and a career. Among his professors, he sees men whose names are known
and revered throughout the civilized world; and their living example
infects him with a noble ambition, and a love for the spirit of work.

The Germans dominate the intellectual world by virtue of the same simple
secret as that which made Napoleon the master of old Europe. They have
declared _la carriere ouverte aux talents_, and every Bursch marches
with a professor's gown in his knapsack. Let him become a great scholar,
or man of science, and ministers will compete for his services. In
Germany, they do not leave the chance of his holding the office he
would render illustrious to the tender mercies of a hot canvass, and the
final wisdom of a mob of country parsons.

In short, in Germany, the universities are exactly what the Rector of
Lincoln and the Commissioners tell us the English universities are not;
that is to say, corporations "of learned men devoting their lives to the
cultivation of science, and the direction of academical education." They
are not "boarding schools for youths," nor clerical seminaries; but
institutions for the higher culture of men, in which the theological
faculty is of no more importance, or prominence, than the rest; and
which are truly "universities," since they strive to represent and
embody the totality of human knowledge, and to find room for all forms
of intellectual activity.

May zealous and clear-headed reformers like Mr. Pattison succeed in
their noble endeavours to shape our universities towards some such ideal
as this, without losing what is valuable and distinctive in their social
tone! But until they have succeeded, a liberal education will be no more
obtainable in our Oxford and Cambridge Universities than in our public
schools.

If I am justified in my conception of the ideal of a liberal education;
and if what I have said about the existing educational institutions of
the country is also true, it is clear that the two have no sort of
relation to one another; that the best of our schools and the most
complete of our university trainings give but a narrow, one-sided, and
essentially illiberal education--while the worst give what is really
next to no education at all. The South London Working-Men's College
could not copy any of these institutions if it would. I am bold enough
to express the conviction that it ought not if it could.

For what is wanted is the reality and not the mere name of a liberal