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too much like that of the chorus of a Greek play to be popular with the masses; and Mr. Arnold will never be the poet of the average drawing

room.

Here is a specimen of what we may term Matthew Arnold's "cry" :"The active politician can hardly get on without deferring to clap-trap and even employing it. Nay, as Socrates amusingly said, the man who defers to clap-trap and the man who uses his intelligence are, when they meet in the struggle of active politics, like a doctor and a confectioner competing for the suffrages of a constituency of schoolboys; the confectioner has nearly every point in his favour. The confectioner deals in all that the constituency like; the doctor is a man who hurts them, and makes them leave off what they like and take what is disagreeable. And, accordingly, the temptation, in dealing with the public and with the trade of active politics, the temptation to be a confectioner is extremely strong, and we see that almost all our leading newspapers and leading politicians do, in fact, yield to it."

When a man sees that humbugs have to be kept up by reason of the preference of the majority for the worse over the better, he has choice between cynicism and faith, and in deciding between the two, there is often a trying time; a struggle between faith and despair.

It may be the wavering lights and shadows of this struggle that frighten away the timid religionists from Mr. Arnold; but his doubts are, we cannot but say it, vastly nobler and more spiritual and closer to true worship than much of that conformity which men have agreed to call by the unsuitable name of faith. Faith in the old sense, is the free spiritual instinct, the being "in love" with God even though afar off; what goes for faith to-day is often hackneyed make-belief. To pierce this humbug even with the lance of doubts is to do no harm. Mr. Arnold has indeed found the only key that will unlock the secrets of all true theology. Even inspired teachers may have fallen into intellectual fancifulness, they may have been narrow, mistaken, prejudiced, local; but they were "in love;" and those that would get at their true spirit must discard their mere nomenclature, their formal mould, and learn of them by being "in love" too.

That Mr. Arnold is not an idealist only, but as kindly natured in matters practical as he is amusing in companionship or sparkling in criticism, we had occasion to know when engaged upon this paper. An artisan poet with a true lyric gift, delicate health, and a wife and family to keep, told us how once, not long ago, when things were so bad with him that his children were asking for bread, Matthew Arnold sent such

timely and generous supplies as brought grateful tears to the eyes of the recipients, and interesting himself in their case got a subscription started for the poor fellow; all was so delicately done that the mention of Matthew Arnold's name brings out a sincere God-bless-him in that family.

Mr. Arnold in his inaugural address from the Poetry Chair of Oxford, quoted the loving admonition of the Buddha to his disciple:-"Go then, having been delivered, deliver; having been consoled, console; being arrived thyself at the farther bank, enable others to arrive there also." Mr. Arnold strives bravely so to let his light shine forth before men; it is our deepest regret that we have to feel that his deliverance is of one not yet delivered himself, his consolation of one not wholly consoled, his helping hand the very kindly hand of one yet buffeting the mid stream. Perhaps, after all, it is not the less a help on that account.

The importance of such works as Mr. Arnold's latest is enhanced by the fact of their proceeding from one well versed in the traditions, and we may fairly regard them as sign-posts on the ways of coming thought, especially when we remember that they are the work of an author who has not only fully attained years of discretion, but is reaching that maturity both in years and in experience which may claim to be wisdom's appropriate time. We have named the date of Mr. Arnold's birth; he will be found to have completed fifty-five years on the Christmas Eve we have just passed, and as he is of a constitution of no common vigour (we wish he had not given us that pet phrase of his, "vigour and rigour," which most inapplicably haunts the mind), we may hope to see much philosophic fruit gathered from him during the next twenty years. It is a long time to look forward to, a short time to look back upon. The grounds of theological discussion in times of intellectual high pressure like these, shift appreciably in briefer periods than twenty years. We can see entirely new elements on the horizon; we shall watch most earnestly Mr. Arnold's relation to them now that he has entered into such a field, for his presence is that of a man who is at least awake.

THE IDEAL UNIVERSITY.

"ONCE invent printing," says Carlyle, "you metamorphosed all Universities, or superseded them! The true University of these days is a collection of books." The thought is clearly stated, but it seems to contain a flaw. Universality does not necessarily include the concentration implied in the word university; it may be but vague chaos; the one is indefinite expansion, the other is definite incorporation. The smallest Literary Institution in working, with its lectures, its School of Art, its organised Reading Club, nay, the humblest Trades Union, has a better historic and logical right to be described as a university than the Library of the British Museum itself; and this is so filled with the results of the invention of printing that, as has been well said, it represents a larger aggregate of human industry than the most renowned of the great cities of the world. But a person seeking education might enter it, and if he had no instructors, pass years therein without profit, finding at last that he had lost his way among dreary deserts of inferior literature, from which a word of direction would have saved him. The man, on the other hand, who is fresh from Carlyle's despised University, might indeed, without further guidance make of the Library, together with himself, a university of power; but without a centre or centres round which to accrete itself, "the chaos of that Library" would be great.

As

matters are, the Library of the British Museum and other large organised libraries, are in a sense universities-universities of re

ference. But they do not merely consist of accumulated books, they are books administered by officials able to aid by bibliographical knowledge, and resorted to by persons of full age, bent on special pursuits, and possessed already of sufficient signposts, so that they can indeed make of the library all the university of learning that they want. But to suppose with Carlyle that the invention of printing has disestablished universities, would be like saying that because grapes grow a gardener is a superfluity. Mr. Carlyle is so pre-eminently removed from belief in things managing them. selves without living rule, that it is singular to find him evolving a fallacy such as would lie in the argument: Because there are herbs and flowers, people learn botany. Because there are flowers, people learn to pluck them at random; would be reasoning of a general truth; and until the former argument can be made to take its place, we may defer the consideration of the question whether libraries will ever supersede universities.

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Any library may be made the nucleus of a university of grown men, but they must have some common objects to bind them together, or they cannot rightly bear the name. The British Museum Library might, as we have

said, bear in a qualified sense the title of the University of Reference. In addition to being the consulting room of writers and thinkers of all classes, it is also the convenient resort of journalists, and the field of labour of a small army of heraldic copyists and draughtsmen. The Heralds' College is not a very dread institution in nineteenth century life, but it would be inclined to shew its teeth at least in laughter-if the British Museum Library took the title of University of Arms on account of its stores of heraldic books, and the plodding use made of them. The function of a library is to contain books available for readers; the function of a university is all its own and a widely different one.

It is quite true that great changes have been taking place which peculiarly affect universities. The wide dissemination of literature which has followed printing has raised up masses of students as untouched by the influence of existing universities as the huge classes of workers, formed since the break up of feudal life, are untouched by any influence of a master born; as opposed, that is to say, to a master at will, or by

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ment into one head of the whole, of the effects.

The next step is that persons by incorporation may form an university. At Rome were found corporate bodies, or universities, of bakers, tax-farmers, scribes, and others. In our own country, in the charters of ancient boroughs, may be found terms denominative of the trades guilds, as the University of Smiths, the University of Tailors. It is to this we referred when saying that a Trades Union of the present day had a better historic right to the title University than an accumulation of books.

The word "university" does not occur in the present Authorised Version of the Bible, but in Wiclif's we find it (James iii. 5, 6) :—

"So also the tunge is but a litel membre, and reisith greet thinges. Lo hou litil fier brenneth a ful greet wood? and oure tunge is fier, the unyuersitee of wickidnesse." Here the word evidently means head-quarters, and is, perhaps, a better rendering of the original than the present translation, "world," which does not quite so fully convey the notion of centrality. In the following (Chaucer, Boecius, b. v.) the word is not quite so strictly employed, but stands for universe:"-" Reason surmounteth imaginacion, and comprehendeth by vniuersall lokyng, the common speache, but the iye of intelligence is higher, for it surmounteth the enuironnyng of the vniuersitie, and looketh ouer that, by pure subtilitie of thought."

In the following from Strype (Eccles. Mem. Hen. VIII., An. 1530) we find the term used in a broad but technical sense, as a centre of universal knowledge:

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"As it resembled a royal court in regard of those many noblemen and persons of quality that lived in it, so one might esteem it an

university, for those many accomplished men in all kinds of knowledge and good learning that were his domesticks."

And yet in the seventeenth century we still find the word used in the sense of universe (Dr. H. More, Psyches Bios I. 13):

The great womb

From whence all things in the university

Yelad in divers forms do gaily bloom, And after fade away.

In the following (Barrow's Serm. II. 12) we see the effect of the Latin usage:—

"That thou givest them (saith the Psalmist, speaking with respect to the university of things,) they gather."

A university, which once was understood to denote any definite class or incorporation of persons, -such as a number of churches united under the superintendence of one archdeacon, or a body of canons at one cathedral-came by degrees to be limited to such as comprised the members of a general school or place of study.

It was not universality that was taught, but what teaching there was was given freely to all. The corporation mostly comprised not the teachers only, but also the students; the qualifying words of "masters and scholars" being understood to follow the word university. Universities, as we now know the word, were not theological in their origin, but literary, being mainly due to the upspringing of intellectual life in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. There was an early struggle on the question of the morality of pagan literature, but the most ancient part of the University of Paris was its faculty of arts or philosophy, whence its graduates took the name of artista. One of the oldest universities, that of Bologna, gave admission to

women, not only as graduates, but as lecturers. The nineteenth century is but returning to an old ideal. The universities in the fourteenth century were the advocates of the right of private judgment in the acceptation of theological dogma, and in the sixteenth century the Paris Parliament adjudged the University to be a secular and not an ecclesiastical corporation. As the universities flourished, the monasteries correspondingly degenerated.

In their earliest days universities fulfilled two functions: their lecturers attracted students unable otherwise to gain learning; the lecturers themselves found a congenial seat of thought and a mutual protection in being together. Crowds of students gathered round, and by their poverty-for the student of old time was notoriously poor-attracted the benefactions of generous and wealthy persons, and found free board and lodging in the inns that began to cluster round the lecture-rooms. Some

of these inns aimed, no doubt, like the monasteries, at being as far as possible self-supporting. One of the colleges at Cambridge has still its kitchen-garden. Lectures were at first desultory, for teachers were rare. An Alcuin, an Anselm, or an Abelard would draw great crowds of students, and to themselves rather than to an institution. Doctor, Master, Professor,-each term was indiscriminately borne by the teachers. Afterwards the term Master became applied to teachers in Arts, while the Doctor was a teacher of Law, Medicine, or Theology.

As learning progressed, and benefactions enriched the schools, the necessity of organisation became manifest. Faculties were established, bodies of teachers on special subjects who, besides

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