At the commencement of the present century, when the Novum Organum had been written nearly two hundred years, the examinations at the University of Oxford, so far as they were scientific at all, and not restricted to learned languages, turned entirely on the scholastic logic which the Novum Organum had shown to be a foul obstruction to knowledge. The new and true logic, as explained by Bacon, was never mentioned in the venerable place; and the new discoveries of the laws of nature to which it had led, formed no part of the general course of study, or of the subjects of public examination. It was quite possible for an Oxford man to have brought away a distinguished degree in the sciences, without knowing the truths of universal gravitation, or of the celestial motions, or of the planetary forces, or of any one of the provisions made by nature for the stability of the system we inhabit; and the very highest Oxford degree in the non-scientific departments, did not imply, any more than it does even yet, the remotest knowledge of modern languages or literature, of modern history or philosophy, of whether it might not have been Cromwell who discovered America, or Columbus who fought at Marston Moor. For any interest that the students at Oxford University were required to take in such matters, the past three hundred years might never have existed, or have been utterly annihilated, and all their wondrous burden of experiences melted into air. It was not till after the nineteenth century had begun, that some sense of what had been going on in the world outside crept into the cloisters at Oxford. Statutes were then passed to recognise the Newtonian improvements in philosophy, and recommending, though not necessitating, their adoption into the course for honours. Honours nevertheless continued to be taken without them; and it is notorious that the soil has been ungenial to their growth, and that they never have flourished in it. Oxford, in effect, continued up to this day no other than it was four centuries ago. Apart from the doubtful discipline of life and manners attainable within its walls, it is still no more than a huge theological school, where the lay youth of England are admitted to participate in such meagre allowance of intellectual training as the clergy think safe for themselves; where Manchester and Birmingham are ignored; where the Greek and Latin authors continue in the same esteem as when they actually contained whatever existed of learning left upon the earth, and no education could proceed without them; and from which there issue into the world yearly reinforcements of the upper classes of society, less able to cope with the wants and duties that surround them, and less acquainted with the laws and operations by which the present is to be guided into the future, than any self-taught merchant’s clerk at Liverpool, or any sharp engineer’s lad at the railway in Euston Square.