University of Cambridge

“ Not the least important feature of modern Cambridge is the unobtrusive red-brick building in Mill Lane, occupied by the University Extension Syndicate. Not remarkable in itself, it is the visible sign of the aim of the modern University not to keep its cherished learning to itself, but to distribute its advantages to others. Whether or no the idea expressed by a far-sighted don in the last century, when he said that each town ought to have its university, will be realised, is a possibility that rests on the knees of the gods ”

“ Now that the outworks of the hoary citadel of Classicism have been stormed, and the undermining of the great walls has already begun, the development of modern science at Cambridge will be accelerated, and in the face of the urgency of the demands of worldwide competition it would appear that the University on the Cam is more fitted to survive than her sister on the Isis. ”

“ The characteristic peculiar to Cambridge and Oxford, and which distinguishes them not only from American but also from all other universities in England and elsewhere, is the college system. Thus Cambridge is a collection of eighteen colleges which, though nominally united to form one institution, are really distinct, inasmuch as each is a separate community with its own buildings and grounds, its own resident students, its own lecturers, and Fellows—a community which is supported by its own moneys without aid from the university exchequer, and which in most matters legislates for itself. ”

“ The life of a University is a peculiar life, which does not suit everybody, and certainly did not suit him. He felt ‘cabined, cribbed, confined,’ in it; and he said afterwards that ‘he never really began to live till he was emancipated from academic trammels.’ Our wonder is, not that he left Cambridge when he did, but that he remained so long connected with it. ”

“ Before, however, we offer any conjectures as to the probable effect of these yet untried changes, we must remind our readers of a certain characteristic of the Cambridge system, which is important in estimating the internal relations of the late reforms. The academic life of Cambridge circulates through two concurrent systems, which we may term the university and the collegiate system. The university is one corporation, and each individual college is altogether another. ”

“ It is also a fact that, while mention is often made of Oxford scholars, the reverse is the case with Cambridge men. On referring to Willis and Clark's "History of the University of Cambridge" we find that although notices occur of scholars in menial employment there is no indication that begging licences were granted them. Still, the following entries prove that occasionally incipient Cambridge men received public assistance. ”

“ The full extent of the loss can only be measured by time; for the moment we can but feel that the University of Cambridge misses an influence which pervaded and animated every department of her affairs. For the last fifteen years no one has been so completely identified with what may be termed modern Cambridge; no one has been admitted to so large a share in her councils, or has devoted 315himself with such unremitting diligence to the administration of her complex organization.
Mr Trotter proceeded to his degree in 1859. ”

“ No one of late years has exerted so strong a personal influence in the University. It was the vigour of this personality which enabled Natural Science to take the place it now occupies in Cambridge life. He began to teach at a time when the rising popularity of science was regarded with dislike and suspicion by not a few persons. He left it accepted as one of the studies of the place. What will happen now that he has been taken away it is hard to foresee. We hope and believe that Natural Science is too deeply rooted at Cambridge to be permanently affected by even his loss. ”

“ Not only in these material ways are scientific studies in no sense neglected, but the position of the sciences is recognised and even envied by those who follow other kinds of learning. The scientific schools of Cambridge form perhaps the dominant force among the resident body of the university, and except by virtue of some great increase in the endowments, it would be impossible to extend further the scientific side of Cambridge and still maintain other forms of intellectual activity in such proportion as to preserve that healthy co-ordination which is the life of a great university. ”

“ In January, 1759, I took my Bachelor of Arts’ degree. The taking of this first degree is a great era in academic life; it is that to which all the under-graduates of talent and diligence direct their attention. There is no seminary of learning in Europe in which youth are more zealous to excel during the first years of their education than in the University of Cambridge. I was the second wrangler of my year. In September, 1759, I sat for a Fellowship. ”

“ We have said that, in modern times, universities as such have less influence than the aggregate of independent thinkers. This, however, hardly applies to England, for the mass of enlightened men in that country forms, practically, the true university. Cambridge, as a seat of equal learning, yet scarcely of equal brilliancy or influence, is of course included. The social and intellectual training of both is the same, the traditions practically so. ”

“ She has nurtured all the great scientists, and all the great poets. The discoveries of world-wide importance have been the work of Cambridge men—such were the three which revolutionised the science of the world, the laws of the circulation of the blood, of gravitation, of evolution. From Bacon the founder of experimental philosophy to Darwin and Kelvin, every great name is a Cambridge name, if we except indeed the few who like Wallace, Humphry Davy, Faraday, and the elder Herschell owe nothing to a university. ”

“ Throughout the 13th century, indeed, the university was still only a very slightly and imperfectly organized community. Its endowments were of the most slender kind; it had no systematic code for the government of its members; the supervision of the students was very imperfectly provided for. Although both Oxford and Cambridge were modelled on Paris, their higher faculties never developed the same distinct organization; and while the two proctors at Cambridge originally represented “north” and “south,” the “nations” are scarcely to be discerned. ”

“ He made bequests to King's College, Cambridge, established a fellowship at Jesus College, and was also a liberal benefactor to both the universities and to the abbey of Waltham.
He founded three public lectures, viz. in humanity, logic, and philosophy, to be read in the common schools of the university of Cambridge for ever. ”

“ Men like this, it has been urged, have made of Cambridge nothing but a gigantic boarding-school; but that is a purely frivolous judgment pronounced by youths aspiring to the honours of "town and gown," and to the fine schooling of a kid-gloved debauchery. The serious person hastens to welcome everything and anything which will promote the fame and maintain the dignity of his University. And there will be always the lighter side of Cambridge life—the effervescence of the mere boy, the occasional aberration of the saner student, the woe of the don with an ideal, the wail of a dean with a creed. ”

“ I see at Cambridge nothing which does not gain my respect for her present state and hope for her future. Increased sympathy between the old and young, increased intercourse between the teacher and the taught, increased freedom and charity of thought, and a steady purpose of internal self-reform and progress, seem to me already bearing good fruit, by making the young men regard their University with content and respect. ”

“ Not one of those who were his greatest admirers at Cambridge, when I was an undergraduate, ever saw him till many years after they had left the university. Nothing, perhaps, was so remarkable in his character as his tenderness to the feelings of others, and the deference with which he listened to those in every respect inferior to himself. ”

“ As Cambridge seems to possess the soil in which everything connected, however remotely, with science, is destined especially to thrive, such as natural history in its various branches, so does Oxford appear to be that University which should assume a prominently artistic character. ”

“ We trust that the scientific workers at Cambridge will take heart at this happy issue of the struggle, and gird up their loins for the heavy task of introducing order and system into the chaos in which the natural-science studies at Cambridge are now lost. It is not a little to the credit of this university that she should have been actually the first to remove one more of the old-fashioned swaddling-clothes which have been checking the development of youthful science, and we trust it is an earnest of still greater changes which she means to take in hand. ”

“ Cambridge may well be proud of its great men and England of its great university; and this feeling we may share, remembering the descent of our academic institutions from the new Cambridge in New England.
An English university is certainly the place where a ceremonial such as the Darwin centenary has the most fit setting. To it came delegates from all parts of the world, some 230 in number, leaders in all departments of science and especially in the biological and evolutionary sciences. ”

“ It grieved me to think, that you were wasting your time merely to gain a little Cambridge fame, not worth your having. I cannot be contented, that your renown should thrive nowhere but on the banks of the Cam. Conceive a nobler ambition, and never let your honour be circumscribed by the paltry dimensions of a university! It is well that you have already, as you observe, acquired sufficient information in that science to enable you to pass creditably such examinations as I suppose you must hereafter undergo. Keep what you have gotten, and be content. More is needless. ”

“ Such Gilds became common in Cambridge as in every town during the Middle Ages; they were the great aids to municipal life, and we shall find that some of them grew rich and powerful enough to found a College on their own account.
Our business is, however, with the University. One cannot fix a deliberate date of foundation. Universities, like every other great design, have small beginnings, and the origin of schools at Cambridge was probably insignificant. Cambridge is on the border of the Fenland, and the [3] Fenland contained the richest abbeys in England. ”

“ More and more, too, foreign travel had, from the middle of the 16th century, been looked upon as a better mode of finishing the education of a gentleman than a course at a university.
The later years of the 17th century saw a revival of university life in Cambridge, through the work of Newton and the increasing attention paid to mathematics and the physical sciences, though the number of students continued Revival of university life. ”

“ The intention, we repeat, was generous, and we protest with some indignation against Palmer’s bitter words: ‘The very worst use a man can make of himself is to stay up at Cambridge and work for the University.’ The truth is that University life did not suit him, and though he tried hard for ten years to believe that it did, the attempt ended in failure, and it is much to be regretted that it was ever made. ”

“ I do not remember that we ever lifted our criticism to the dons and the organisation of the University. I think we took them for granted. When I look back at my youth I am always astonished by the multitude of things that we took for granted. It seemed to us that Cambridge was in the order of things, for all the world like having eyebrows or a vermiform appendix. ”

“ If the original Cambridge schools were grammar schools after the pattern of Orléans and Bury-St.-Edmund’s, then the introduction of the arts faculty—the trivium and quadrivium—was the first step towards the formation of a universitas; and its appearance in the xii century would account for the university status of Cambridge in the opening years of the xiii century. [272] The first of the three learned faculties to take its place in the university was divinity, and with the rise of the earliest colleges provision was made for the study of the two faculties of theology and law. ”

“ But the truth of it is there are too many old women at the head of the Universities. What you want are keen-headed men, men of experience in the world, who would move with the times, and get Oxford and Cambridge to move with them. I am so convinced I am right in this opinion, that if it were not for the cares of business, to which I must return when I have finished with Cambridge, I should apply for a Trinity fellowship after I have taken my degree, and try to infuse a little spirit into the counsels of the college and through it into the University. ”

“ We have spoken chiefly of Cambridge, because Cambridge has put herself forward as the representative of a system of so-called university reform—of a certain movement in the direction of that principle which would accommodate the education of our higher classes to the caprice of a popular cry or cant phrase. We care not so much whether that movement in itself be advantageous or the reverse: it is against the principles supposed to be involved in it that we protest. The report goes, that changes of some kind or other are contemplated at Oxford also. ”

“ It is expected that a university should set a limit to the assumption that every good and perfect thing is at the beck and call of the mere plutocrat, and should confer its honours and seat in its rectorial chairs only those persons who present academic qualifications. When one sees with what punctilious assiduity every mark and brand of tradesman and tradesmen’s interests receives recognition nowadays, one turns with anxiety to the Cambridge list of honorary degree men. ”