that if you bribed them to stay by allowing them to marry and hold Fellowships for life after a certain length of service, the College would be overburdened with such pensioners, and be drained of the disposable Fellowships which are its very lifeblood.

The Commissioners attempt to meet this difficulty by restricting the number of such pensioners; but by this means, the certainty of a provision is taken away. If a College ask a man to devote his youth to them, they must not let there be any chance of his being cast on the world in middle life by no act or fault of his own.

And in the case before us this chance would, unless a very serious number of Fellowships were absorbed, be much greater than would at first sight appear, and such as to deter men, to a very considerable extent, from engaging in College work. The status and perfect independence of a retired Tutor, with the possibility of some Academical employment, would make these positions more valued by the men we contemplate than moderate College Livings; and as persons might get such a pension at the age of forty-eight, and hold it for life, vacancies would seldom occur. If, in a College of sixty Fellows, the number of such persons were restricted to six, this complement would be reached after a few years of the operation of the change, and then a vacancy could only be expected once in three or four years: hence a Tutor could not look forward to such a provision; it would only be by his term expiring just when there happened to be a vacancy, that he could gain it.

Besides this, there is another dilemma which appears inseparable from the scheme.

Lecturers might become so inefficient, or objectionable, as seriously to impair the value of the College Instruction; but their shortcomings would seldom warrant a penal dismissal involving the forfeiture of their Fellowships (which we suppose guaranteed to them for life).

To remedy this inconvenience, we must have recourse to some sort of re-election, and thereby we destroy that certain character of the occupation which we have found to be essential to induce able men to enter on it: and the insecurity thus introduced would also be of a very objectionable kind.

It is moreover, an axiom that Statutes should be framed so as to avoid as much as possible putting Fellows into positions where their private feelings and interests would clash with their duties. Now in this case a large number of the voters would be advanced a step in the tuition by the removal of the Tutor, some would be his personal friends, and some his opponents in the domestic politics of the College. Constant grounds of dissension would thus arise, and the post of Tutor would be quite intolerable to a person of an independent spirit.

Worse than this, an easy going Tutor, though a little inefficient, would always be re-elected; but a man of strong mind, who contended for some change, would frequently fail to secure the suffrages of two-thirds of the Fellows.

The Universities are frequently the seats of strong theological feeling, and if this scheme had been in operation when the Tractarian movement was at its height, there would have been scarcely a Tutor re-elected in any College. Indeed the adoption of any novel views on Biblical criticism might well seem to some four or five members in a governing body of twelve, a sufficient reason for the withholding of their votes t. Moreover, as by this plan the Tutorial offices would be held for much longer periods than they now are, vacancies and promotions would be far more rare.

In consequence, it would very often happen that young men of great ability and anxious for College work, could not get a footing on the Tutorial staff, and we should lose their services altogether.

At present there is a constant stream of young men passing through the lower Tutorial offices, of whom some take a warm interest in their work and stay, and the rest after a time make room for others. This is by no means a bad plan for recruiting the Tutorial staff, for many men of high degree and great ability are not fitted for Collegiate work; it requires a peculiar facility of exposition and sympathy with learners and their difficulties to succeed in this : whether a man has these qualities or not can only be determined

The case would be similar to its being decided by the officers of a battalion whether the Lieut.-Colonel should be re-appointed, or retire and his step go in the regiment,

+ Colleges might be found where even an eminent man like Professor Jowett, of Oxford, would not be re-elected.

by trial, and that he likes the work and wishes to remain in it is a very fair criterion of his being suited for it. But under the system of limited tenure, it would be difficult to get young men to stake three or four years of the period given them to seek a maintenance on a mere experiment, and a Lecturer would have to be appointed nearly untried, and could hardly give up his place, if he felt in a few years that he was not quite in his proper sphere.

Again, as things are, a Tutor who finds that as he advances in years the labour of his post becomes distasteful, is generally very ready to resign, but if he were a married man, with a family dependant on him for support, he would feel bound to cling to his place as long as he was not absolutely incapacitated.

The question of the age up to which a Tutor is effective, has called up many contradictory statements in the discussions which have appeared in the newspapers; but it was clear to a spectator that the disputants were speaking of different things, and that both were right in their own view.

It was quite true that a College Tutor, whose business it is to understand young men and to obtain influence with them, should not as a general rule be much over forty years of age; and it was equally true that a College Lecturer, whose business is simply to teach and to become perfectly master of a certain range of subjects, might very well continue his occupation for twenty years longer.

No scheme for the improvement of the organisation of Collegiate instruction will be sound which does not recognise this distinction. Adopting it as a basis, I think that we may see our way to an easy means of obtaining a very approximate solution of the chief problem which the subject presents, viz. how to make Collegiate teaching a permanent profession in the University, and yet so to manage that a College Tutor shall always be rather under than over the prime of life. This I think may be effected without any alteration in the tenure of Fellowships, or without any complicated statutable provisions, merely by the extension of the system which has began to grow up of itself, of taking as College Lecturers persons who are not Fellows of the College.

If it were the general practice for a College to obtain as the Lecturer of its higher classes the ablest man it could find in the University, irrespective of his being a Fellow of a College,

Collegiate teaching would become a regular profession, and the efficiency of the instruction given in the College Lectures would be placed beyond dispute.

Most of those who under the present system act as private Tutors would, I think, gladly accept a smaller income for the more dignified and stable position of College Lecturers, and the post of senior Lecturer at a large College would be more coveted than those Scotch Professorships which now draw off so many of our valuable men. A Lecturer might well deliver as many as three or four Lectures in the day, either at the same College or at different ones; and might thus secure a comfortable income by Collegiate teaching alone, though of course he might also act as a private Tutor.

It might indeed be necessary for the College to allow such Lecturers some stipend in addition to what would be supplied from the tuition fees; but I do not think that such an expenditure of College funds, to a moderate extent*, would meet with objection.

Some classes should be left as they now are, in the hands of the younger Fellows, so that the staff would still be recruited in the way I have above described, and from this body would be selected those who would take the general guidance and superintendance of the Undergraduates, as Tutors and Assistant Tutors, just as now. It would be an additional inducement to these junior Lecturers to exert themselves, that if known to have shown considerable powers of teaching, they might hope to retain their Lectureship after marrying, with perhaps an accession of duties and emoluments, or to obtain such employment at another College.

Of course each Lecturer would be in constant communication with the College Tutor, just as at present, so as to keep him informed as to the regularity and progress of his pupils.

The very vital principle and distinguishing characteristic of our English University system is the Tutorial supervision, the first

• I say to a moderate extent, because I think it very important that our institutions should be in the main self-supporting, and that therefore the Pensioners should pay adequate fees for the tuition they receive, otherwise we should be giving gratuitous education indiscriminately, whereas assistance from the foundation should be confined to those who, as our Scholars, have shown themselves to deserve it.

requisite for the effectual exercise of which is, that the Tutor should be able to get an insight into the individual character and capacity of his men. It is essential then that a frank and manly confidence should subsist between Tutor and pupil, and that they may arrive naturally at such an understanding they should not be very far apart in age or situation. A Tutor should stand to his men, not so much in loco parentis, for parents and sons sometimes comprehend each other so little that a College Tutor has to stand between them, but rather in that of an elder brother who enters into their ways of judging and knows what considerations weigh with them.

Very little change need be made in our system with respect to the way in which the actual College Tutors are supplied. Our existing plan has the great advantage of securing their assistance during that period of life when they are most fitted for their work, and the position of Tutor is one so much more desired by young men than that of a Lecturer, there is so much more of human interest and responsibility in his work, he is so much less unfitting himself for turning to clerical duty, or other employment later in life, than one who is only teaching a branch of science, that a College can generally retain those men to act as Tutors who are the fittest for the post.

I think it more convenient that a Tutor should be a Fellow and reside in College; access to him is thus rendered more easy at all times, and I think a closer union exists between Tutor and pupil when they are leading the same kind of Collegiate life, than if the former is a family man.

But as I regard it as a principle that every discretion should be left to the College, and as circumstances might make it very desirable that a College should retain an able Tutor after his marriage, I should propose, in order that the Tutor might have his due weight and not lose the prospect of a provision, that by some statutable enactment the College should be enabled to give the Tutor, as Tutor, without being a Fellow, a voice in all educational matters, and his proper position with respect to the choice of preferment*.

* I understand that there may be legal difficulties in fettering the bodies in the disposal of their preferment—the claim of Fellows to livings in many rests solely on an understanding, and this would be all that would be required for the Tutor.