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become an empty name. The most able of the students will desert the public lectures for the instructions of those who specially prepare them for the highest examinations; the slower minds will seek those private tutors who may enable them to pass the inevitable ordeal; the Class will be broken into pieces, and almost into individuals, by the diversity of men's powers and courses; with their influence on the studies of their pupils, the Tutors will lose their influence on their character and conduct in general; and the system will cease to be that of the English Universities.

If, on the other hand, we wish to preserve the English College system of direct teaching, since we have to combine it with the system of indirect teaching, which is almost essential to a University, we must consider how this combination effected.

can be

SECT. 4.-OF THE COMBINATION OF THE UNIVERSITY WITH THE COLLEGE SYSTEM.

I SHALL dwell very briefly on this subject, for I do not here intend to propose changes in detail in any particular University. I will only offer a few general considerations.

The continued superintendence and control which direct College teaching implies, are most easy and natural in the earlier part of the pupil's residence in the University. I should judge it desirable that the two first years of his career were employed in this

kind of study; and I think it would be a great advantage, if no University examinations, compulsory or emulous, disturbed the even tenour of this course of instruction. In the University of Cambridge, this maxim has been of late departed from. Besides various prizes, which are open to the junior as well as the senior students, an examination, termed “the previous examination," was established in 1830, at which all the students are required to acquit themselves in a satisfactory manner, in the middle of their second year. The ground of this step was a persuasion that in some of the Colleges the progress of the students was not sufficiently insisted upon; and the belief that it was the duty of the University to secure an attention to study, in the first years of residence, by a compulsory examination, as she is supposed to effect the same object, at a later period, by the final examination which precedes the admission to an academic degree. It is impossible not to respect the motives which actuated the authors of this measure, and I believe it is conceived to have answered its purpose to a very great extent. It has, however, interfered very seriously with the College instruction, in Colleges where no such new compulsion was needed; and I should gladly see it removed out of the second year of the College course.

After two years spent under the influence of College rules, I conceive the student might, with advantage, be given over to the motives and employments which the University offers; though still, as before, under the general superintendence and direction of his College tutor. By this time, the list of mathematical

subjects would have been gone through, so far as it is important to follow them in a definite order, and with a discussion of principles; and classical subjects might easily be framed into a progressive system, fitted to the same period. After this, the forward student would be prepared for the highest exertions and the widest speculations, for competitions and professorial lectures; while the slow learner would have exhausted all that could easily be communicated to him directly; and might be well employed in preparing for the final examination; and, if possible, in also voluntarily attending the lectures of some professor on a subject of general interest; and it would be quite consistent and reasonable, that this, the University period of the student's career, should be opened by a previous examination, fitted to ascertain that he was in the state of proficiency which the system supposed.

I give this sketch merely with a view of pointing out the mode in which the University and College systems may be combined, and the great inconveniences avoided, which may arise, and have arisen, from their conflicting tendencies; by no means intending to offer it as a scheme of which the details are matured. But this, or something of this kind, is, I think, a plan well worthy the notice of all English Universities.

CHAPTER III.

OF DISCIPLINE.

SECT. 1.-OF THE NECESSITY OF DISCIPLINE.

THAT the teaching of the intellect alone is insufficient to prepare man for his place in society, and for all the higher purposes of his destination, is allowed by all who have thought seriously on education. This declaration has, for instance, been repeated again and again by some of the wisest among those patriotic men who, in France, are trying to remodel in a beneficial manner the national education. We must, say they, educate, not instruct merely; we must infuse a sense of moral and religious responsibility, as well as mere knowledge; we must form the principles of conduct as well as the intellect.

But how is this to be done? or can it be done? What selection of the matter or of the mode of communication, can affect the moral nature? What kind of knowledge can give habits of self-government and a sense of duty? We may make the boy learn by memory, maxims and rules, prayers and creeds; but the memory does not sway the heart. And when we have placed the youth in the independent position of the student at a university, how shall we teach his

light mind and impetuous spirit to recollect that his condition is one of grave responsibility; that he must act with considerate reference to external regards and internal convictions of duty; and that the religion taught to his boyhood is intended to form an unbroken part of the business of his life?

The answer which the principles of English education direct us to give to such inquiries, is this;-that the meaning and the value of the moral and religious maxims which are taught to the boy, are to be impressed upon his heart by the personal exhortation of parents and other instructors; and that the student at the university is not to be uncontrolled, but is to be in such a condition that he is never allowed to forget, that the demands of society and the rules of duty must direct his habits of action and shape his man

ners.

This lesson, which cannot be taught through the memory alone, is conveyed by the position in which the student is placed at the English Universities. For he is subjected to many rules, and put under governors and monitors who, by their institution, are invested with a combination of parental and official authority. And hence he acts in a little world, which is constituted of definite relations and duties, and requires a certain self-restraint and selfregulation at every step; and thus is a fit school to prepare him for the world of real action. Whereas, without such a constitution of the University, the student's academical career is a period of unbounded freedom from restraint and responsibility; which may

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