if, by such skilful management, they get through the day without an outbreak. When a child cries, the nurserymaid dances it about, or points to the pretty black horses out of 5 window, or shows how ashamed poll-parrot or poor puss must be of its tantrums. Such is the sort of prescription which Sir Robert Peel offers to the good people of Tamworth. He makes no pretence of subduing the giant nature, in which we were born, of smiting the lions of the domestic enemies of our peace, of overthrowing passion and fortifying reason; he does but offer to bribe the foe for the nonce with gifts which will avail for that purpose This was mainly the philosophy of the great Tully, except when it pleased him to speak as a disciple of the Porch. Cicero handed the recipe to Brougham, and Brougham has passed it on to ful Knowledge is that which tends to make us more useful to ourselves;-a most definite and intelligible account of the matter, and needing no explanation. But it would be a great injustice, both to Lord Brougham and to Sir Robert, to suppose, when they talk of Knowledge being Virtue, that they are Benthamizing. Bentham had not a spark of poetry in him; on the contrary, there is much of high aspiration, generous sentiment, and impas- 10 sioned feeling in the tone of Lord Brougham and Sir Robert. They speak of knowledge as something "pulchrum," fair and glorious, exalted above the range of ordinary humanity, and so little connected with the personal in- 15 just so long as they will avail, and no longer. terest of its votaries, that, though Sir Robert does obiter1 talk of improved methods of draining, and the chemical properties of manure, yet he must not be supposed to come short of the lofty enthusiasm of Lord Brougham, who 20 Peel. If we examine the old Roman's meaning expressly panegyrizes certain ancient philosophers who gave up riches, retired into solitude, or embraced a life of travel, smit with a sacred curiosity about physical or mathematical truth. Here Mr. Bentham, did it fall to him to offer 25 or passion, or ambition, or hatred all that a criticism, doubtless would take leave to inquire whether such language was anything better than a fine set of words "signifying nothing," flowers of rhetoric, which bloom, smell sweet, and die. But it is impossible to 30 suspect so grave and practical a man as Sir Robert Peel of using words literally without any meaning at all; and though I think at best they have not a very profound meaning, yet, such as it is, we ought to attempt to draw 35 it out. in "O philosophia, vitæ dux," it was neither more nor less than this;-that, while we were thinking of philosophy, we were not thinking of anything else; we did not feel grief, or anxiety, time, and the only point was to keep thinking of it. How to keep thinking of it was extra artem. If a man was in grief, he was to be amused; if disappointed, to be excited; if in a rage, to be soothed; if in love, to be roused to the pursuit of glory. No inward change was contemplated, but a change of external objects; as if we were all White Ladies or Undines,3 our moral life being one of impulse and emotion, not subjected to laws, not consisting in habits, nor capable of growth. When Cicero was outwitted by Cæsar, he solaced himself with Plato; when he lost his daughter, he wrote a treatise on consolation. Such, too, was the Now, without using exact theological language, we may surely take it for granted, from the experience of facts, that the human mind is at best in a very unformed or disordered 40 philosophy of that Lydian city, mentioned by state; passions and conscience, likings and reason, conflicting,-might rising against right, with the prospect of things getting worse. Under these circumstances, what is it that the the historian, who in a famine played at dice to stay their stomachs. And such is the rule of life advocated by Lord Brougham; and though, of course, he School of philosophy in which Sir Robert has 45 protests that knowledge "must invigorate enrolled himself proposes to accomplish? Not the mind as well as entertain it, and refine and elevate the character, while it gives listlessness and weariness their most agreeable excitement and relaxation," yet his notions of vigour and elevation, when analyzed, will be found to resolve themselves into a mere preternatural excitement under the influence "O philosophy, guide of life." 3 Undine by La Motte Fouqué was a water nymph born without a soul. 4 After the overthrow of Pompey's cause at the Battle of Pharsalia (48 B. C.) Cicero who, after much vacillation, had supported Pompey, found his political career for the time at an end. In his enforced inactivity he turned to philosophy for consolation. Heroditus, Bk. I. 94. of some stimulating object, or the peace which is attained by there being nothing to quarrel with. In morals, as in physics, the stream cannot rise higher than its source. Christianity raises men from earth, for it comes from heaven; but human morality creeps, struts, or frets upon the earth's level, without wings to rise. The Knowledge School does not contemplate raising man above himself; it merely aims at 10 disposing of his existing powers and tastes, as is most convenient, or is practicable under circumstances. It finds him, like the victims of the French Tyrant, doubled up in a cage in which he can neither lie, stand, sit, nor kneel, and its highest desire is to find an attitude in which his unrest may be least. Or it finds him like some musical instrument, of great power and compass, but imperfect; from its stop drinking, they gamble; stop gamblin and a worse license follows. You do not e rid of vice by human expedients; you can b use them according to circumstances, and u 5 their place, as making the best of a bad matte You must go to a higher source for renovatio of the heart and of the will. You do but phy a sort of "hunt the slipper" with the faul: d our nature, till you go to Christianity. I say, you must use human methods in the place, and there they are useful; but they a worse than useless out of their place. I hav no fanatical wish to deny to any whateve subject of thought or method of reason a pian 15 altogether, if it chooses to claim it, in the cử tivation of the mind. Mr. Bentham may de spise verse-making, or Mr. Dugald Stewar logic, but the great and true maxim is to satr fice none--to combine, and therefore to adjust very structure some keys must ever be out of 20 all. All cannot be first, and therefore each he its place, and the problem is to find it. It s at least not a lighter mistake to make what is secondary first, than to leave it out altogether Here then it is that the Knowledge Society Room, Lord Brougham and Sir Robert Pe are all so deplorably mistaken. Christianity and nothing short of it, must be made the de ment and principle of all education. Wher it has been laid as the first stone, and acknow edged as the governing spirit, it will take into itself, assimilate, and give a character & literature and science. Where Revealed Truth has given the aim and direction to tune, and its object, when ambition is highest, is to throw the fault of its nature where least it will be observed. It leaves a man where it found him-man, and not an Angel-a sinner, not a Saint; but it tries to make him look as 25 Gower Street College, Tamworth Reading much like what he is not as ever it can. The poor indulge in low pleasures; they use bad language, swear loudly and recklessly, laugh at coarse jests, and are rude and boorish. Sir Robert would open on them a wider range 30 of thought and more intellectual objects, by teaching them science; but what warrant will he give us that, if his object could be achieved, what they would gain in decency they would not lose in natural humility and faith? If so, 35 Knowledge, Knowledge of all kinds wi he has exchanged a gross fault for a more subtle one. "Temperance topics" stop drinking; let us suppose it; but will much be gained, if those who give up spirits take to opium? Naturam expellas furcâ, tamen usque recurret,7 40 grafted into the mind of a Christian, and g is at least a heathen truth, and universities and libraries which recur to heathenism may reclaim it from the heathen for their motto. minister to Revealed Truth. The evidence of Religion, natural theology, metaphysicsor, again, poetry, history, and the classicsor physics and mathematics, may all br and take by the grafting. But if in education we begin with nature before grace, with eve dences before faith, with science before conscience, with poetry before practice, we sha Nay, everywhere, so far as human nature remains hardly or partially Christianized, the 45 be doing much the same as if we were to indulz heathen law remains in force; as is felt in a measure even in the most religious places and societies. Even there, where Christianity has power, the venom of the old Adam is not subdued. Those who have to do with our Colleges 50 give us their experience, that in the case of the young committed to their care, external discipline may change the fashionable excess, but cannot allay the principle of sinning. Stop cigars, they will take to drinking parties; 55 • Louis XI (1461-83). Scott describes these cages in Quentin Durward, I. xv. "In point of fact these cages were eight feet long and about seven feet high." 7" You may cast out nature with a pitchfork, but it will always return." the appetites and passions, and turn a dea ear to the reason. In each case we mispis what in its place is a divine gift. If we attempt to effect a moral improvement by means poetry, we shall but mature into a mawkist frivolous, and fastidious sentimentalism;-3 by means of argument, into a dry, unamisbie longheadedness;-if by good society, into a polished outside, with hollowness within, in which vice has lost its grossness, and perhaps increased its malignity;-if by experiments science, into an uppish, supercilious temper much inclined to scepticism. But reverse the order of things: put Faith first and Know? edge second; let the University minister to the Church, and then classical poetry becomes the type of Gospel truth, and physical science a comment on Genesis or Job, and Aristotle changes into Butler, and Arcesilaus into Berkeley.8 SITE OF A UNIVERSITY (From The Office and Work of Universities, 1854) and their civilization. The arts and philosophy of the Asiatic coast were easily carried across the sea, and there was Cimon, as I have said, with his ample fortune, ready to receive them 5 with due honours. Not content with patronizing their professors, he built the first of those noble porticos, of which we hear so much in Athens, and he formed the groves, which in process of time became the celebrated Academy. Athens it was once the most beneficent, of employments. Cimon took in hand the wild wood, pruned and dressed it, and laid it out with handsome walks and welcome fountains. If we would know what a University is, con- 10 Planting is one of the most graceful, as in sidered in its elementary idea, we must betake ourselves to the first and most celebrated home of European literature and source of European civilization, to the bright and beautiful Athens, Athens, whose schools drew to 15 Nor, while hospitable to the authors of the her bosom, and then sent back again to the business of life, the youth of the western world for a long thousand years. Seated on the verge of the continent, the city seemed hardly suited for the duties of a central metropolis 20 of knowledge; yet, what it lost in convenience of approach, it gained in its neighbourhood to the traditions of the mysterious East, and of the loveliness of the regions in which it lay. Hither, then, as to a sort of ideal land, where 25 menced what may be called her University city's civilization, was he ungrateful to the instruments of her prosperity. His trees extended their cool, umbrageous branches over the merchants, who assembled in the Agora,1 for many generations. Those merchants certainly had deserved that act of bounty; for all the while their ships had been carrying forth the intellectual fame of Athens to the western world. Then com existence. Pericles, who succeeded Cimon both in the government and in the patronage of art, is said by Plutarch to have entertained the idea of making Athens the capital of federated all archetypes of the great and the fair were found in substantial being, and all departments of truth explored, and all diversities of intellectual power exhibited, where taste and philosophy were majestically enthroned as 30 Greece; in this he failed, but his encourage in a royal court, where there was no sovereignty but that of mind, and no nobility but that of genius, where professors were rulers, and princes did homage, hither flocked continually from the very corners of the orbis 35 terrarum,' the many-tongued generation, just rising, or just risen into manhood, in order to gain wisdom. 3 ment of such men as Phidias and Anaxagoras led the way to her acquiring a far more lasting Sovereignty over a far wider empire. Little understanding the sources of her own greatness, Athens would go to war: peace is the interest of a seat of commerce and the arts; but to war she went; yet to her, whether peace or war, it mattered not. The political power of Athens waned and disappeared; kingdoms Pisistratus 2 had in an early age discovered and nursed the infant genius of his people, and 40 rose and fell; centuries rolled away,-they did Cimon, after the Persian war, had given it a home. That war had established the naval supremacy of Athens; she had become an imperial state; and the Ionians, bound to her by the double chain of kindred and of subjection, 45 of Mithridates, gazed without alarm at the were importing into her both their merchandise 8 The two ancient Greek philosophers, Aristotle, the profound thinker and logician, and Arcesilaus, a sceptical teacher of the fourth century, who declared that certain knowledge was unattainable by man, are here taken as types of those who put knowledge before faith; while 50 Bishop Butler, who held in his Analogy that the revelation of God in nature confirmed the revelation of Him in the Bible, and Bishop Berkeley, who, denying the existence of matter, found in ideas, or spirit, the one reality,are selected to represent those who give the first place to faith. 1 "Of the circle of lands." 2 Pisistratus' administration was famous for its encouragement of literature and the arts. He had a new edition of the Homeric poems prepared, and he built the Lyceum and several temples. 3 This commander, after defeating the Persians, spent much of his money on improving Athens. but bring fresh triumphs to the city of the poet and the sage. There at length the swarthy Moor and Spaniard were seen to meet the blueeyed Gaul; and the Cappadocian, late subject haughty conquering Roman. Revolution after Many a more fruitful coast or isle is washed by the blue Ægean, many a spot is there more beautiful or sublime to see, many a territory more ample; but there was one charm in At55 tica, which in the same perfection was nowhere else. The deep pastures of Arcadia, the plain 4 The market place, used not only for buying and selling, but as a place of assembly for debating, elections, trials, etc. would visit their Ionian cousins, a sort of vis duct thereto across the sea; but that fan would not occur to him, nor any admiration of the dark violet billows with their whe 5 edges down below; nor of those graceful, farlike jets of silver upon the rocks, which slowly rise aloft like water spirits from the deep, the shiver, and break, and spread, and shread themselves, and disappear, in a soft mist of and panting of the whole liquid plain; nor di the long waves, keeping steady time, like a line of soldiery, as they resound upon the bollow shore, he would not deign to notice that his stars that he was not upon it. Nor the distinct detail, nor the refined colouring, nor the graceful outline and roseate golden hue of the jutting crags, nor the bold shadows cast from Otus or Laurium by the declining sun;our agent of a mercantile firm would not vale these matters even at a low figure. Rather we must turn for the sympathy we seek te yon pilgrim student, come from a semi of Argos, the Thessalian vale, these had not the gift; Boeotia, which lay to its immediate north, was notorious for its very want of it. The heavy atmosphere of that Boeotia might be good for vegetation, but it was associated in popular belief with the dulness of the Bootian intellect: on the contrary, the special purity, elasticity, clearness, and salubrity of the air of Attica, fit concomitant and emblem of its genius, did that for it which earth did 10 foam; nor of the gentle, incessant heaving not;-it brought out every bright hue and tender shade of the landscape over which it was spread, and would have illuminated the face even of a more bare and rugged country. A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its 15 restless living element at all, except to bless greatest length, and thirty its greatest breadth; two elevated rocky barriers, meeting at an angle; three prominent mountains, commanding the plain,-Parnes, Pentelicus, and Hymettus; an unsatisfactory soil; some streams, not 20 always full;-such is about the report which the agent of a London company would have made of Attica. He would report that the climate was mild; the hills were limestone; there was plenty of good marble; more pasture 25 barbarous land to that small corner of the earth. land than at first survey might have been expected, sufficient certainly for sheep and goats; fisheries productive; silver mines once, but long since worked out; figs fair; oil first-rate; olives in profusion. But what he would not 30 think of noting down, was, that the olive tree was so choice in nature and so noble in shape, that it excited a religious veneration; and that it took so kindly to the light soil, as to expand into woods upon the open plain, and to climb 35 up and fringe the hills. He would not think of writing word to his employers, how that clear air, of which I have spoken, brought out, yet blended and subdued, the colours on the marble, till they had a softness and harmony, for 40 all their richness, which in a picture looks exaggerated, yet is after all within the truth. He I would not tell, how that same delicate and brilliant atmosphere freshened up the pale olive, till the olive forgot its monotony, and 45 Alma Mater at the time, or to remain afterits cheek glowed like the arbutus or beech of the Umbrian hills. He would say nothing of the thyme and thousand fragrant herbs which carpeted Hymettus; he would hear nothing of the hum of its bees; nor take much account of 50 the rare flavour of its honey, since Gozo and Minorca were sufficient for the English demand. He would look over the Ægean from the height he had ascended; he would follow with his eye the chain of islands, which, start- 55 their minds. Now, barren as was the soil of ing from the Sunian headland, seemed to offer the fabled divinities of Attica, when they A promontory forming the extreme southern point of the province of Attica. as to a shrine, where he might take his fill of gazing on those emblems and coruscations of invisible unoriginate perfection. It was the stranger from a remote province, from Britain or from Mauritania, who in a scene so differen from that of his chilly, woody swamps, or of his fiery choking sands, learned at once what a real University must be, by coming to understand the sort of country, which was its suitable home. Nor was this all that a University required, and found in Athens. No one, even there, could live on poetry. If the students at that famous place had nothing better than bright hues and soothing sounds, they would not have been able or disposed to turn their residence there to much account. Of course they must have the means of living, nay, in a certain sense, of enjoyment, if Athens was to be an wards a pleasant thought in their memory And so they had: be it recollected Athens was a port, and a mart of trade, perhaps the first in Greece; and this was very much to the point, when a number of strangers were ever flocking to it, whose combat was to be with intellectusi, not physical difficulties, and who claimed to have their bodily wants supplied, that they might be at leisure to set about furnishing Attica, and bare the face of the country, yet it had only too many resources for an elegant, 6 Laurium was a mountain range in Attica. Otur is apparently a misprint for Orus, the peak of Aegina. at the time; and one point which he was strong upon, and was evidently fond of urging, was the material pomp and circumstance which should environ a seat of learning. He con 5 sidered it was worth the consideration of the government, whether Oxford should not stand in a domain of its own. An ample range, say four miles in diameter, should be turned into wood and meadow, and the University should nay luxurious abode there. So abundant were the imports of the place, that it was a common saying, that the productions, which were found singly elsewhere, were brought all together in Athens. Corn and wine, the staple of subsistence in such a climate, came from the isles of the Egean; fine wool and carpeting from Asia Minor; slaves, as now, from the Euxine, and timber too; and iron and brass from the coasts of the Mediterranean. The 10 be approached on all sides by a magnificent Athenian did not condescend to manufactures himself, but encouraged them in others; and a population of foreigners caught at the lucrative occupation both for home consumption and for exportation. Their cloth, and other 15 it would cost a round sum to realize it. What textures for dress and furniture, and their hardware for instance, armour-were in great request. Labour was cheap; stone and marble in plenty; and the taste and skill, which at first were devoted to public buildings, as tem- 20 stinct of mankind. ples and porticos, were in course of time applied to the mansions of public men. If nature did much for Athens, it is undeniable that art did much more. park, with fine trees in groups and groves and avenues, and with glimpses and views of the fair city, as the traveler drew near it. There is nothing surely absurd in the idea, though has a better claim to the purest and fairest possessions of nature, than the seat of wisdom? So thought my coach companion; and he did but express the tradition of ages and the in THE AIM OF A UNIVERSITY COURSE (From Idea of a University, 1852) Here some one will interrupt me with the 25 remark: “By the bye, where are we, and whither are we going?-what has all this to do with a University? at least what has it to do with education? It is instructive doubtless; but still how much has it to do with your sub-30 ject?" Now I beg to assure the reader that I am most conscientiously employed upon my subject; and I should have thought every one would have seen this: however, since the objection is made, I may be allowed to pause 35 awhile, and show distinctly the drift of what I have been saying, before I go farther. What has this to do with my subject! why, the question of the site is the very first that comes into consideration, when a Studium Generale is 40 contemplated; for that site should be a liberal and a noble one; who will deny it? All authorities agree in this, and very little reflection will be sufficient to make it clear. I recollect a conversation I once had on this very subject with 45 a very eminent man. I was a youth of eighteen, and was leaving my University for the Long Vacation, when I found myself in company in a public conveyance with a middle-aged person, whose face was strange to me. How- 50 Washingtons, of Raphaels or Shakespeares, To-day I have confined myself to saying that that training of the intellect, which is best for the individual himself, best enables him to discharge his duties to society. The Philosopher, indeed, and the man of the world differ in their very notion, but the methods by which they are respectively formed, are pretty much the same. The Philosopher has the same command of matters of thought, which the true citizen and gentleman has of matters of business and conduct. If then a practical end must be assigned to a University course; I say that it is that of training good members of society. Its art is the art of social life; and its end is fitness for the world. It neither confines its views to particular professions on the one hand, nor creates heroes or inspires genius on the other. Works indeed of genius fall under no art; heroic minds come under no rule; a University is not a birthplace of poets or of immortal authors, of founders of schools, leaders of colonies, or conquerors of nations. It does not promise a generation of Aristotles or Newtons, of Napoleons or though such miracles of nature it has before now contained within its precincts. Nor is it content on the other hand with forming the critic or the experimentalist, the economist ever, it was the great academical luminary of the day, whom afterwards I knew very well. Luckily for me, I did not suspect it; and luckily too, it was a fancy of his, as his friends knew, to make himself on easy terms especially with 55 or the engineer, though such too it includes stage-coach companions. So, what with my flippancy and his condescension, I managed to hear many things which were novel to me 7 A university, or school of universal learning. within its scope. But a University training is the great ordinary means to a great but ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, |