aware of the great importance of securing first-rate instructors for the rising generation of students-men of real eminence, and who are willing to devote their lives to the pursuit of the studies they have selected. They form a low estimate of the sort of instruction necessary for undergraduates, and are quite contented with that very inferior teaching, which even the worst tutors of inferior colleges are found at present capable of imparting men selected not from fitness for their calling, but because they are born in particular counties, or have been educated at particular schools. A story has been current in Oxford for many months which seems to show that this Committee of Heads is scarcely likely to take a very practical view of the present deficiency of the Professoriate. The only suggestion said to have been made on this subject by the most distinguished member of the Committee is, that there was certainly one professorship which it would be well to establish, viz., a Professorship of Chinese. Whether this suggestion was made seriously or in bitter irony, we cannot say. The proposer is not a man commonly supposed to be given to jesting: and he was evidently understood at the time to be serious by another Head, who, kindling at the thought of the expansiveness of his learned brother's soul, is said to have followed up the suggestion, by hinting that it would be well to have another professorship for the languages of Southern Africa. The Committee, on mature reflection, have been so pleased with the suggestion that to the astonishment of all who have been laughing at it for the last nine months, they have formally given the Chinese Professor a prominent place in their Report. We presume the learned Committee were of the opinion, that all branches of European learning are already so admirably taught in the University, that there is no room for improvement without seeking for the materials of progress in the very extremities of the earth. Not even the sacred cause of missions with which the Committee have connected it, ought to make us hesitate to stigmatise this Chinese proposition as an absurdity, while so many of our most obviously needful branches of learning are but ill taught.

But we have reason to believe that the nation in general has formed a different opinion of the perfection of the present University instruction. The Oxford Commissioners' Report has surely proved that the University requires far abler instructors than it at present possesses-men of great reputation, who will therefore command the respect of their pupils-men of enthusiasm in the studies which they have selected as the business and pleasure of their lives men who are contented to withdraw from the

rivalry of a profession and the bustle of life that they may give themselves to these studies, and have the high satisfaction of kindling a noble desire to pursue them amongst a generous youth -men who are the leaders of the thoughts of their fellow-men, each in his own branch of science. A galaxy of such men every great university ought to use every means to gather within its circle; but we look in vain for such men amongst the habitual teachers either of Oxford or Cambridge. Her Majesty's Commissioners have proposed to make the Professoriate a reality. They have endeavoured to answer the popular objections to professorial teaching. They have shown that the instruction of college tutors is not only at present notoriously deficient, but never can be made of itself sufficient to meet the wants of the University; indeed, that it will best perform its peculiar work, and become most perfect, when it goes side by side with the teaching of able professors. They have pointed out, moreover, the unreasonableness of those suspicions with which many look upon the teaching of professors, as likely to introduce German and other foreign modes of thought into our Universities.

'It is evident,' says the Oxford Commissioners' Report (p. 96.), 'on a more careful consideration of the subject, that an active system of professors would, in fact, be the best safeguard against such an evil. "I cannot help observing," says Professor Vaughan, "that such an apprehension appears to me hasty and ill-founded, and, indeed, if duly considered, the reverse of the truth. At the present moment the teaching of the University is, on the whole, indirectly determined (so far as the information itself is concerned) by the professorial system. Our classical manuals, editions, histories, grammars, &c. are the work of professors. These professors are foreigners; and, as we have no similar class in our own University, which might supply us, their superiority to our home-grown literature on such subjects is incontestable. The University is thus obliged to adopt the works of foreigners on many subjects; and with this is coupled the necessity of instilling in some degree their general principles of criticism and philosophy. Had we a professorial system of our own, embracing all the great subjects of instruction, the national character and genius would assert itself in their works. The spirit of our institutions, intellectual character, domestic life, and moral qualities, would necessarily be at work in the minds of our professors, to form a literature and philosophy independent, native, and in the truest and most valuable sense congenial: it would, therefore, not tend to make us copyists of foreign systems, either in form or spirit, but would open for us a new source of independence in these things."

In this reading age undergraduates, of course, have their professors; but they are men uninfluenced by the feelings of English university-life. The intellectual influence of our universities is at this moment, in a great degree, wielded by foreign

writers, many of them of a very doubtful stamp. If young men cannot find instructors at home, they must seek them elsewhere; and, provided they find talent, they will not be very particular as to the tone in which the instruction is given.

The Commissioners proposed adequately to endow all the most important professorships. For this purpose they invoked the aid of Parliament. Both the Cambridge and Oxford Commissioners insist that fully adequate endowments for the purpose may be found in the revenues of the colleges without at all impairing their collegiate usefulness. It was proposed also to give to professors great weight in the government of the University, and to secure a succession of professors, by making university instruction a regular line of life, to which any man of literary ability may look for a livelihood. The professors ought to be assisted by a large body of sub-professors or lecturers, who will make the University their home, and teaching their life's business, not, as the tutors make it, a mere work by the way, which is to occupy them for a few years till they go off to a country living or the bar. This body of sub-professors will always afford the materials from which the greater professors can be chosen.

These sub-professors we regard as an indispensable part of a sound reform. The example of the richly-endowed Theological Faculty at Christ Church has in former times shown that, unless a new system be devised to supply candidates for the chairs as they become vacant, wealthy professorships may be mere sleeping-places. The office of University Instructor must become a profession; and a vigorous competition must urge all to the discharge of their duties. If one of the greater professors becomes unwilling or unable to fulfil his mission, he must find in the presence of these younger rivals, in the one case a stimulus to his exertions, in the other an abundant means of securing valuable aid. We trust that we shall see the proposed plan soon adopted for the establishment and adequate payment of a large staff of professors and sub-professors or public lecturers. Other reforms are indispensable for the better management of the academic machinery; but machinery, however well contrived, will be useless without a power to set it in motion; and to the professors and sub-professors of a new system we look for a great accession of intellectual life.

We will not weary our readers by showing more in detail how useful such a professorial system might be in Law, History, or Philosophy. But we must not altogether pass by Theology. The inert state of the Theological Faculty at Oxford is the strong hold of all who argue against the usefulness of a pro

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fessoriate. Certainly, as we have said, it is not want of endowments that has failed to secure here the desired result. Each of the Christ Church professorships is believed to be worth about 1,500l. a year. It would be wrong to speak otherwise than with respect of the learned and worthy men who at present hold these professorships, who are all conscientiously anxious to work; but something paralyses their efforts. There are doubtless other obstacles in the present system impeding their usefulness; but one great reason for their failure is, we believe, to be found in the fact, that they are not raised to their posts through such a vigorous competition as the Commissioners' scheme recommends. Indeed, it has sometimes happened, that men have been thrown into these situations as it were by mere accident, having had no training to fit them for the adequate discharge of their duties. Neither, as we have said, is there at present any provision for their being aided and stimulated by others, if in any department of their work they are found inefficient. The present wants of the Church call for the ablest, most earnest, and most influential instructors for the rising clergy. It is no injustice to the Divinity professors of Oxford, to say that, with the exception of Dr. Pusey, whom other reasons forbid us to praise, whatever ability and soundess they possess, not one of them has as yet succeeded in making his influence extensively felt. The time has passed when the Church can be satisfied with negative excellence. There are crises in society when what are called safe men are the most dangerous men in the world. We would not exclude such men from eminent posts in the University: it may even be right that they should hold the highest posts; but we protest against their having a monopoly of clerical instruction. There ought to be a fair-field and no favour. We repeat it the most learned, able, and earnest religious men of the Church of England ought to be found amongst the instructors of its young clergy; and this cannot be effected without a much wider and freer competition than the present system allows.

Truly the Church of England requires at this moment a race of enlightened and energetic pastors, if it is rightly to fulfil its great work. We cannot conceive a more melancholy sight than that of a young clergyman from either University, trained in the present inefficient way ordained as soon as he is of age -going down to some thickly-peopled district where he has to deal with intelligent mechanics, any one of whom is far more than his match in that sort of science which alone such persons appreciate, and far better acquainted than he is with the great social questions of the day. How will the young pastor's

knowledge of rubrics and a few antiquarian questions of theology enable him to grapple with Chartism and Socialism? Granted that there is a higher training required for a zealous pastor, which no University teaching can impart; but he does not gain from the University what we have a right to expect that it should give. Neither his meagre theology, nor his polite literature (of which probably, after all, if he is a young man of only average ability, he has a very slight sprinkling) will stand the shock of the unexpected conflict. Those whom the Church sends him to convince and instruct, have all the most powerful arguments against Christianity familiarly brought before them, from the cheap publications which retail to them the reasonings of Strauss and his school. But the young pastor knows neither the strength nor the weakness of such arguments; for the instructors at whose feet he has sat, have led him to suppose that they know as little on the subject as himself, usually teaching him to substitute a pious horror of all German books for a knowledge of their contents and a power of refuting their sophisms.

Would that the Church of England, the great bulwark in this age of Protestantism and of Christianity, knew its strength and the greatness of its mission. How goodly a foundation might the wholesome training of our Universities lay in a sound general education, if those who sit in their seats of honour would but raise the necessary superstructure. How far more powerful than any of the narrowly trained ministers of other denominations might the clergy of the Church of England be if the University did its duty by them. We do not deny that some of the young clergy are most intelligent and well read as well as zealous men; but these are so by their own efforts. The system of their University has given them no especial training for their work. We trust that not many months hence the professors, both of the theological and of every other faculty in our Universities, will be subjected to an unsparing reform.

But we weary our readers. The subject we have thought it right to bring forward is so comprehensive, that we must forbear. We will only once more express our confident hope that Lord John Russell's speech was the opening up of very thorough measures of educational improvement; and that the Government are now perfectly aware both of the magnitude of the task which lies before them, as bound to see that justice be done to all classes of the community in securing for them a good education, and also of the necessity for vigorous and speedy action in the accomplishment of this task. The poorest child in the streets and the son of the highest peer of the realm have