If Mr. Pattison's high position, and his obvious love and respect for
his university, be insufficient to convince the outside world that
language so severe is yet no more than just, the authority of the
Commissioners who reported on the University of Oxford in 1850 is open
to no challenge. Yet they write:--

"It is generally acknowledged that both Oxford and the country at large
suffer greatly from the absence of a body of learned men devoting their
lives to the cultivation of science, and to the direction of academical
education.

"The fact that so few books of profound research emanate from the
University of Oxford, materially impairs its character as a seat of
learning, and consequently its hold on the respect of the nation."

Cambridge can claim no exemption from the reproaches addressed to
Oxford. And thus there seems no escape from the admission that what we
fondly call our great seats of learning are simply "boarding schools"
for bigger boys; that learned men are not more numerous in them than out
of them; that the advancement of knowledge is not the object of fellows
of colleges; that, in the philosophic calm and meditative stillness of
their greenswarded courts, philosophy does not thrive, and meditation
bears few fruits.

It is my great good fortune to reckon amongst my friends resident
members of both universities, who are men of learning and research,
zealous cultivators of science, keeping before their minds a noble ideal
of a university, and doing their best to make that ideal a reality; and,
to me, they would necessarily typify the universities, did not the
authoritative statements I have quoted compel me to believe that they