d in "Tom Brown at Oxford." But we have no arrangements which
correspond at all to those of the system which in England brings
graduates and undergraduates to a certain extent into a common life,
mutually interested in the honor and popularity of "Our College."
When Mr. Maurice and his friends spoke of "a college," they meant to
carry to the utmost these social and mutual views of college life. They
wanted to come into closer connection with the working-men of London,
and formed the Working-Men's College that they might do so.
They had, therefore, something in mind very different from sitting for
an hour in presence of a dozen students, hearing them recite a lesson,
saying then, "_Ite, missa est_," and departing all, every man to his
own way. They foresaw their difficulties, undoubtedly, and they have
undoubtedly met some which they did not foresee. But they meant to
establish, on paper, if nowhere else, a mutual society,--a society, it
is true, in which those who knew the most should teach those who knew
the least, but still a society where the learners and the teachers met
as members of the same fraternity,--equals so far as the laws of that
society went,--and with certain common interests arising from their
connection with it.
Not only does the necessity for such an undertaking appear in England
as it does not here, but the difficulty of it is, on a moderate
calculation, ten thousand times greater than it is here. Here, in the
first place, if the "working-man" as a boy has felt any particular fancy
for algebra or Greek or Latin, (and those fancies, in a fast country,
are apt to develop before the boy is eighteen,) he has e'en gone to a
high-school, and, if he wanted, to a "college," where, if he had not the
means himself, some State Scholarship or Education Society has floated
him through, and he has gained his fill of algebra, Latin, or Greek, or
is on the way to do so. Or, if he have not done this,--if the appetite
for these things, or for physical science, historical science, or
political science, has developed itself a little later in life, he has
hoarded up books for a few years, and has made himself meanwhile rather
more necessary to his master than he was before, so that, when he says,
some day, "I think we must arrange so that I can leave the shop earlier
in the afternoon," the master has bowed submiss, and the incipient
chemist, historian, or politician has worked his own sweet will. Or,
thirdly, if he
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