cate and important privilege to be granted? If on that of seniority, it seems rather hard that a sighing lover of twentyseven should have to wait till his senior has made up his mind whether he will or will not take a companion for his declining years. If priority of application is taken into consideration, the system would form a heavy premium on early engagements, and a fiancée would become as indispensable an appendage to an unmarried tutor as a follower is to a housemaid.

The fact that, in spite of these difficulties, every college which has recently taken in hand the remodelling of its fellowships, has found itself compelled to tolerate, to a greater or less extent, the marriage of its resident fellows, shows the necessity of the change. Without it college tutorships cannot compete with their most formidable rivals, masterships at public schools and Scotch professorships. Scarcely a year passes without seeing some graduate, who appears eminently qualified to remain a University teacher, transferred to some sphere of life for which celibacy is not a disqualification. The difficulty of inducing able men to remain at the University is one which increases every year. The average age of the working staff is probably under thirty, and there is said to be a college where the senior tutor has not reached that venerable age. There will be some who will say that this is just as it should be; that the time when a tutor is at his best is when he is young, vigorous, and enthusiastic, and not yet sufficiently removed from the standing of his pupils to be unable to comprehend their difficulties; and that an older man very soon tends to become dull and mechanical. There is a great deal of truth in this; and if the whole work of education consisted in the ploughing up of the mental field, and the rooting out of the prejudices which have sown themselves in the fallow, it is probable that no more potent instrument could be devised for the purpose, than a young graduate, fresh from his degree, eager to do his best for his pupils, full of sympathy for the diffi

culties with which he himself has recently struggled, full of belief in the truths into which he has just been initiated, and full of scorn for the fallacies from which he has just been emancipated It will be an evil day for the Universi ties when this element disappears from their teaching. But admitting this, there are many-not merely among those who regard the Universities pri marily as homes of culture and science, but among those who attach greater weight to their strictly educational func tions-who feel strongly that this ele ment needs to be supplemented by another in which the Universities are at present deficient: the element of thorough, solid, scientific teaching; the teaching which is the fruit of mature reflection, and patient, laborious years, and which ultimately enriches the Univer sity and the world with written work of permanent value. Teachers of this kind the Universities now and then contrive to retain in their service, rather through the operation of some "divine chance than by good management; but they can never reckon on retaining them until they have made the career which they offer attractive, not merely to a youngster, but to a middle-aged

man.

The second innovation to which we have referred, namely the system of intercollegiate teaching, is a necessary result of the increased and increasing variety and elasticity of the recognized University course. When the University curriculum simply offered a choice between a comparatively narrow course of classics and a comparatively narrow course of mathematics, there was always a reasonable chance that in each college might be found a teaching staff sufficient to conduct the undergraduates through their course of mathematics, or classics, as the case might be. But now that to classics and mathematics have been added law, history, theology, and physical science; now that the school of "literæ humaniores” has ramified into a number of subjects, more or less cognate, but each sufficient to monopolize the exertions of any one

teacher, and that each successive modification of the examination statutes shows a further tendency in the direction of specializing,-pretensions on the part of any one college to supply with its own unaided staff the teaching required for all these subjects become absurd, and the costliness and wastefulness of the cumbrous and antiquated machinery of separate college teaching become apparent. Whilst colleges still struggled to maintain their independence of external assistance, their αὐτάρκεια, in teaching, there might be seen, here a lecturer delivering to five a course of lectures which might, with equal advantage, have been delivered to fifty; there a pupil unable to obtain any college teaching which met his wants. It was the latter anomaly which first led to a change; for colleges now-a-days usually feel some scruple about adhering to the time-honoured system of contenting themselves with pocketing tuition fees, leaving all real instruction to be supplied by private tutors. The most obvious mode of meeting the want was that of calling in as lecturers, or even as tutors, members of other colleges; and this was soon resorted to. A still more beneficial extension of the system of extra-collegiate instruction was made, when one college admitted to its lectures, or to some of its lectures, the members of another college, either on the condition of a money payment, or of being granted a reciprocal favour. This plan was found to be at once so simple, so sensible, and so useful, that it was widely and rapidly taken up; and the most remarkable phenomenon in Oxford teaching during the last few years has been the growth and increase of these commercial treaties, as they may be termed, between different colleges, which have formed a network embracing nearly every college at the University. These confederations may be more or less complete, and may extend to all, or only to a part, of the subjects professed to be taught; in their completest form they involve the most entire intercommunion for teaching purposes, a common staff of lecturers, and the settlement in com

mon of a comprehensive programme of lectures open to all members of the confederated societies. In fact for teaching, as distinguished from disciplinary purposes, the college has disappeared, and the confederation, under the management of a common board of tutors and lecturers, has taken its place. In some subjects, such as mathematics, for which there is a more limited demand, and consequently a more limited supply of teachers, it is believed to be the case, that teaching, at least so far as "honour" mathematics are concerned, is entirely irrespective of the colleges. The mathematical teachers of the University meet together, and divide the profits among themselves, drawing their fees out of the tuition funds of the different colleges.

It requires no great sagacity to foresee that this system of confederation is only preparing the way to a still greater unity in the administration of the University, to a state of things in which the colleges will be far more completely subordinated to the University, and in which the most important lecturers will be in theory, as they are rapidly becoming in fact, University and not college officers. To hold such a view implies rather a wish for, not a belief in, the probability of the extinction of the colleges. The recent admission of unattached students to the University does indeed show that colleges are not necessary, but it is far from showing that they are not highly useful elements of a University. Not merely as institutions round which honourable and venerable traditions have gathered, but as institutions which have always fulfilled and still fulfil functions of the highest value in the University, the loss of the colleges would be irreparable. There is one point especially in which the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, through the possession of colleges, contrast favourably with the Universities of other countries, and of other parts of the United Kingdom. No one who has enjoyed the inestimable advantage of belonging to a good college can fail to remember that much as he owes to his tutors and lecturers, he owes still more

to his college friends and contemporaries, to common studies, common recreations, common interests, all stimulated by attachment to one small society, and given full play by the easy and familiar intercourse which college life supplies. How much of all this is not lost to one who, instead of becoming a member of a college, is cast adrift upon the University at large?

The future constitution of the University is, however, too large a subject to be discussed here. It has been the object of this paper to state problems, not solve them; to indicate the magnitude and complexity of the questions which are involved in college reform, by showing, in the first place, that the points in the fellowship system which are the most favourite topics of popular criticism, are not mere ugly warts which may be removed, but are inherent in the very constitution of the colleges; and in the second place, that the changes which are passing over the University, not in consequence of any gratuitous experimentalizing on the part of its members, but through the operation of natural causes, are of the most serious and important kind, going to the root of the most fundamental principles upon which the University and the colleges have been built up; and to draw the conclusion that these changes require to be dealt with, not by such fragmentary, incomplete, and incoherent measures of reform as the colleges can themselves supply, but upon broad, comprehensive, and general principles.

It would be tempting to say a few words on some other points in which the working of the existing college system is unsatisfactory, whilst an adequate remedy seems to be out of the reach of the colleges themselves. The most important of these are, first, the economical waste which is involved in the existence, side by side, of a number of institutions, all existing for the same object, but each maintaining in jealous independence its separate expensive establishment, separate officers, separate buildings, and separate "pockethandkerchief estates," scattered up and

down over the face of the country; and secondly, the serious extent to which rivalry between the colleges in founding and augmenting scholarships and exhi bitions has run. At the last conference of the masters of public schools, a pritest was raised against the unnecessary multiplication of scholarship examinations, in running the gauntlet of which the most promising pupils at a school are apt to be employed during no incorsiderable part of the working year, aud others have complained of the growing tendency on the part of colleges to raise unnecessarily the pecuniary value of their scholarships, and the maximum age of eligibility, in the hope of making them more attractive, and of drawing candidates from a wider field. money can be better applied than that which is devoted to aiding poor scholars in defraying the expenses of a good education; but scholarships are scarcely fulfilling their proper purpose when they are made the means of inducing scholars to prefer a less to a more efficient college for the sake of getting a little money, when in fact they are used not as meaus of promoting education but as advertisements of rival teaching-shops.

No

Nothing can be more praiseworthy than the strenuous efforts which the most active colleges have been making to remedy the defects to which we have referred, and to adapt their antiquated machinery to the wholly new state of things which they have to meet Nothing can be more valuable as suggestions and indications of the direction which reform ought to take, but it is mere mockery to tell them that they, exposed as they are to the keen est competition, with their imperfect powers, their conflicting theories, and their jealous rivalries, are competent to carry out what is nothing less than a remodelling of the University. The simple statement that what is really needed is a revision of the relations of the colleges to each other and to the University, is enough to show how unequal the colleges are themselves to the task; and of this a strong confirmation might be found in the wild panaceas

which some colleges have been proposing, and the incongruous principles upon which they have been reforming their constitutions.

The most indispensable preliminary of any reform is an accurate knowledge of facts, aud for this purpose the inquiries which the University Commissioners are directed to make are invaluable. The nature and value of college property is a subject about which not merely members of Parliament and journalists, but fellows of colleges themselves, are as absolutely ignorant as they are about the number of landholders in Great Britain. The instruction to inquire into and report on, not merely the nature and extent of college revenues, but the mode in which those revenues are applied, will, it is to be hoped, have the effect of making the Commissioners report something more than a mere balance-sheet, and will enable it to contain useful suggestions as to the best mode of utilizing and of redistributing, if necessary, college property. Yet, in

spite of the elasticity of the Commissioners' instructions, it is impossible not to regret that they did not extend a little further, and authorize them to collect opinions as well as facts. It may very well be that opinions on the proper mode of University reform, both at Oxford and at Cambridge, are at present in an almost hopelessly divided state, and that the bulk of what would be elicited would be a mass of contradictory and impracticable theories; but even so, if legislation is desirable, it is surely better that it should be preceded by an inquiry into the opinions of those most conversant with the facts, and that those opinions should be given an opportunity of sifting and clearing themselves, of discovering their own inconsistencies, and of crystallizing themselves into shape. Perhaps it is not too much to hope that such an enlargement of the Commissioners' powers as will impose this additional duty upon them may still be made,

SURELY nine o'clock was early enough for breakfast at this remote little inn on the top of the hill; and indeed, when we parted the night before, after our moonlight improvisation of Fra Diavolo, that was the hour agreed upon. Nine o'clock ! Going down at a quarter past eight, with some notion that the Lieutenant might have sat up half the night consuming his wrath in the smoking of many cigars, and might now be still in bed, I heard voices. Sometimes there was a laugh-and no one who had once heard Bell's musical laugh could ever mistake it. When I went into the parlour which had been the Lieutenant's bedroom, I found that all traces of his occupation were gone: a fire was burning brightly in the grate, the breakfast tray was laid, and Bell sat at the open window, talking to Von Rosen himself, who was standing out on the pavement in the full blaze of the morning sunshine that now filled the main thoroughfare of Bourton onthe-Hill.

Bell looks round with a startled air. "My dear," I say to her, "travelling is doing you a world of good. Early rising is an excellent thing for young people."

I did not know when you might want to start," says Bell, gently, and rather averting her eyes-for which there was no reason whatever.

At this moment Queen Titania came down, looking brisk and cheerful, as

A DAUGHTER OF HETH," ETC.

she always does in the morning. She glanced at the tire, at the clean table, at Bell sitting by the window, and at the blaze of sunlight on the wall on the other side of the street. Apparently, this pleasant picture put her into an excellent humour, and she said to the Lieutenant, with one of her brightest looks

"Well, have you been making discoveries this morning? Have you made the acquaintance of many people? Has Bourton-on-the-Hill anything peculiar

about it?"

"Oh yes, Madame," said the Lieutenant, seriously, "something very sin gular, which you will not like to hear. This is an English village, in the middle of the country, and yet they never have any milk here-never. They cannot get any. The farmers prefer to make butter, and they will not sell milk on any inducement."

66

Why," said Tita, "that is the reason of our having no milk with our tea last evening. But is there no one the landlady can beg a little milk from?"

The Lieutenant looked at Bell, and that young lady endeavoured to conceal a smile. They had evidently been speculating on Tita's dismay before we came down.

"The great farmer in the neighbourhood," continued the Lieutenant. gravely, "is a Mrs. Phillips. I think she owns all the cattle-all the milk. I did send to her a polite message an hour ago, to ask if she would present us with a little of it but no; there is no answer. At the moment that Mademoiselle came down, I was going up to Mrs. Phillips's farm, to get the milk for you, but Mademoiselle was too proud for that, and