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undying youthfulness and quickness of mind, the readiest laugh, the most sensitive sympathy, moments of boyish impatience and generous impulsiveness, an unfailing response to the adventurous or heroic.'

It was all this in Alfred Lyall-notwithstanding, as Lady Lyttelton also observes, an habitual caution in practicewhich kept him in touch with the following generations; and he was able by sympathy and understanding to capture and retain the affection of the young. His own spirit of youth was never drowned in the stagnancy of age.

History and poetry attracted Lyall, but his deepest interest lay in the nature and life of religion. The Hindu religion, he thought, arose from the deification of striking personalities by the popular imagination, and from their supposed ascent after death to a lower or higher grade in the divine hierarchy, combined at certain points with the metaphysical speculations of brooding intellects. His writings suggest that he deemed these processes to be universal, not Indian alone. Nothing, he thought, could be known of things unseen; no assertion as to the Unknowable could rightly be made; 'yet amongst jarring creeds and tottering traditions, a man can always know the right from the wrong, and hold to that.' This is, after all, the unspoken thought of many, perhaps of most, modern Englishmen, sceptical and stoical, like the aristocrats and high officials of the Roman Empire.

'The gods who have mercy, who save or bless,
Are the visions of man in his hopelessness.'

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These sad conclusions are embodied in what are, perhaps, his two finest poems, 'Siva' and the Meditations of a Hindu Prince.' He was little influenced by anything save his own thoughts and experiences. He wrote to a sister in 1873 :

'I am rather pleased that the philosophers leave you much where you were before. So does all reading leave me little changed; I can find nothing that makes me less forlorn, as you find nothing that troubles your clear air. I see that Herbert Spencer is muddling away among books instead of understanding men; and I perceive that a religion without divinity is no religion at all, whatever else it may be.'

He approved of the Church of England as a comparatively safe channel for canalising religious feeling; he respected Bishops as prudent administrators acting in difficult circumstances; and, when he took a house in the country, he liked sometimes to attend the parish church, where he sat lost in dreams. Once, in 1890, he attended at Edinburgh a Presbyterian service, and noted, 'Its simplicity attracted me-no prayer books, a Bible and hymnbook, singing, praying and reading alternately. I think it's nearer the true feeling than all the papistical, souldestroying doctrine of the High Anglicans and Romans.' This was an outbreak of the spirit of his Scottish forbears. It may, on the other hand, be held, and perhaps in some of his varying moods Lyall would have admitted it, that, be undiscoverable truth what it may, a fixed and ancient ritual, the symbolic language of controlled inner doctrine, is soul-liberating and not soul-destroying. Some, at least, feel that the Roman Mass does not, like the prayers and preachings of Scottish ministers, distract the soul from the deeper meditation by which it lives. A sister, nearest to Alfred Lyall in age, character and intellect, became a Roman Catholic-so diverse are the roads which those bred in the nursery of one rural vicarage may tread. All the highest religions,' Lyall wrote, 'have been at one in their anxiety to lift the human soul clear above the region of changes, and to bring it into some beatific state of finally unbreakable rest.' 'Fecisti nos

ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te.' This supreme and final verity is recognised by the heart of man, and is taught symbolically by the highest religions in their solemn and tranquillising ritual.

'Vobis parta quies, nullum maris aequor arandum,
Arva neque Ausoniae semper cedentia retro
Quaerenda.'

These Virgilian lines, also, are engraved upon the tablet to Alfred Lyall in the nave of Canterbury Cathedral.

BERNARD HOLLAND.

Art. 11.-LONDON UNIVERSITY REFORM.

1. Final Report of the Royal Commission on University Education in London. London: Wyman, 1913 [Cd 6717].

2. Medical Education in Europe. A Report to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. New York, 1912.

I.

IN April last we laid before our readers an outline of the principal problems with which the Royal Commission on University Education in London was then occupied, and it is therefore desirable to add a short account of the conclusions which their Report announces. It contains not only proposals for the future government of the University, but also a masterly treatise on the characteristics and methods of University Education, together with a comprehensive analysis of the causes which have led to the serious failure of the scheme which came into operation in the year 1900.

The Report has been very well received by the Press; and, whatever its ultimate fate may be, it is generally admitted that it is based on far-reaching principles, and that these are very ably applied to the development of both general and detailed proposals. It will thus, at all events, serve as a standard by which alternative suggestions may be conveniently tested. The essentials of University Education cannot be more lucidly stated than in the summary of their report which the Commissioners themselves supply. They are:

'First, that students should work in constant association with their fellow students, of their own and other faculties, and in close contact with their teachers; and that they should pursue their work when young and able to devote their whole time to it.

'Secondly, University work should differ in its nature and aim from that of a secondary school, or a technical and purely professional school. In the secondary school definite tasks are prescribed, knowledge is acquired while the mind is specially receptive, and the pupils are mentally and morally trained by the orderly exercise of all their activities; in the technical or professional school theoretical teaching is limited and diverted by the application of ascertained facts to practi

cal purposes; in the University, knowledge is pursued not only for the sake of information, but always with reference to the attainment of truth.

'Thirdly, there should be a close association of undergraduate and post-graduate work. Proposals which tend to their separation are injurious to both. A hard and fast line between the two is disadvantageous to the undergraduate, and diminishes the number who go on to advanced work. The most distinguished teachers must take their part in undergraduate teaching, and their spirit should dominate it all. The main advantage to the student is the personal influence of men of original mind. The main advantage to the teachers is that they select their students for advanced work from a wider range, train them in their own methods, and are stimulated by association with them. Free intercourse with advanced students is inspiring and encouraging to undergraduates.

'Finally, the influence of the University as a whole upon teachers and students, and upon all departments of work within it, is lost if the higher work is separated from the lower.

'Special research institutes should not form part of the University organisation. No true analogy is offered by those established in Berlin, Leipsig, Paris or Brussels for the establishment of research institutes in London under University control. The establishment of a University Press, under full University control, is an essential function of the University' (cf. Report, pp. 26-31).

It would be difficult to define better the tasks of different educational institutions, and it is to be hoped that the Commissioners may have incidentally assisted in checking the overlapping which arises from institutions founded for a definite purpose attempting to do work other than that allotted to them. Matriculation classes in Universities and University classes in schools are alike to be condemned. It will, however, be observed, that the definitions and principles above set forth lead to the conclusion that a real University Education can only be obtained in a teaching University. In that alone the mingling of students in different faculties, the advantage which they all obtain from instructions given by leaders in the subjects they study, and the transition from the mere attainment of knowledge to the development of knowledge can be adequately secured.

The external system, guiding the student only by a series of rigid syllabuses of successive examinations, thus stands condemned as at best a pis-aller. The kindest way of helping those who cannot through poverty attain unaided a true University education, is not to provide a less advantageous route to a degree, but by means of bursaries or other endowments to secure that the path to the University shall be as broad and unencumbered as possible. It must, however, be stated at once that the Commissioners do not propose to do away with external examinations. It is obviously their desire that the external system may gradually become less important as the facilities for a true University education increase, but they have wisely decided that it is better to trust to evolution than to initiate a revolution. With certain changes the external system will still be maintained. The changes can more conveniently be described hereafter; but it must be clearly understood that it will still be possible for a learner who neither has money nor can win it by scholarships, but who nevertheless desires to obtain a degree, to achieve his ambition provided he can pass the requisite examinations. He will, it is true, no longer be called an external student, but will receive a title already consecrated by usage at Oxford. As he has been unable to avail himself of the educational advantages provided by the University or its colleges, he will be called an 'unattached' student.

Having stated the fundamental fact that the external examinations are to continue, we may turn to the method of government proposed for the University as a whole, premising that, as the various questions connected with the Faculty of Medicine are dealt with in a separate article, they will not be discussed here.

The objections to the present constitution of the Senate which were mentioned in our April number have been met by a drastic revision of the method of governing the University. This is no longer to be the task of one supreme body in which all legislative and executive power is concentrated; but different functions are allotted to a Court, a Senate, an Academic Council, and a group of Faculties respectively. The general scheme is based chiefly on the proposals made by a majority of the existing Academic Council (Report A). The differences

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