enabled an answer to be given to the question frequently put by strangers, "How is it, if your Colleges can receive nearly any number of pupils, that all do not go to the largest?"

It is surprising to find how large a proportion of the parents who send their sons to College have the emoluments more or less in view. In fully half the admissions at most Colleges the question of prospects is entered into, and some expectations acknowleged. Of course some parents are deceived by natural partiality, or by over-estimating the previous success of their sons in some limited sphere; but many say truly, "Since cases are known to occur in which men succeed at College beyond all expectation, especially in mathematics, which generally present to them quite a new field, we think it our duty to select a College which offers him the greatest advantages, that he may have every inducement to do his best *."

Now, by the way in which their Fellowships are disposed of, the small Colleges offer special attractions to several considerable classes. Those to whom a Fellowship is of great importance feel that, though possibly they might, if vacancies were very numerous, be elected at Trinity, even upon a degree below the standard of another College, yet that their prospects at a small College are much more secured and their fate sooner decided; they see that it is easier to make sure of a place in the first class of the Classical Tripos or in the first twelve or fifteen wranglers, than of election in a miscellaneous Examination, where the prizes vary considerably in the number, and where men are superannuated in three years.

Again, in a small College there is in general no superannuation, and therefore a candidate feels that even if vacancies come slowly, the worst that can befall him is to have to wait rather longer.

There is a further advantage in knowing, after the Triposes, whether anything is to be expected from the College or not, as at that time of life it is important for a man to decide on the course he is going to take. For instance, experience shows, contrary to what was predicted, that a man who has any hope of a Fellowship

*If we take the number of vacancies of Fellowships and the number of Undergraduates residing in the several Colleges, on an average of a considerable number of years, we find a proportion to hold, which is much more nearly uniform than could be expected, viz. 75 Undergraduates for one vacancy per annum.

will not present himself for an Indian appointment; but if disappointed at degree, he might try to obtain one.

Many men also wish to be able to leave the Uuiversity directly after their degree; some have not the means of continuing there, and if they take pupils in such numbers as to support them, their time will be so much occupied as to deprive them of nearly all opportunity for effective study. Again, in some Colleges the having Lay Fellowships tenable for life offers a feature of contrast to the large Colleges, which exerts a very considerable effect.

Every College Tutor knows how these and similar points are canvassed by the parents of the more promising men, and how certainly these men, if all such characteristics of a College were effaced, would drift with the main stream.

None but a College Tutor can fully know, how much the health of the younger body depends on its containing able men within it. Not only does an active-minded man take the lead in studies, but frequently in other pursuits and general society as well. And second-rate men suffer greatly, both as to progress in studies and in general character, from having none better than themselves within sight.

Undergraduates always will create for themselves a kind of aristocracy of their own, and if it cannot be one of vigour and ability, it is to be feared that it will be one of social position and pretension, or of pre-eminence in that sort of vicious vulgarity which passes with the feebler youngsters for knowledge of the world.

Again, with his good men all the life and interest of the Lecturer's work would go; he would no longer have to keep himself up to the level of the Senate House, would no longer feel that he was improving himself as he went on, and would be apt to get disheartened with his work.

Even if it be supposed that the Scholarships would provide for the distribution of the able men, it should be remembered that at the utmost they would only bring those who got them, and their numbers would be much diminished by consolidation, whereas now they attract several times the number; and if disposed of at the end of the first year, the scheme would fail from this, that few but the needy men would change their College to hold them.

Let every Trinity man ask himself whether he would have left his friends and the Tutor whom he had got to feel at home with, and the boat-club which had taught him what a common interest was, and the College which he had learnt to believe was the only one he could live at, and become a stranger elsewhere, for £50 per annum for his two remaining years, less by a serious deduction for the cost of changing his rooms.

Further than this, when from the result of the University Examinations it became evident that the men at the smaller Colleges were of inferior calibre to those at the larger ones, this would deter youths of any ambition from entering there, and thus at every step by which the tone and character of the College was lowered, the rapidity of its downfall would be increased.

We next have to consider how this proposed change would affect the connexion of the College.

Anything which weakens this would be very injurious to the University at large. A great part of our hold on the country springs from the attachment and the warm advocacy of our old members; but it is to their College, in the first instance, that their associations point, and their affections tend; and if by adopting these suggestions we loosen this relation, if we are too systematic and doctrinaire to take account of such sentiments, we shall throw away a support which under all opposition and discouragement has stood us in good stead.

The Universities in England are in a position very unlike that which they hold on the continent. There a University education is a necessary passport to every profession and to every tolerable government situation; with us, excepting in the case of the Clergy, and only partially with them, it has no such immediately convertible value. The Inns of Court have found it necessary to fling open their gates as widely as possible, and little by little have withdrawn all the advantages which they once attached to a University degree; not because our education, either general or legal, has deteriorated, but on account of the decrease in the number of Students at Law.

Something similar has taken place in the College of Physicians. The effect of this has been, as might be expected, that many men enter the professions of Law and Medicine without any liberal education,―men who have carefully avoided learning anything

but the necessary technicalities for practising their craft. This has lowered the social status of those professions; and now that their leading members have become aware of this evil, there are hopes that in their attempts to remedy it, they may accept the aid which the Universities are so desirous to render.

Meanwhile, together with our emoluments, it is our old connexion with the country which enables us to maintain our ground.

We hear it alleged to our disparagement that of late our numbers have not increased. It speaks wonderfully well for the vitality of our institution, that in spite of many rival establishments, in spite of the drain to the colonies and the army, in spite of the decrease in legal business, which has thinned so seriously the candidates for admission to the bar, we have still been able to hold our own. On the other hand, what would become of a foreign University if it were no longer the sole entrance to the professions in its country?

Nowhere can we find a mass of people who value education for its own sake. Young men cannot be taught without some outlay on their parents' part, and some labour and self-denial on their own, sacrifices to which few will submit without seeing some immediate and tangible return. The state of the army and of the public offices, when there were no examinations, showed that when young men were permitted to be ignorant, they would avail themselves of such license to the full.

However we may vary and extend our teaching we cannot draw to us that class,-and it comprises the lower branches of the professions as well as men in business,-who can gain their subsistence equally well without any education at all. But, happily, we have a class of stanch supporters who know what a University education did for them, and who will forego much to gain it for their sons. It was owing to their influence in their own spheres that the public never quite believed the slanders and misstatements which used to circulate in the newspapers, and which found their last echo in the House of Commons.

The most strongly attached to us among these, the most influential, because the most able and the best informed on University matters, are those who have been Fellows of Colleges, those who for many years looked on the corporate interests as their own,

who still have friends residing in the old house, still search the Tripos for the names of its Students, and from old habit still look on its prosperity and repute as though they shared in the credit. Their sons, like the connexions of existing Fellows, form a most valuable nucleus of students, as standing on a more familiar footing with their fathers' friends, and feeling bound to the College by something like a domestic tie.

But the proposed change would effectually destroy such College feeling; men would be always transplanted just as their affections began to take root; a man's freshman-associations would point to one College, he would be a scholar at another, and at a third he would have a temporary Fellowship. But even this last would not identify him with the body; he would have the termination of his connexion with it always before his eyes; he would not regard it as a home; he would look on himself simply as the possessor of an annuity chargeable on its lands. It would be hard to say to which College his associations would tend, certainly in his state of divided allegiance he would not be a hearty supporter of any; he might indeed have a regard for the University at large and recommend it when his opinions were asked; but it is not friendly feeling, but active zeal, which produces results, and this could hardly be expected of a non-resident in behalf of an abstraction so wide and so destitute of personal ties as the University.

We next have to consider how the professional speciality of a College would be affected.

It is most desirable that such specialities should exist, perhaps to a greater extent than they now do. It is hard to see how professional studies, or any of those which have been lately brought into notice, are to take root, unless under the shelter of some particular foundation.

For young men to enter on a subject with spirit they must do so together. If students of law or medicine were scattered in different Colleges they would lose, to a great degree, the advantages of public education, and though teaching might be given by Professors, yet to give these studies their full development, and to put them on a par with those of the Arts faculty, it is desirable that there should be a sufficient number of students in these departments congregated at particular Colleges, to admit of College lectures and Examinations and prizes.