respects the exercise of their duties) with any college whatsoever—not even with their own—but altogether and exclusively with the whole University. Besides the public tutors appointed in each college, on the scale of one to each dozen or score of students, there are also tutors strictly private, who attend any students in search of special and extraordinary aid, on terms settled privately by themselves. Of these persons, or their existence, the college takes no cognisance; but between the two classes of tutors, the most studious young men—those who would be most likely to avail themselves of the lectures read by the professors—have their whole time pretty severely occupied: and the inference from all this is, not only that the course of Oxford education would suffer little if no Professors at all existed, but also that, if the existing Professors were ex abundanti to volunteer the most exemplary spirit of exertion, however much this spectacle of conscientious dealing might edify the University, it would contribute but little to the promotion of academic purposes. The establishment of Professors is, in fact, a thing of ornament and pomp. Elsewhere, they are the working servants; but, in Oxford, the ministers corresponding to them bear another name,—they are called Tutors. These are the working agents in the Oxford system; and the Professors, with salaries in many cases merely nominal, are persons sequestered, and properly sequestered, to the solitary cultivation and advancement of knowledge which a different order of men is appointed to communicate.

Here let us pause for one moment, to notice another peculiarity in the Oxford system, upon the tendency of which I shall confidently make my appeal to the good sense of all unprejudiced readers. I have said that the Tutors of Oxford correspond to the Professors of other Universities. But this correspondence, which is absolute and unquestionable as regards the point then at issue,—viz., where we are to look for that limb of the establishment on which rests the main teaching agency,—is liable to considerable qualification, when we examine the mode of their teaching. In both cases, this is conveyed by what is termed "lecturing";—but what is the meaning of a lecture in Oxford and elsewhere? Elsewhere, it means a solemn dissertation, read, or sometimes histrionically declaimed, by the Professor. In Oxford, it means an exercise performed orally by the students, occasionally assisted by the tutor, and subject, in its whole course, to his corrections, and what may be called his scholia, or collateral suggestions and improvements. Now, differ as men may as to other features of the Oxford, compared with the hostile system, here I conceive that there is no room for doubt or demur. An Oxford lecture imposes a real bona fide task upon the student; it will not suffer him to fall asleep, either literally or in the energies of his understanding; it is a real drill, under the excitement, perhaps, of personal competition, and under the review of a superior scholar. But, in Germany, under the declamations of the Professor, the young men are often literally sleeping; nor is it easy to see how the attention can be kept from wandering, on this plan, which subjects the auditor to no risk of sudden question or personal appeal. As to the prizes given for essays, etc., by the Professors, these have the effect of drawing forth latent talent, but they can yield no criterion of the attention paid to the Professor; not to say that the competition for these prizes is a matter of choice. Sometimes it is true that examinations take place; but the Oxford lecture is a daily examination; and, waiving that, what chance is there (I would ask) for searching examinations, for examinations conducted with the requisite auctoritas (or weight of influence derived from personal qualities), if—which may Heaven prevent!—the German tenure of Professorships were substituted for our British one: that is, if for independent and liberal teachers were substituted poor mercenary haberdashers of knowledge—cap in hand to opulent students—servile to their caprices—and, at one blow, degrading the science they profess, the teacher, and the pupil? Yet I hear that such advice was given to a Royal Commission, sent to investigate one or more of the Scottish Universities. In the German Universities, every Professor holds his situation, not on his good behaviour, but on the capricious pleasure of the young men who resort to his market. He opens a shop, in fact: others, without limit, generally men of no credit or known respectability, are allowed to open rival shops; and the result is, sometimes, that the whole kennel of scoundrel Professors ruin one another; each standing with his mouth open, to leap at any bone thrown amongst them from the table of the "Burschen"; all hating, fighting, calumniating each other, until the land is sick of its base knowledge-mongers, and would vomit the loathsome crew, were any natural channel open to their instincts of abhorrence. The most important of the Scottish Professorships—those which are fundamentally morticed to the moral institutions of the land—are upon the footing of Oxford tutorships, as regards emoluments; that is, they are not suffered to keep up a precarious mendicant existence, upon the alms of the students, or upon their fickle admirations. It is made imperative upon a candidate for admission into the ministry of the Scottish Kirk, that he shall show a certificate of attendance through a given number of seasons at given lectures.