That is exactly what the Professor does not find in any University in the three Kingdoms that I can hear of—the reason of which state of things lies in the extremely faulty organisation of the majority of secondary Schools. Students come to the Universities ill-prepared in classics and mathematics, not at all prepared in anything else; and half their time is spent in learning that which they ought to have known when they came. I sometimes hear it said that the Scottish Universities differ from the English, in being to a much greater extent places of comparatively elementary education for a younger class of students. But it would seem doubtful if any great difference of this kind really exists; for a high authority, himself Head of an English College, has solemnly affirmed that: “Elementary teaching of youths under twenty is now the only function performed by the University;” and that Colleges are “boarding schools in which the elements of the learned languages are taught to youths.”[6] This is not the first time that I have quoted those remarkable assertions. I should like to engrave them in public view, for they have not been refuted; and I am convinced that if their import is once clearly apprehended, they will play no mean part when the question of University reorganisation, with a view to practical measures, comes on for discussion. You are not responsible for this anomalous state of affairs now; but, as you pass into active life and acquire the political influence to which your education and your position should entitle you, you will become responsible for it, unless each in his sphere does his best to alter it, by insisting on the improvement of secondary Schools. Your present responsibility is of another, though not less serious, kind. Institutions do not make men, any more than organisation makes life; and even the ideal University we have been dreaming about will be but a superior piece of mechanism, unless each student strive after the ideal of the Scholar. And that ideal, it seems to me, has never been better embodied than by the great Poet, who, though lapped in luxury, the favourite of a Court, and the idol of his countrymen, remained through all the length of his honoured years a Scholar in Art, in Science, and in Life. “Would’st shape a noble life? Then cast No backward glances towards the past: And though somewhat be lost and gone, Yet do thou act as one new-born. What each day needs, that shalt thou ask; Each day will set its proper task. Give other’s work just share of praise; Not of thine own the merits raise. Beware no fellow man thou hate: And so in God’s hands leave thy fate.”[7] III. TECHNICAL EDUCATION.