W. W. Rouse Ball

“ Sculpture, unless it is absolutely first rate, does not represent a man as well as portraiture. The number of pieces of statuary of the first class in Great Britain is small, and in the possession of such pieces the College is extraordinarily fortunate. The statue of Newton, with its proud inscription “Newton qui genus humanum ingenio superavit,” in the antechapel by Roubiliac—“the marble index of a mind for ever voyaging through strange seas of thought alone”—is of the highest merit. ”

“ The College took pride in resuming at once its position in the world of letters and science, and the following years are famous for the work of Pearson and Barrow, two great divines of the time, and above all of Isaac Newton. The influence of the last-named philosopher on the studies and intellectual life of Cambridge was far reaching. His discoveries in pure mathematics, mechanics, physics, and dynamical astronomy were of the utmost importance, and made Cambridge the centre of mathematical work in England. ”

“ Being much interested in the prosperity and well-fare of that our College which is both our immediate Foundation and the fairest in all our kingdoms, and furnished, for the most part with the extracions of our own free-school at Westminster, we cannot but be very sensible of any alteration in the government of the same. ”

“ I come next to the question of the secular students in arts, most or all of whom would be clerks in major or minor orders. Rejecting the migration theory of the origin of the University, I do not suppose that in its earliest days these secular students were numerous, for the vicinity cannot have provided many such men, but as soon as the University acquired reputation as a centre of higher teaching they would be attracted to it from a wide area, and their numbers would be increased by many glomerels who would continue their course as students in arts. ”

“ No obligation to take pupils seems ever to have been imposed on fellows, though a pupil once taken could not be transferred. This, and the fact that scholars were elected only from students already in residence, made it undesirable to retain any rule to the effect that a fellow should not have more than one pensioner as a pupil. Hence in time those who liked tutorial work and did it well were allowed to have more than one pensioner pupil, and gradually the bulk of the entries came to be made under a comparatively few tutors. ”

“ If a stone is allowed to fall near the surface of the earth, the attraction of the earth causes it to move through sixteen feet in one second: also Kepler’s Laws, if accurate and applicable, involve the conclusion that the attraction of the earth on a distant body varies inversely as the square of its distance from the earth. Now the radius of the earth and the distance of the moon were known to Newton, and therefore, on this hypothesis, he could find the magnitude of the earth’s attraction on the moon. ”

“ The father of a college takes a student of a different college aside, and, sometimes for an hour and an half together, strictly examines him in every part of mathematics and philosophy, which he professes to have read.
After he hath, from this examination, formed an accurate idea of the student’s abilities and acquired knowledge, he makes a report of his absolute or comparative merit to the moderators, and to every other father who shall ask him the question.
Besides the fathers, all masters of arts, and doctors, of whatever faculty they be, have the liberty of examining whom they please ”

“ Colleges were erected for the benefit of selected scholars who were maintained at the expense of the foundation, and throughout the middle ages, most of the students lived in Private Hostels. In Tudor times undergraduates who paid their own expenses were admitted to colleges, and finally, every student was required to be a member of one of these Houses: the peculiar collegiate character of Oxford and Cambridge dates from this change. I need hardly add that women were not (and are not) admissible as members of the University, and that in former days teachers and students alike were unmarried. ”

“ These sections brought the problem of the solar system, consisting of solid bodies of finite size and approximately spherical in form, into the domain of mathematics, and led up to the generalization that all particles of matter attract one another with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, from which law it would seem that all the known phenomena of the motions of the solar system can be deduced. ”

“ The examiners are not seated, but keep moving round the tables, both to judge how matters proceed and to deliver their questions at proper intervals. The examination, which embraces arithmetic, algebra, fluxions, the doctrine of infinitesimals and increments, geometry, trigonometry, mechanics, hydrostatics, optics, and astronomy, in all their various gradations, is varied according to circumstances: no one can anticipate a question, for in the course of five minutes he may be dragged from Euclid to Newton, from [282] the humble arithmetic of Bonnycastle to the abstruse analytics of Waring. ”

“ To alter or subvert the ancient liberties of one of the chiefest Colleges in Christendom and to divert from the uses intended by his Majesty’s Predecessors a foundation like Trinity in order to satisfy private humour or under the pretence of benefitting an ordinary School is a great indignity to his Majesty’s Sacred Person, Power, and Prerogative. ”

“ A century ago there seems to have been a sort of recognized scale of penalties for cutting lectures or chapel. First, a reprimand was given at an interview or sent in writing by a servant; second, an imposition was set; third the offender was deprived of commons and sizings. If these steps were ineffective, the matter might be regarded as a serious offence against college discipline, and lead to “hauling” by the tutor, a gating, an interview with the master, a formal admonition, and in extreme cases to rustication. ”

“ The history of Guilds in the University cannot be given with any certainty. It may be that in the early years of the University most secular students and teachers from any particular locality were associated together as a guild, and perhaps every student on arrival was expected to join his local guild, and through it become a member of the University. The guilds imposed on their members definite rules for their conduct in relation to one another, and enforced such regulations by means of money fines, refusal of assistance, and in extreme cases expulsion. ”

“ It is inconvenient that so large a College as Trinity should be restrained unto a particular School, and it can be easily shown that other Schools have furnished Trinity with students of much better hope and proof than Westminster hath done or is likely to do, for the whole number of Westminster boys who are eligible to both Universities are but forty, and there are seldom more than eight or nine candidates for the six vacancies at the two Universities. ”

“ But as the highest academical distinctions are invariably given to the best proficients in mathematics and natural philosophy, a very superficial knowledge in morality and metaphysics will suffice.
When the division under examination is one of the highest classes, problems are also proposed, with which the student retires to a distant part of the senate-house, and returns, with his solution upon paper, to the moderator, who, at his leisure, compares it with the solutions of other students, to whom the same problems have been proposed. ”

“ In the sixteenth century the colleges opened their doors to the admission of pensioners and fellow-commoners. Collegiate teaching and arrangements were superior to those of the private hostels, and before the middle of the century the latter had disappeared: their revival was rendered impossible by a regulation that membership of the University should be confined to those who were members of a college. Shortly afterwards it became the custom not to require residence for degrees after the baccalaureate, and thus a course limited to three or four years became usual for the average student. ”

“ In 1755 there were only two fellows acting as tutors, namely S. Whisson and J. Backhouse. Thenceforth there were definite tutorial “sides,” each under one tutor or joint tutors, a tutor being appointed to a side when a vacancy occurred; and every admission to the College being made on a designated side. In effect the work of a tutor was now regarded as being of a character which should occupy [43] a man’s whole energies, and it was generally held that a tutor, while he held office, had not, and ought not to have, leisure during term-time for independent work. ”

“ To deprive such a student of the right to dine in hall or of his commons was equivalent to a pecuniary fine, and in the case of a poor scholar might be a severe, though not a satisfactory, punishment; probably a modicum of bread and beer was supplied to students even when discommonsed. In some comments, published [217] in 1768, on university education at Cambridge, discommonsing is described as “one of the most idle and anile punishments ... inflicted rather on the parent than on the young man, who being prohibited to eat in Hall is driven to purchase a dinner at a tavern or coffee house.” ”

“ The Philosophy Lecturer to read first of things introductory to natural philosophy—time, space, body, place, motion and its laws, force, mechanical powers, gravity and its laws, hydrostatics, projectiles solid and fluid, circular motions and the forces relating to them. And then to read natural philosophy, beginning with the general system of the world, and thence proceeding to the particular constitution of this earth and the things therein—meteors, elements, minerals, vegetables, animals, and ending with anatomy if he have skill therein. ”

“ As far back as Sir Simon D’Ewes’s time—and he entered Cambridge in 1618—the majority of the students were regarded as responsible, and capable of conducting themselves rationally. They reflected the virtues and foibles of their time, but they were a select class, and compare favourably in manners and morals with their contemporaries elsewhere. Almost without exception they speak warmly of their development in college from lads to young men, of friendships formed with their elders as well as their [209] contemporaries, of the abiding influence of the place, and of their affection for it. ”

“ If a student continued in the glomerel faculty, the degree of master in grammar (or rhetoric) was open to him, but in processions of the University, such graduates took a lower place than students in arts, and their inferior position was emphasized by a statute which, while regulating the attendance of regents at the funeral of a regent master or student in arts, stated that graduates and scholars in grammar were not entitled to such recognition—Illis tantummodo exceptis, qui artem solam docent vel audiunt grammaticam, ad quorum exequias nisi ex devotione non veniant supradicti. ”

“ Membership of a college was a privilege confined, in general, to scholars specially nominated, and no doubt the standards of work and discipline there were higher than in the private hostels. Naturally we know less of life in these hostels, but it is likely that disciplinary rules were originally made by or with the approval of the elder residents, and that the normal discipline in them was of the same general character as that exercised in colleges, though, as the members paid for themselves, money fines were [199] possible and usual penalties, especially in the case of the older members. ”

“ No condition of poverty was imposed on the scholars of King’s Hall, nor was their life here penurious: they had a dining-hall, library, common room, chapel, kitchens, a brewery, a vineyard, a garden, and a staff of servants maintained by the Society, while a good many of them also kept their own private servants: they received a liberal allowance for daily commons, clothes and bedding were supplied from the royal wardrobe, and pocket-money was given to buy other things. ”

“ In May 1849, the board issued a report in which, after giving a review of the past and existing state of the mathematical studies in the University, they recommended that the mathematical theories of electricity, magnetism, and heat should not be admitted as subjects of examination. In the following year they issued a second report, in which they recommended the omission of elliptic integrals, Laplace’s coefficients, capillary attraction, and the figure of the earth considered as heterogeneous, as well as a definite limitation of the questions in the lunar and planetary theories. ”

“ Delighting in danger, which even when in supreme command he deliberately sought, brave to a fault, an excellent cavalry leader, rich and lavishly generous, he was the idol of the public, and witnesses to his popularity remain in the numerous public-houses scattered far and wide over England which bear his name and arms. Somerset was of a very different type, being a stupid man whose power was chiefly derived from his enormous landed possessions. ”