by the evidences of internal fermentation which they exhibit. If Gibbon could revisit the ancient seat of learning of which he has written so cavalierly, assuredly he would no longer speak of "the monks of Oxford, sunk in prejudice and port." There, as elsewhere, port has gone out of fashion, and so has prejudice—at least that particular fine, old, crusted sort of prejudice to which the great historian alludes.
Indeed, things are moving so fast in Oxford and Cambridge, that, for my part, I rejoiced when the royal commission of which I am a member had finished and presented the report which related to these universities; for, we should have looked like mere plagiarists, if, in consequence of a little longer delay in issuing it, all the measures of reform we proposed had been anticipated by the spontaneous action of the universities themselves.
A month ago, I should have gone on to say that one might speedily expect changes of another kind in Oxford and Cambridge. A commission has been inquiring into the revenues of many wealthy societies, in more or less direct connection with the universities, resident in those towns. It is said that the commission has reported, and that, for the first time in recorded history, the nation, and perhaps the colleges themselves, will know what they are worth. And it was announced that a statesman, who, whatever his other merits or defects, has aims above the level of mere party fighting, and a clear vision into the most complex, practical problems, meant to deal with these revenues.
But, Bos locutus est. That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, public opinion—which some whisper is, in the present case, very much the same thing as publican's opinion—has willed otherwise. The Heads may return to their wonted slumbers—at any rate for a space.
Is the spirit of change, which is working thus vigorously in the south, likely to affect the northern universities, and, if so, to what extent? The violence of fermentation depends, not so much on the quantity of the yeast, as on the composition of the wort, and its richness in fermentible material; and, as a preliminary to the discussion of this question, I venture to call to your minds the essential and fundamental differences between the Scottish and the English type of university.
Do not charge me with any thing worse than official egotism, if I say that these differences appear to be largely symbolized by my own existence. There is no rector in a English university. Now, the organization of the members of a university into nations, with their elective rector, is the last relic of the primitive constitution of universities. The rectorate was the most important of all offices in that University of Paris upon the model of which the University of Aberdeen was fashioned, and which was certainly a great and flourishing institution in the twelfth century.
