucratic 
 tendency. That University and liing's Colleges 
 should be united in some way to form a University 
 is one proposition : that the University should 
 take the form excogitated by Sir George Young is 
 another. . . . The draft Charter havmg failed 
 to reform the existing University of London 
 ought, one woivld have thought, to have been 
 torn lip." 
 
 More recently Professor Ra}' Lankester has expressed a still 
 stronger opinion on the objectionable character of the Charter 
 in the Times (February 9, 1892). 
 
 Mr. Thiselton Dj^er and Professor Ray Lankester are both 
 governors of University College. 
 
 Professor Carey Foster writes to Nature (July 9, 1891) : 
 
 " Mr. Thiselton Dj-er has done good service in pointing 
 out the nature of the proposed Albert University, 
 which, unfortmiately, seems not unlikely to be the 
 result of the discussions that have been going on 
 for the last six or eight years with respect to a 
 ' Teaching University for London.' Should the 
 Charter petitioned for by the Councils of Uni- 
 versity and King's Colleges be granted, it will not 
 constitute a teaching University in any real sense, 
 but, as Mr. Thiselton Dyer says, ' an institution
 
 138 THE NEW UNIVEKSITY. 
 
 very similar to what the present University of 
 London was as constituted by the original charter 
 of 1837 ... If it conies into existence, it will be 
 a mere examining University over again. Such 
 a scheme can go no appreciable way towards 
 remedying the existing defects of University 
 organisation in London. It is not easy to see 
 what public advantages are likely to result from it. 
 Seeing that it is put forward as representing the 
 views of University College, London, it does not 
 seem irrelevant to the present stage of the dis- 
 cussion to say that the scheme of the Albert 
 University has never been submitted to a general 
 meeting of the Governors of the College." 
 
 Prof. G. Croom Robertson writes to Nature (Jitly 16, 1891) : 
 " I desire to associate myself with Prof. Carey Foster, and, 
 to a great extent, with Prof. Ray Lankester in 
 the statements made and the opinions expressed 
 by them in yoiu'last issue. ... It looks now as if 
 the Albert University were straightway to be upon 
 us instead [of a re-organisation of the existing 
 University] . I will not inquire into the agencies 
 that have brought this result into such near view. 
 Nor will I in your columns follow up my present 
 and my late colleague's arguments against the 
 prospective creation with others that seem to me 
 of serious import. But I may be allowed to 
 endorse emphatically what Professor Lankester 
 has said as to the absence of sanction by the 
 professorial body here [University College] to the 
 Albert draft Charter. And nothing could be 
 more to the point than Professor Foster's observa- 
 tion that the 'Albert' scheme has never been 
 submitted to a meeting of the Governors of the 
 College — which means, to the College as a cor- 
 porate body. . . . 
 
 P.S. — Since these remarks were put in print a decision 
 of the Privy Council has been announced in favour 
 of an "Albert " (or "Metropolitan") University.
 
 APPENDIX. 139 
 
 ... I regret the decisiou, and think the promoters 
 of it may yet have reason to wish that their action 
 had been less hurried "... 
 
 In the face of such opinions from some of the most dis- 
 tinguished academical members of the Governing Body of 
 University College, the Albert Charter was still pushed through 
 the Privy Council, and its promoters have since never ceased 
 to insist that all opposition now comes too late !
 
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