OXFORD NEEDS.
THE old Universities are bad beggars. This is not from want of practice, for of late years they have con- stantly been in need, and they have not been slow to take the public into their confidence. But it is so difficult to associate Oxford and Cambridge with poverty that the millionaire passes by on the other side. He pays them possibly an occasional visit, when he is well entertained ; and as he sits beneath the long line of founders and benefactors whose portraits gaze at him from the walls, and notes the costly array of historic plate which has sur- vived the loyal enthusiasm of the seventeenth century, it is not wonderful that if he is minded to bestow a part of his wealth on the higher education, it goes to bring some newer University somewhat nearer to the position which the endowments of former generations have already secured for the great foundations of the past. Yet all the timeOxford and Cambridge are just as much in need of help as any of their younger rivals. The visitor knows in a general way that the University and the Colleges are separate bodies and have separate purses ; but he does not realise that all the evidences of wealth which be sees belong to the Colleges, and that the wealth itself is largely of a kind which brings in little or no revenue. The pictures have an historical and personal interest, but they have seldom any high value as works of art. The plate has of late become precious in the eyes of lovers of old silver, but all England would be indignant if the Colleges took to turning their cups and tankards into cash. Their lands are still there, it is true ; but the Fellows among whom the visitor sits in Hall or Common-room could, for the most part, tell a sad story of falling incomes and an increasing cry for improvements from the College tenants. These are the causes which make it difficult, if not im- possible, for the Universities to obtain more help from their constituent corporations, and endowments of their own they have scarcely any. Formerly, indeed, this poverty mattered comparatively little. The work of the University was done by the Colleges, or, more accurately, the Colleges did their own work and the University had none to do beyond that of examining the men sent up to it from the Colleges. The whole conception of a University as a place of research, a place where the costly and elaborate plant which modern research requires . shall be at the disposal of every student, is in England at all events essentially modern. For these purposes there are next to no funds available, except so far as they have been con- tributed from without, and as yet little has come from this source. The Rhodes bequest has left the University in its original poverty. It has benefited a single College. It has benefited Colonial and foreign students. It may some day bring money to the University in the shape of contributions from those who will owe their education to Mr. Rhodes's generosity. But that lies wholly in the future. In the present the money goes to bringing up more students to Oxford to profit by the small endowments she has, not by so much as a penny to making those endowments larger.
Early in the year that has just closed the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford addressed a circular-letter to the Professors, Boards of Faculties, and others engaged in the work of the University, in which he asked for a statement of the requirements of their several departments. Nothing of the kind las been done since 1877, and the last quarter of a, century has made vast additions to the subjects taught in Oxford, and revolutionised the methods of teaching them. The replies which be has received have just been published by the Clarendon Press, and they give a very comprehensive summary of the objects for which money is wanted. It appears on examination that it is wanted for all the newer subjects of study and for most of the old ones. Oriental languages no longer mean only Hebrew, Arabic, and Sanskrit; but the University makes no provision for any other. It knows nothing of Assyrian ; it knows nothing of Pali. Yet the Professor of Hebrew tells us that, owing to the progress of Assyrian studies during the last thirty years, a resident Professor of that language is greatly wanted if Oxford is to be placed on a level with the leading European and American Universities. At present there is only a non-resident Professor with a salary of £100 a year. Even in his own subject Dr. Driver wants help. Hebrew now means more than the text of the Old Testament. There is a vast body of Rabbinical literature with a language peculiar in many respects to itself, and for this a special teacher is needed. As to Pali, the Professor of Sanskrit reminds us that it is " the ancient sacred language of Buddhism," and so is a subject of interest to a large part of our Indian Empire. The foundation of a Chair of Pali would have the additional advantage of completing a department of study in regard to which but for this one want Oxford is unusually well off. Oxford, says Professor Macdonell, " is better equipped for the promotion of Indian learning than any other University in Great Britain or Ireland." She has a teaching staff, scholarships, manuscripts, and books. That is only what the first University in England ought to have if she is to play her proper part in the education of the race which has given India a beneficent Government and a succession of great rulers. Here is an opportunity for giving to this part of her work an exceptional per- fection. Will not one of the King's Indian subjects fill up the gap by the foundation of a Professorship of Pali ?
In another direction the needs of the University embrace pretty well the whole field of physical science. In some departments there is a cry for Professors. There are not enough to teach, the students. In another it is the Professors themselves who are the complainants. They have neither apparatus with which to teach their pupils, nor room in which to house them while they are giving them instruction. A Professorship of Physics was founded by New College in 1900, but the occu- pant of the Chair must trust for the elucidation of his subject very much to his own power of stating it. He has not yet been provided, with a physical labora- tory, but has instead to borrow rooms from two of his colleagues. Even with this the scientific plant of the University would still be very incomplete. The laboratories are stationary ; the pupils who use them are multiplying. Scientific studies are still in their infancy at Oxford, and their importance is every day becoming better understood. That must mean a corresponding increase in the number of students, unless indeed Oxford is to allow this, the newest learning, to pass out of her hands. These ex- pected additions to the roll of learners will have to be housed, and housed in such a way as to provide them with the means of learning. Delicate experiments can hardly be well performed when the operator's elbows are continually being jostled by fellow-students absorbed in their own special work. Mechanics are more exacting still, for they want buildings large enough to hold machinery. It is hardly creditable to a nation which has so many mines in its own territory, and furnishes miners to so many other countries, that the Professor of Mineralogy should be able to say of the kindred subject of metallurgy that there is not at present any equipment for the study of it at Oxford. One kind of plant there is which belongs to all faculties, and is as much needed in arts as it is in science. It is books, and the last wail that we shall mention to-day is the wail of Bodley's Librarian. The Library is in one way unfortunately situated. Books are continually being published, and when published they need shelf-room. There is little or no possibility of extending the present buildings, but we should have thought that there was no objection other than a financial one to the building of a new library in some other part of Oxford. The books might be distributed between the old and the new build- ings on some broad principle, such as the division between literature and science, and the inconvenience of having to go from place to place would thus be reduced to the smallest possible dimensions. Mr. Nicholson, however, who must be the best judge of his own wants, would pre- fer an underground extension on the north side of the Radcliffe Square. He sees his way at once to housing in this way nearly four million more volumes, and apparently looks forward to a time when Oxford, not content with touching Summertown above ground, will reach out equally far beneath the surface of the earth. But storage is not the only need of the Bodleian. English books come to it by a natural process, but foreign books have mostly to be bought, and the Bodleian has not the money where- with to buy them. The Board of Modern History declares that " the scientific study of modern history cannot at present be prosecuted in Oxford." The studies subsidiary to that of history have given birth in foreign countries to a complete literature of their own, and this is hardly repre- sented in the Bodleian Catalogue. The justifiable soreness of the Historical Faculty is shown in a way which is not quite justifiable. Not only do they complain of the poverty of the Bodleian, they go out of their way to compare it with the wealth that has flowed in upon " every branch of physical science." In the light of what has just been said, this comparison seems lacking in the force which comes from truth of fact. The Bodleian has been neglected, but we do not see much evidence of the complete satis- faction given to scientific demands.
Clearly the millionaire has only to come along to find abundance of work ready to his hand.
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