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5° 6 MODERN TIMES.
connected with medical and surgical practice. The utilitarian
spirit which animates the English people is, perhaps,
nowhere so plainly expressed as in those establishments
which aim purely and simply at preparing men for medical
examinations. They resemble the institutions in Germany
which make it their business to provide the general education
demanded of candidates for commissions in the shortest
possible time, and which are known under the name of
Fahnrichspressen (cramming-places for ensigns).
On the other hand, the English universities look upon it
as their highest task to call into existence and to nurture
the taste for scientific pursuits. Whoever studies medicine
in one of them has in view a thorough and profound education
in the preliminary subjects of the natural sciences, and contemplates
taking academical degrees. But it costs a man
much more to maintain himself at the university than it
does at a medical school, and by studying at the university
the total period of student-life is prolonged, and much
expense is incurred in consequence of associating with
rich young men and participating in the amusements in
vogue. The doctors who have resided at the university
and have proceeded to degrees belong by their learning
and their social position to the elite of the profession.
The English universities are no more State institutions
than are the medical schools. Their expenses are met by
the academical fees paid by the students, and by the income
derived from their rich estates. They are administered
and governed by senates composed of public men in a
distinguished position of life, and of academical professors.
Unlike those of the rest of Europe, the English Universities
are institutions not devoted merely to teaching, but
to general training also. Affiliated to them are numerous
colleges and halls—establishments suggestive of monasteries
—where the students live together and are boarded and
assisted in their studies. Oxford possesses 25, Cambridge
20 of these institutions. Some of them in their origin,
reach back into the middle ages. They owe their founda-