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ENGLAND,—NORTH AMERICA. 5°7
tion to pious bequests and donations, and are richly pro­
vided with pecuniary means. Unfortunately these are not
always expended in a suitable or proper* way. Instead of
serving to advance science and to support poor students,
their chief function is to provide profitable sinecures for the
Master and Fellows—that is to say, the head and officials of
the colleges. If these positions were granted exclusively to
persons who devoted their lives to scientific research, and
whose efforts in this direction were rich in results, large
salaries might, perhaps, be justifiable; but all that is
demanded of the candidates for a fellowship is that they
must possess an academical degree. Favouritism gives the
casting vote in the election to these appointments; that
the clergy should get the lion's share is consonant with the
conditions of English life, which bestow upon the cleric of
the State Church a social power like that which the
Catholic priesthood in the Tyrol is vainly attempting to
usurp. A member of the Senate of the University of
Cambridge complained publicly that the places of authority
in the colleges there were held by clergymen, and that the
fellowships were given away to people who achieve nothing
whatever for science, the university, or their colleges* E.
RENAN says that a small German university, with its
awkward professors and its starving private teachers, does
more for science than all the pomp and wealth of Oxford.
Most of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge are
ancient buildings and well worth seeing on account of
their architecture and their artistic monuments. With
their towers and archways, their chapels, colonnades and
butteries they call back times long passed away; but the
spirit which animates these establishments is that of
scholasticism. Although it was a British monk who in the
13th century directed the first powerful assault upon this
system it is nevertheless precisely in his native land that
the method of contemplating nature characteristic of the
middle ages has been preserved to this day. Theological
* A few brief remarks on Cambridge University, London 1870.