And yet there is no reason at all why there should not be the same solidarity in the activity of Literature as there is in the activity of Science, and why the standard of aim and attainment in the one should not be as high as in the other. But this can never be accomplished until certain radical reforms are instituted, and the first step towards reform is to demonstrate the necessity for it. I have done so here. I have drawn attention to the state of things in our Universities,--in other words, to what I must take leave to call the scandalous and incredible indifference of the Councils of those Universities to the appeals which have, during the last fifteen years, been made to them to place the study of Literature, in the proper sense of the term, upon the footing on which they have placed other studies. I have pointed out what have been, and what must continue to be, the effects of that indifference. I have given specimens of the books to which the Universities are not ashamed to affix their _imprimatur_, and I have shown that, so far from them considering even their reputation involved in such a matter, they do not scruple to circulate works teeming with blunders and absurdities of the grossest kind, blunders and absurdities to which their attention has been publicly called over and over again. I have given specimens of the kind of works which the occupants of distinguished Chairs of Literature can, with perfect impunity, address to students; and I would ask any scientific man what would be thought of a Professor, say, of the Royal Naval College, or of the City and Guilds of London Institute, who should put his name to analogous publications--to publications, that is to say, as unsound in their theories, as inaccurate in their facts, as slovenly and perfunctory in general execution, as those to which I have here directed attention? If such things are done in the green tree, what is likely to be done in the dry? or, as Chaucer puts it, “if gold ruste, what schal yren doo?” That is one of the questions on which these essays may, perhaps, throw some light.