The good and bad features of the English college system as a whole should not be hard to distinguish. In all social aspects the colleges are as nearly perfect as human institutions are capable of becoming, and they are the foundation of an unequaled athletic life. Educationally, their qualities are mixed. For the purpose of common or garden English gentlemen, nothing could be better than a happy combination of tutorial instruction and university examining. For the purposes of scholarly instruction in general, and of instruction in the modern sciences and mechanic arts in particular, few things could be worse than the system as at present construed. To exult over the superiority of American institutions in so many of the things that make up a modern university would not be a very profitable proceeding. Let us neglect the imperfections of Oxford. It is of much greater profit to consider the extraordinary social advantages that arise from the division of the university into colleges, and the educational advantages of the honor schools. These are points with regard to which we are as poor as Oxford is poor in the scope of university instruction. The point will perhaps be clearer for a brief review of the manner in which our college system grew out of the English. The development is the reverse of what we have just been considering. In England, the colleges overshadowed the university and sapped its life. With us, the university has overshadowed the college and is bidding fair to annihilate it. VII THE COLLEGE IN AMERICA