English Universities in 1839. He was a lenient judge; sometimes even too lenient. But he recognises the existence of a hostile feeling against Oxford and Cambridge, which is proclaimed, he says, "in every variety of tone and manner, and from the most different quarters."
The two chief defects.Let us note the causes of this feeling. First, there had been, since the seventeenth century, a great expansion in science and literature, with which the Universities had not kept pace. They no longer adequately represented the knowledge of the age, or the best intellect of the nation. Secondly, the instruction which they did give—and in some subjects it was better than it had ever been before—was virtually limited to certain classes of society, defined partly by wealth, and partly by religious opinion. That moment was the earliest at which it had become apparent to the country at large that, in both these senses, the Universities failed to be national. And the perception was quickened by the new democratic tendencies.
A German criticism:It is curious to observe what Huber—a friendly critic—regarded as the one tenable ground of defence. He says, in effect: "The end for which the English Universities have long existed has not been to form learned men, or able professional men, or State Officials, as our German Universities do; it has been to produce that first and most distinctive flower of English national life, an English gentleman; a product to which we on the Continent have nothing really similar; the nearest approach to it