nd to let mediocrity and
dulness go their way. On the dull student Oxford, after a proper lapse
of time, confers a degree which means nothing more than that he lived
and breathed at Oxford and kept out of jail. This for many students is
as much as society can expect. But for the gifted students Oxford offers
great opportunities. There is no question of his hanging back till the
last sheep has jumped over the fence. He need wait for no one. He may
move forward as fast as he likes, following the bent of his genius. If
he has in him any ability beyond that of the common herd, his tutor,
interested in his studies, will smoke at him until he kindles him into
a flame. For the tutor's soul is not harassed by herding dull students,
with dismissal hanging by a thread over his head in the class room. The
American professor has no time to be interested in a clever student. He
has time to be interested in his "deportment," his letter-writing, his
executive work, and his organising ability and his hope of promotion
to a soap factory. But with that his mind is exhausted. The student of
genius merely means to him a student who gives no trouble, who passes
all his "tests," and is present at all his "recitations." Such a student
also, if he can be trained to be a hustler and an advertiser, will
undoubtedly "make good." But beyond that the professor does not think
of him. The everlasting principle of equality has inserted itself in a
place where it has no right to be, and where inequality is the breath of
life.

American or Canadian college trustees would be horrified at the notion
of professors who apparently do no work, give few or no lectures and
draw their pay merely for existing. Yet these are really the only kind
of professors worth having,--I mean, men who can be trusted with a vague
general mission in life, with a salary guaranteed at least till their
death, and a sphere of duties entrusted solely to their own consciences
and the promptings of their own desires. Such men are rare, but a
single one of them, when found, is worth ten "executives" and a dozen
"organisers."

The excellence of Oxford, then, as I see it, lies in the peculiar
vagueness of the organisation of its work. It starts from the assumption
that the professor is a really learned man whose sole interest lies in
his own sphere: and that a student, or at least the only student with
whom the university cares to reckon seriously, is a young man who
desires to know. T