PART A.-GENERAL REVIEW. CONTENTS. II.-Self-reform and development since the last Royal Commission III.-General position of the two Universities and their special value to I.-HISTORICAL SURVEY. FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE COMMISSIONS 7. The word University has no necessary connection either with learning or with groups of Colleges. It originally meant the In the Middle Ages students often came up as boys of fourteen or less, but were expected to take courses extending over a number of years. To use modern language, the original Oxford and Cambridge were "Public Schools" and "Universities" in one, but with a minimum of discipline, and with provision for The original governing body of either University was an together by the sound of the bell. Even when the Colleges had begun to supplant the halls and hostels, the Heads of Colleges as such had no power in the government of the mediæval University; and until the age of railways the influence of nonresidents was small as a voting power. The medieval University gave its own instruction to the students through lectures delivered by its licensed teachers. The Professoriate, on the one hand, and College teaching on the other, were later developments. The University held what we should now call examinations to qualify for a degree; in days when comparatively little work could be done by reading and writing owing to scarcity of books and material, these exercises or tests took the form of a series of oral disputations in Latin, conducted sometimes in the form of question and answer, with an examiner either as a disputant or as umpire of the debate. The memory of this practice survived in words like "responsions, "modera,"" moderations," and "wrangler." 8. Until the sixteenth century Cambridge was of small account beside Oxford in regard to numbers, wealth, achievement, or prestige. It was under the stimulus it received from the Reformation that Cambridge began to be regarded as a serious rival to Oxford. Another effect of the Reformation is thus described by Mr. J. A. Venn, in his treatise on Oxford and Cambridge Matriculations. "The dissolution of the monasteries and the 66 66 consequent suppression of the religious orders caused a com"plete cessation of the flow of monks and friars to Oxford and Cambridge, but concurrently, and as a direct result of this, the proportion of country gentlemen's sons increased. At first there can be no doubt that, numerically at least, both "Universities were hard hit by the expulsion of the religious "orders, although a couple of decades enabled them to recover "and even exceed their former number." The lay element and the upper class element both began to have an important place in the life of the Universities. In the same epoch the peculiar type of learning associated with the Trivium and Quadrivium,* and the scholastic philosophy, was giving way before the "new learning," Scriptural and Greek, brought to Oxford and Cambridge in the previous generation by Grocyn, Colet and Erasmus; but the process of official change was more gradual than is sometimes supposed. Indeed, the course of study prescribed by Laud's Statutes for Oxford affords a clear link between the medieval Trivium and Quadrivium on the one hand, and the reformed schools of the early nineteenth century on the other The Trivium contained Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic (alias Logic); the Quadrivium Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Astronomy. The Trivium was the first and the more generally studied of the two courses. 9. The Tudor and Stuart epochs saw rapid progress in a revolution by which most of the teaching was transferred from the Universities to the Colleges, while the Heads of Colleges as such had allotted to them the chief share in the government of the University itself. Ultimately no one was allowed to become a member of the University without being a member of a College, while the University had no control over admission to Colleges, which thus became the sole avenue to matriculation. The University was reduced to little more than an examining body, and when in the eighteenth century it ceased at Oxford even to examine, its functions, all save degree-giving, had become atrophied, and its independent existence had in effect been. merged in an aggregate of its Colleges. Alma Mater had been devoured by her own children. This great revolution, though by the admission of all to-day it was at one time carried much too far, has given Oxford and Cambridge their distinctive character, and not a few of their special merits. It is indeed a mistake to suppose that Colleges were peculiar to Oxford and Cambridge in the Middle Ages. Italian Universities had many Colleges or endowed residences for students, which have since disappeared with a very few exceptions. At Paris University upwards of fifty Colleges were founded between 1180 and 1500. But they never attained to the size, wealth and importance eventually reached by the corresponding institutions in England. They withered away and failed to preserve their property, and what was left of them finally disappeared in the French Revolution. 10. The chief causes of the rise of the Colleges to power and influence in Oxford and Cambridge may be described under five headings. (i) The desire to provide for the maintenance, discipline and welfare of the students.-A sound and generous instinct has led people in modern times to compare themselves unfavourably. with the poor clerks " of mediaval Universities who faced the direst poverty in pursuit of knowledge. We praise the days "When Learning like a stranger came from far," and "Lovers of truth, by penury constrained" "Led in abstemiousness a studious life; When, in forlorn and naked chambers cooped And crowded, o'er the ponderous books they hung.' But there was another side to the picture. Boys of fourteen sent, with little or no money and no advice or protection, to fend for themselves in a scene of riot, of debauchery, and frequently of murder, among practised extortioners, who lived by cheating the "silly scholars," might often get as much harm as good. from academic life. When, therefore, the first Colleges were started, towards the end of the thirteenth century, originally to provide food and maintenance for scholars to be placed on the foundation" of the College, it was soon perceived that the protection and control of the boys was hardly less valuable than the financial assistance afforded them. Careful English parents became more and more anxious to put their sons into one or other of these arks of safety; an increasing number of undergraduates who were not scholars. "on the foundation" sought and obtained a place in the envied life of the Colleges. The number, wealth and importance of these institutions increased generation after generation to meet a natural demand, characteristic of the English craving for the comfort and security of a settled "home. (ii) The desire to assist the learned professions and especially the Church. It would be impossible, without entering upon a lengthy survey of mediaval society, to show clearly what the aims of the Founders and early benefactors of the Colleges were, in respect of the classes they wished to assist and the careers which they hoped to open to them. To take the latter point first, one avowed object was to recruit the depleted ranks of the secular clergy; another, and a kindred one, to cultivate the study of Theology; and a third, closely related, to extirpate current heresies and errors (e.g., those of Wycliffe and Pecock). Next to the study of Theology, that of Law, Ecclesiastical and Civil, was favoured, and in a less degree those of Medicine and Astronomy (the pursuit of these two being permitted only to a small number of Fellows of Colleges); Music was also taught in the Grammar and Song Schools, as definitely ancillary to the services of the Church. (iii) The local patriotism and family feeling of Founders and their desire to help poor scholars.-With regard to the classesfrom which scholars came, it must be remembered that the stratification of society in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. differed immensely from that of the present time. The professional classes of lawyers and doctors, as well as clergy, were normally celibate. The sons of labourers in the field were only gradually ceasing to be bound to the land, and seldom in fact left it. Those of the artisan class of the towns, which furnishes. to-day many able students, looked forward with few exceptions. to following the crafts of their parents. We have to think of the scholars of early times as coming chiefly from the families of small yeomen, or as children of the many retainers of noble houses. General philanthropy towards poor students as such was a prominent motive, but by no means the only one, in the minds of Founders and early benefactors of Colleges. Provincial and even parochial patriotism bulks large in some of the early charters of foundation. The natives of certain villages, towns, and counties have preference in elections, and provision for founder's kin was frequent. Another motive was the desire toperpetuate prayers for self and family. The requirement of poverty is, indeed, a recurrent feature in early statutes; but it is difficult to translate it into present-day To take a single instance: the scholars of Eton, who were all intended to proceed in due course to King's College, Cambridge, were allowed under Henry VI's statutes to possess as much as 5 marks sterling per annum. The Head Master's salary is only 24 marks. Both he and the scholars are fed, lodged and clothed by the College. Evidently there is here no insistence upon absolute penury. Yet here as elsewhere the scholars are described as poor or indigent.' (iv) From an early date benefactors, both Royal and private, were more personally attracted by the idea of founding and endowing Colleges than of enriching the University.-Founders and benefactors could with greater ease perpetuate their names, or leave the impress of their own ideas, in connection with the smaller society of a College. As the centuries went by, the magnificence and beauty of the College buildings completely eclipsed the University. The aspect of High Street and the Backs identified men's visual conception of Oxford and Cambridge with the Colleges that everywhere met the eye and dominated the imagination. (v) The last reason for the growth of the power of the Colleges was religious and political, two aspects of life which in old English history cannot be treated apart. Oxford University, which, as compared to that of Paris, breathed an air of free speculation, was the cradle of the Wycliffite doctrines. But, as has been already mentioned, the Colleges at both Oxford and Cambridge were regarded with favour as convenient instruments to extirpate such heresy and so prevent its recrudescence. There could be a discipline of opinions as well as of morals. When, at the Reformation, the Crown became specially interested in controlling religious and political opinion at Oxford and Cambridge as the places where the clergy were trained, the monarchs found the individual Colleges more easy to manage than the University as a whole. They therefore put its government largely into the hands of the College authorities. Elizabeth cut deep into the liberties of the Medieval University. Her statesmen remodelled the constitution of both Oxford and Cambridge so as to give the Heads of Colleges considerable control over Convocation and the Senate. The systems adopted for this purpose differed in the two Universities, but the general result was much the same. At Cambridge this action appears to have been taken largely as a measure against the Puritan movement headed by Cartwright. Laud carried the same principle even further in his Oxford Statutes, which stereotyped the domination of the Colleges over the University. 11. For a while, opposition to the Royal policy, whether Roman Catholic or Puritan, could be easily suppressed through the agency of the Colleges. But the power of the Colleges continued to grow after the power of the Crown had begun to |