Page:University Reform - Two Papers.djvu/14

10 and the Universities should form the crown of the majestic edifice. But the foundations are hardly yet laid; till primary education is compulsory, all over the country, can hardly be said to have begun to be laid. Only step by step, layer by layer, can the work go on; what we shall want on the first storey, we know not till we be come thither. Apart from the religious difficulty and other crotchets, the question as to the possibility of a so-called scientific education, co-ordinate with, and alternative to, the literary education which is still the secondary education of the civilised world, has yet to be settled. It is no good preparing an elaborate roof, till we know how many chimneys the house will want. Whatever we may do now, we may be sure that if the Universities exist in anything like their present relation to education in days to come, they will be moulded to supply the crowning glory of what generations of educational reformers have been desiring to see. Apart from any other reasons against determining permanently to other objects what seems now to be able to be spared from educational purposes here in Oxford, it should never be forgotten that the passing of fit persons from the lower-grade schools to the higher, and so on to the University, has always formed a part of every complete theory of national education; that this will require, whenever it is systematically carried out, considerable sums of money, and that no even approximate estimate can at present be formed of the amount of those sums.

It is on these three grounds that I am prepared to rest a negative answer to the question, Is it desirable that a Parliamentary or Royal Commission should shortly issue, to re-distribute the funds of the