organised as to be ready at a moment's notice to take the field with a certain number of men, whose appearance under arms when called in must be beyond the possibility of doubt. This does not, however, imply that all the troops required should be kept continually on foot the expense would be too great and the advantage derived too small; the only way in which efficiency can be combined with economy is by general obligation to military service, and this principle has now been adopted by Austria, Italy, Russia, and France. The other two systems-of compelling one portion of the population to serve, whilst exonerating the remainder; or purchasing the services of one class with money-no longer suffice to bring such armies into the field as modern warfare requires. General Trochu told the National Assembly, on June 14, that he had telegraphed to M. Gambetta on October 25, 1870, 'Modern armies cannot be improvised; our troops cannot attack the enemy in the open field; we must defend open towns, such as Châteaudun.' He said further, 'At the present time the arms of a people cannot struggle against the arsenal of a nation.' He spoke highly of the courage evinced on January 19, 1871, by the National Guards, but the disorder which reigned among them was a source of great danger: he believed that one-half of the French soldiers killed and wounded on January 19 owed their fate to the fire of the National Guards. Those who have paid attention to what happens at the Brighton reviews can easily credit this.

There were twenty-five thousand released convicts in the National

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Guards. The absence of discipline, the neglect of work, and the preva lence of drunkenness, brought about wide-spread demoralisation.' The Belleville and Montmartre people would not fight against the Germans; that portion of the National Guard recruited from the party of order fought bravely against the Prussians, and then suffered themselves to be tyrannised over and slaughtered by the Belleville people. The extemporised troops of the line, who had been in Paris under Generals Vinoy and Ducrot, turned up the butt-ends of their rifles and fra ternised with the insurgents on March 18; the insurrection could not be put down until the old officers who had been prisoners in Germany, and had kept their parole, until the men of honour, came back to reorganise the army and esta blish discipline with the aid of the soldiers who had been accustomed to order and discipline in the German garrisons.

The three wars we have now gone through form a turning point in military history. No well-governed State will again follow the bad example set by Austria and France in the wars of 1859, 1866, 1870-71. There are more wars coming, but they will be different in character, and we may hope less destructive, because more rapid, than the FrancoPrussian war. There is not much time to lose. Public opinion says that it is impossible to introduce general obligation to military service in England, but it does not condescend to give any valid reason. We know that there are dif ficulties and obstacles, but these apply equally to all reserve systems, not excepting Mr. Cardwell's, which is already a failure.

been

haps hard to say whether the victory has been won in a longer or a shorter time than might have been reasonably anticipated. On the one hand, it may be urged that we have passed a good many years in talking over a very small measure of reform; and that if matters are to proceed at this rate, it will be a good many more before any substantial changes can be effected. On the other hand, it is true that when once a place had been secured for the abolition on the Liberal platform, conversions proceeded with edifying rapidity. Three years ago nobody would have expected to see heads of houses and divinity professors joining in a demand, not merely for a relaxation of the tests, but for their complete and compulsory abolition. The difficulty, in fact, of most modern reforms seems to lie rather in gaining a hearing for the proposal to remove any grievance, than in removing it when once attention has been aroused. The Jews of old thought that it was a miracle when the walls of a fortified city fell down at the blast of a trumpet. We know better. A little declamation is amply sufficient to level with the ground many of the strong places in which Conservatives used to pride themselves most confidently. It is surprising to observe how rapidly their

VOL. IV. NO. XXI. NEW SERIES.

to possess. Only it must be admitted that it is rather troublesome to induce the trumpets to sound unanimously. The first distinct summons to surrender may be irresistible; but, luckily or unluckily, our attention is SO distracted amongst the various candidates for a hearing, and our machinery for bringing our destructive energies to bear is so clumsy and slow of operation, that many acknowledged obstructions are likely to last simply because we cannot find time even to challenge them. It is still harder to say when we shall find the leisure to put anything in their place.

This question is interesting in the case of the Universities, because it is evident that there is still a great deal of work to be done. Having got rid of the tests, what will be our next step? If Liberals choose to go on working in the old grooves, there is a programme of the old kind cut out for them. Conservatives were informed during the recent discussions that the present measure, sweeping as it would have been called a few years ago, was after all a compromise. There is still an important privilege reserved for members of the Church of England, and therefore there is still something to be pulled down. A large portion of the endowments is open only to clergymen; it is

U 2

plain enough that this may, if desired, give the necessary leverage for a further agitation. Judging from recent experience, it is not improbable that in some colleges a perceptible share of the fellowships-in some cases, perhaps, the largest part may be held by Dissenters or unbelievers. Could they have a better plea for a renewed agitation? Why, it would be asked, should any distinction be drawn? It is now admitted that any man, whatever his religious opinions, may be a Fellow, may lecture the students, and may take part in the government of the college. For what possible reason should he be practically put at a great disadvantage as regards a share in the emoluments? So long as the college was intended to be an organisation for propagating the opinions of a particular sect, it was fair enough to reserve special advantages for the clergy of that sect. When that pretext has been removed, it is impossible to say why the Church of England clergy should have the advantage over Dissenting ministers, or why any clergy should have an advantage over the laity. We have only to wait till a sufficient body of aggrieved persons has been accumulated, and the pressure against the existing barriers will become strong enough to justify a new agitation with all the prestige of the success of its predecessor. Behind this question, again, there may come the question of college livings. They are practically retiring pensions for men who have served their time as tutors. When they become available only for a small minority of the body, would it not be a fairer plan to dispose of the patronage, and to convert its value into some form which would render it equally available for everybody? With the help of these fragments of an extinct system, there is still the raw material for a discussion, carried on either in Par

liament or in the separate collegesfor an agitation which may last for another generation.

The question between the rival systems of secular and denominational education is not likely to be settled in a day. Where theological animosities exist we need not be afraid that there will be any lack of ingenuity in providing opportunities for gratifying them. That there is a certain amount of danger of renewed discussions may be inferred from the evidence recently given before the Committee of the House of Lords. Some sanguine people, indeed, imagine that the removal of tests will inaugurate an era of perfect religious tranquillity. One witness set forth a theory which, it may be feared, is a little too fine-spun to be satisfactory. It was something to the effect that most young men at the present day go through a double process, involving first the destruction and then the re-construction of their religious faith. The tests were generally taken in the period of life when reconstruction was proceeding, and somehow or other had the effect of, as it were, turning it sour. The young gentlemen were just becoming good Christians of the newest pattern, after passing through a phase of general negation; but being asked to sign the Thirty-nine Articles, or to declare themselves bona fide members of the Church of England, they naturally became infidels, apparently out of pure perversity. Tests being once abolished, all the bitter feelings would disappear, and religious harmony be restored. The antagonistic doctrine which appeared to be held by the Conservative members of the Committee was that Oxford had somehow been led into the paths of infidelity by the changes which had been introduced into the schools. The youth have been allowed to read Comte and Hegel and Herbert Spencer, and other writers of dangerous tendency, and, strangely enough, they have

not studied with equal care the numerous works in which the sneers of the infidel are victoriously refuted. Keep up the tests, it was argued, and this fashion would speedily pass away, and sound orthodoxy would once more overspread the land. Both these views admit the prevalence of very revolutionary elements of thought, though they curiously underrate the true state of the case. The facts are simple and notorious, and nothing is gained by shutting our eyes to them, or calling them by pretty names. A very large proportion of the most intelligent people in England (to say nothing of other countries) have entirely given up the old-fashioned creeds. Some of them occupy a position of angry or contemptuous hostility towards believers; others, as they grow older, prefer gradual development to revolution, and go through that same 'reconstructive process,' which means learning to express the new theories in the old dialect. But a man must be blind indeed not to recognise the immense change which, in one form or another, has taken place throughout England within the last twenty years, on a scale rather too wide to be explained by new examination statutes. Now, very many, probably a majority, of the Fellows and tutors are young men of from twenty-five to thirty-five. They are still convinced that the Universities are the intellectual centres of the world, and they know themselves to be the pick of the Universities. They are really very clever; they have gone through a training of which it is the express object to make a man ready, fluent, and plausible; and, though most exemplary persons at bottom, they are often superficially, to put it plainly, conceited young prigs. They are prepared at any moment to write out in a quarter of an hour a judicious appreciation of the merits and defects of any system of philosophy,

ancient or modern, with a proper garnish of historical and biographical notices. Such men are naturally anxious above all things to be up to the very last new novelties of opinion. They are, of course, destructive and audacious; and the more boldly any man parts company with oldfashioned orthodoxy, the more willing they will be to follow him. Oxford, we know, has produced the great prophets of the Positivist school; and if Cambridge has been less demonstrative, it is not that opinions there are much less advanced, but probably that the system of educa tion has less tendency to bring them to the surface. This state of opinion has been brought about in spite of the tests. The only way of checking it entirely would be to suppress intellectual activity within the Universities. So long as clever young men are anxious to be in the very front ranks of progress, or catch at every word which falls from the lips of the favourite philosophers of the day, or, if possible, to anticipate them, no system of intellectual quarantine will be able to cut off the contagion. Clever young men, so far as we can tell, are likely to retain that propensity to the end of the chapter; and the Universities will therefore sympathise, and ought to sympathise more quickly than other parts of the country, with the most rapid movements of speculation. Hitherto the tests have acted partly by suppressing outward manifestations of this spirit, partly by exiling the most extreme thinkers from the Universities. Now that they are removed, it is highly probable that some of the teaching to be heard in college lecture-rooms will be calculated to astonish steadygoing country clergymen of the old school.

It has been the cue of the Liberal party rather to cast doubts upon this highly probable development. They have laughed at the fears of Conservatives, and tried to prove