not, anticipated and shared in by the framers of our constitution; and to gratify it, had been an easy task. There are living on our own shores men whose acquirements raise them to the highest rank in various departments of knowledge, who will not, we trust, in due time, refuse to be associated in any undertaking for the public good. And the more honour is due to those whose self-denial preferred the less imposing substance to the tempting but as yet delusive shadow, and is content to wait until circumstances prepare and justify the extension of our boundaries. And whilst I also anxiously desire the coming of that time, I look for it the more hopefully and cheerfully, because it has not been anticipated prematurely in a vain pageant. What has been done is our best security for that which yet remains to do. Upon this subject I will entreat your patience, if I offer further explanation.

“The idea of a University," to adopt the words of a celebrated living authority*, " is two-fold; it is first, what its name imports, a school of liberal and general knowledge, and, secondly a collection of special schools, devoted to the learned professions. Of these the former is the University, properly so called; the second is complementary and ministerial. The former considers the learner as an end in and for himself, his perfection as man simply being the object of his education. The latter proposes an end out of and beyond the learner, his dexterity, namely, as a professional man." The faculty of arts, which assumes the province of general education, was accordingly considered in the ancient universities as the mother of the other faculties; in some instances, as in Oxford and Paris, it subsisted for a considerable period alone, and still in the majority of learned bodies it occupies a predominant position. Few, indeed, amongst modern Universities preserve unim

* Sir William Hamilton. "Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, Education, and University Reform; collected from the Edinburgh Review." 8vo. 1852. p. 672,

paired the two-fold type of their origin; in some the special schools have well nigh superseded the general; in others they have practically disappeared themselves. Whilst either neglect is deeply to be regretted, and if possible, repaired, we may yet derive an instructive lesson from the comparative fortunes of those Universties in which special or general teaching has prevailed. Both have come short of their appointed purpose, but not both equally. In the former, knowledge, however technically and professionally accurate, has failed to preserve to the graduates that estimation which a degree originally claimed, and, in course of time, their narrow and partial requirements have been lowered to a continually decreasing standard. The graduates of the latter, although unhappily compelled to seek their professional education beyond the precincts of the mother University, have yet secured almost a monopoly of credit and success. The soundest lawyers come forth from schools in which law is never taught; the most accomplished physicians are nurtured where medicine is but a name. Neither of these examples will, we hope, be followed by the University of Sydney; yet she has done wisely in avoiding for the present the delusive appearance of a perfect type; and in establishing, after the ancient pattern, first, the faculty of arts, she has consulted, as well for the interests of those sciences which she is contented for a time to want, as of those which she commences by professing. She has escaped a similar disappointment to that which in England has been experienced in the failure of Mechanics' Institutes and People's Colleges. Those well-intended experiments have owed their ill success not to any deficiency of zeal or experience or ability in their governors or teachers, but to a radical and inherent vice in their constitution, or to speak more justly, in the mental condition of those to whom their advantages were proffered, the absence, that is, of a previous disciplinal training, and the consequent incapacity for continuous intellectual exertion. The history of these institutions, is generally the same; their first erection excites attention, interest, enthusiasm;

the classes are crowded with eager and delighted auditors; it is necessary rather to repress than to stimulate application.. But soon all is changed: when the intoxication of novelty and the eclat of publicity is succeeded by the daily routine of obscure and laborious diligence, few indeed are found to whom the fruit of knowledge compensates for the bitterness of its root; few who are able to devote to the silent laboratory of thought that sustained attention which the mastery of the simplest truth demands.

But, it may be asked, by what right do we arrogate to the chairs already founded amongst us the proud title of the faculty of arts? By what authority do they claim an exclusive or even pre-eminent value as the disciplinal method of education? To this question an answer must be returned. It is not enough to plead the suffrage of philosophers and educators throughout the civilized world: not even enough to exhibit the result of these, in comparison with more novel and popular systems. We acknowledge indeed, and accept our position as the youngest daughter of the family of learning: we are not rash to assay weapons other than those whose temper has been proved in many a conflict with ignorance and presumption: we hear with respect the counsels, and follow in the footsteps, of those who have already won the height which we are setting out to climb. But we follow neither implicitly nor as unconvinced. The ceremonies of this day's inauguration, so far as they are retained from ancient academic ritual, the habits which we wear, our statutory and customary observances, are not adopted only because they preserve the traditions of our fathers, because they link us to the venerable procession of scholars in the days of old, because in them we seem to claim the kindred and inherit the spirit of the mighty dead; but, also, because we believe that the God who, not in vain, has clothed the soul with a body, and made the senses interpreters and ministers of thought, and given to the outward world its mysterious hold and mastery upon our fancy,

has designed and commanded us by the right use of material symbols to bring our souls and bodies into harmony, and attune our faculties to the work in which they are engaged. And thus we vindicate our proposed undergraduate course, not more from authority than common sense; and in the vindication our only difficulty arises from the abundance and multiplicity of our materials. To enter in detail upon a theme so varied would ill become this place and occasion; even to indicate in passing the topics of the argument will exercise the patience of my hearers. I will try to do so with all briefness. I say then, generally, that the judgement of our founders in appointing for their disciplinal course the study of philology, especially in the clasical languages, with logic and mental philosophy on the one hand, and on the other, mathematics and the elements of physical science, is supported, were the evidence of experience as doubtful as it is decisive, by the reason of the case. A liberal education is one which cultivates and developes in their due and harmonious proportion what the Romans called "humanitas," all those faculties and powers which distinguish man from the inferior creatures. This end it accomplishes in two ways; (1) by the appropriate and healthful exercise of those faculties; (2) by introducing them to those objects, in the observation of which they will hereafter be engaged; in other words, a good education mustinduce a habit of patient, connected, vigorous, independent thinking, and must afford a general prospect of the most important objects of thought, the world within us, and then the world without, both in our relations to our fellowmen, and the constitution of the physical creation. How the second of these purposes, the opening, that is, of an extensive and many-sided range of thought, is effected by the studies you recommend, we need scarcely to be told. We know that mathematical science is the queen and guardian of all those pursuits which investigate or apply the laws of nature; the progress, nay even the continuance of the meanest among

the latter, ever keeps pace with the cultivation of the former. And to take the lowest ground: the mechanical arts, those which assuming scientific truths, deduce from them discoveries which directly enhance the luxury of life, but indirectly are most powerful agents in promoting the moral and social progress of mankind; all these, in a thousand ways, are indebted to the abstracted studies of the solitary recluse; and even the stability of moral and social relations depends not a little upon a Galileo or a Newton. We know, again, that the languages of Greece and Rome are the master-keys which unlock the noblest modern tongues of Europe, and, with the increased power of understanding our brethren's speech, enlarge our sympathies and realise our fraternity; that as the disunion of the nations was the consequence of misunderstanding, so the growth of fellow-feeling, what the Greeks beautifully call σvyyvpn, the thinking with others, the identifying of our minds with theirs, may prepare the restoration of "concord and unity." We know that in their rich and graceful literature, the model of all most perfect since, they provide appropriate nutriment to the noblest faculties of our nature; poets, historians, philosophers, with their keen and delicate sense of the beautiful, their vigorous and versatile intellect, their life of intense activity and ceaseless energy of thought, not from books and theoretic rules, but fresh from nature's inspiration and the school of experience, created those masterpieces in every kind, to understand and emulate which is daily more and more the noblest exercise of taste, of moral judgment, even of scientific research. We have learnt lastly, that philology is the primary element of sciences, which, like ethnology, trace back the stream of time to its fountain head, and disclose to our view the mysterious cradle of our race and the history of our gradual alienation. These topics, however important and interesting, I the more readily pass over because in the works of one whose name is justly honoured in this University they are doubtless familiar to many here. And