Mr. Pattison on Oxford studies. 413 cal sort; good sense, vigour, determination, readiness. And with these we have triumphed in competition with nations which have been deficient in them. But already we are begining to find our wealth, population, and materials too vast for our capacities of system. We have no system in any thing; our affairs go on by dint of our practical sense; a stupid precedent supplying on all occasions the place of method. We are unable to organize our labour market or our commerce; to codify our law; to administer any one department on a principle of management; and every Act of Parliament that is passed presents a laughable array of puzzling contradictions. We can build more solidly, durably, quickly, than at any former time, but we have no architecture; we add room to room but cannot lay out an interior. All our arts of design are mere copying from patterns. We have brave and enduring soldiers; officers of resolution and skill, but no generalship. We have the stores and supplies of war in profusion; no capacity for organising a commissariat. There is a corresponding deficiency in our education. We have some excellent discipline in practical life, in public schooling, in the energy of our trade; we have no systematic education. All this is beginning to be understood and felt; and there is a remedy. The necessary tendency of advancing civilization is to divide and subdivide the applications, as of labour, so of thought. The professions tend to split up into branches; and skill in one becomes more and more incompatible with skill in another. The more a subject has been explored, the more time does it take each succeeding student to follow the steps of his predecessors. To prevent the disabling effects of this speciality of pursuit, it becomes the more requisite to secure at starting a breadth of cultivation, a scientific formation of mind, a concert of the intellectual faculties." he says, He explains that the education given at a University aims at Universality that the knowledge acquired there is not to be valued for itself or its immediate application to practical purposes, but for its effect on the mind. He condemns the theory of the "useful knowledge" school, but with the moderate language of a man writing to Oxford readers who have always anathematised that heresy and require no further exhortation on the subject. Again, he fully supports our views on the proper end and object of a University. "It "It may be," "the home and nurse of learned men, it may promote the progress of science, it may qualify for the learned professions. None of these are its true or primary purpose. If science be promoted by a University, well and good; but such promotion is not to be required of it. Academies or learned societies are for the furtherance of special sciences. In France the Institute performs this office well, even while the University is extremely deficient. The promotion of their science is the sole end of such societies; but in a University every science sinks into a means to a worthier-the cultivation of mind. This is the one use to which it puts knowledge, the light in which it regards science. The products of a University are not inventions, improvements, discoveries, novel speculations, books, but the fully educated man, the περὶ πᾶν πεπαιδευμένος. Its one great achievement is that philosophical spirit, which has been finely described as un talent |:་ acquis par le travail, et par l'habitude, pour juger sainement de toutes les choses du monde. C'est une intelligence à qui rien n'échappe, une force de raisonnement que rien ne peut ébranler, un goût sûr et réfléchi de tout qu'il y a de bon ou de vicieux dans la nature. C'est la régle unique du vrai et du beau.'" Mr. Pattison fully recognises the value of "classics," not only in the ample Oxford sense of the word (or the "Literæ humaniores" to use the language of the statutes), but in its ordinary literary signification. It is only those, he pithily says, who are not scholars themselves, that question the utility of classical studies. "It is natural," according to a great Edinburgh reviewer, "that men should be inclined to soothe their vanity with the belief that what they do not themselves know is not worth knowing; and that they should find it easy to convert others, who are equally ignorant, to the same opinion is also what might confidently be presumed. Ce n'est, pas merveille, si ceux que n'ont jamais mangé de bonnes choses, ne sçavent que c'est de bonnes viandes.'" We believe Mr. Pattison would fully agree (though his opposition line of argument makes him chary of admissions in favor of the classicists) with Sir William Hamilton's opinion (vide his review of Pillans's defence of classical studies,) of the importance of philological pursuits in the higher cultivation of the mind," and would admit the soundness of his statement, that "where classical learning has been vigorously cultivated, the most powerful attacks have only ended in the purification and improvement of its study. In Germany and in Holland, in Italy and even in France, objections, not unreasonably, have been made to an exclusive and indiscriminate classical education; but the experimental changes they determined, have only shown in their result, that ancient literature may be more effectually cultivated in the school, if not cultivated alone; and that whilst its study, if properly directed, is, absolutely, the best means towards an harmonious development of the faculties-the one end of all liberal education; yet that this means is not always, relatively, the best when circumstances do not allow of its full and adequate application." The only point on which we should have wished for more definite explanation from him is to what extent would he introduce the physical sciences into the curriculum. The inductive system must of course be thoroughly mastered as the groundwork of all experimental philosophy, and it should be illustrated from an ample variety of the special branches of natural laws. But would he introduce those special branches as substantive portions of an academic course? and if so, how many and to what extent of accuracy? The universal knowledge of a University is certainly Mr. Pattison on Oxford studies. 415 not a smattering of everything, which would rather deserve the name of universal ignorance. It would be preposterous on the other hand to expect the student to acquire the whole cycle of the sciences in their fulness, whatever length his academical course might be protracted to. His language is rather vague on this point, though always sound as far as it goes. He lays down broadly that Philology is imperfect, taken by itself. "At the same time a purely scientific education, without the emollient graces and amenities of literature, is apt to generate a harsh, unpliant character to the intellect." But when he passes to positive precepts we confess we are not clear as to his meaning. He wishes to instal in the schools "a general philosophy of the laws of knowledge, but based on a combination of the recorded history of speculative thought (especially the Greek epoch) with the extant condition of the special sciences." What do the italicised words mean? That Mr. Pattison could, if he chose, be explicit we have no doubt whatever. That he is withholding his opinion in deference to the prejudices of the liberal party we do not like to think. The man who could write as he has written is not to be supposed capable of being carried away by the polytechnic utilitarian cry of the day. He distinctly and invariably rests the value of material knowledge in the higher education, not on its merits as an useful acquirement, but on its philosophical character, i. e. its applicability to intellectual culture.* He must therefore abhor smatterers, and yet his words above quoted would seem to imply that the student should be forced to "cram up" the last researches in every science, from Astronomy to Botany. We say deliberately that he does not and cannot mean this. That he expects a great deal more, however, from the University scholar than has ever yet been required, is clear. Such is the natural bent of an energetic tutor whose own powers of intellectual digestion are so potent that he can have little sympathy for weaker stomachs. His concluding remarks seem to us to indicate a faint misgiving as to the danger of overworking the young men under the new system. With these observations we commend this remarkable essay to all who desire to make themselves acquainted with the present state of the question as to liberal education, and the spirit of the leading men at present engaged in tuition in our University. We ought to remember ourselves, he says, and inculcate on others, that intellectual character, and not the acquisition of facts, is the true preparation for life. INDEX. A Ahmedabad Collectorate. See Mackay, 20. Assessment in Guzerat.-See Mackay, 25. B Baber.-Emperor, and his contemporaries-review of Mr. Erskine's work, 84 ;-De- |