Classical Tripos Research Articles

The Universities Bill

VERY little light has been thrown on the future of Oxford and Cambridge by the discussions in the House of Commons last week and this week. Harassed as they are by the difficulties of the Eastern question, our legislators could not, perhaps, be expected to devote serious thought to the fortunes of higher education in England, but as Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen said,the debate was “certainly more suited to the debating societies of Oxford and Cambridge than to the arena of the House of Commons.” Lord F. Hervey, who opened it, had little weightier to remark than that Mr. Grant Duff was “no doubt a very learned and superior person,” and Mr. Grant Duff's chief contribution was the venerable witticism that Lord F. Hervey ought to be carried round the country by himself and other advanced reformers, as “the shocking example” of the results of the present system. Mr. Trevelyan delighted the House and the country by the amusing patriotic statement that “It would not be possible to find in any European University forty mathematicians equal to the Wranglers in the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos, or twenty classical scholars to compare with those who stood first in the Classical Tripos at Cambridge or in the School of Literœ Humaniores at Oxford;” and with an equally cheerful indifference to the facts Mr. Lowe replied that the teaching of the Universities was “simply disgraceful.” When we add that there was much dispute whether the glories of Lord Macaulay, whq was not “a resident fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge,” should be credited to that University, and that Sir William Har-court was delighted to hear that an overworked judge like Sir Alexander Cockburn could find time, in spite of his work, to undertake the arduous office of chairman, which would require the “constant and daily attention of one having entire and absolute leisure,” we sum up most of what was interesting and novel in the discussion before going into Committee.