when he died, and he looked forward to many years of happy toil, both in finishing these "Economic Studies" and other work beyond. So far from becoming absorbed in economic science as he grew older, though his later writing happened to be almost all economic, Bagehot to the last gave me the impression of only passing through one mental stage, which being passed through he would again leave political economy behind. To his historical and descriptive account of English political economy he was likely enough to have added a history of political ideas, or at any rate some other work of general philosophy, which had necessarily more attraction for him than the ordinary topics of political economy. His actual achievement in political philosophy and literature was very great; but the writing had almost all been the work of about fifteen years of his life, and at the age when he died he might well have looked forward to other fifteen years which would have yielded at least an equal work both in quantity and quality. He spoke to me only a few weeks before he died of the difference he felt in his power of work; of his being able to produce more in a given time because he knew better what he was doing, though he had no longer the elasticity of youth and the youthful power of continuous and exhausting labor. I am not writing all this, however, to indulge in vain regret, but as some excuse for claiming a higher place for Bagehot than what those who did not know him may readily grant. The world must perforce judge him by an incomplete record, extended as that record is; but it is at least permissible to friends to show that the fragments left are those of a grand building, that the design went much farther than what we see, and that, fine and noble as the work is, it is greatly interesting as proving how much finer and nobler the whole structure would have been.

EXTRACTS FROM ARTICLE ON "OXFORD."

(Prospective Review, Vol. viii., No. xxxi.*)

FATHER NEWMAN is a man to fail. With all his ability and invention and logical accuracy, there is generally in all his writings some impossible postulate, some incredible axiom, that mars the whole. So it is here: he deduces his entire theory of a university from what we had always understood to be the obsolete derivation, that it is to teach "universal knowledge." This is odd enough: we are actually to receive from the emissaries of the pope the very theory which twenty years ago was in vogue among certain rather advanced sectaries of the Radical philosophy. A man of some wealth and transactive ability sometimes has a family; he is struck with the importance of various subjects. He says, "There is Chemistry: what progress it makes day by day! What a scheme for making soap Dr. Dirtihands was mentioning yesterday!-my son must know Chemistry. And there is French: Commong survatteel?' — my son shall know French. And there is Physiology; what an interesting topic the human frame is! We are always having diseases we can't account for. I wonder where I caught that cold last week - my son shall know Physiology. And then, too, what was that when I felt so floored the other morning? I remember it was those barrister fellows that were for me against the Brewer's Company, and they were talking of the late Lord Chancellor and his always giving things to his relations what's called 'nepotism'; and then a little red-headed man, who was very quick in business, said, 'Certainly, certainly, why, he's Nepos himself; and then everybody laughed at him, and I laughed. I wonder why we laughed? It is very unpleasant laughing when one don't know the reason. I fancy it is something in Latin-my son shall know Latin." And so on through all the range, of the sciences; and the end is, that the young gentleman is sent to a "seminary" near London, where everything is taught, according to the Times, "without corporal penalties," whereat he learns at least nothing. Something of this sort, we learn, is the Catholic idea of a college universal information is to be diffused; all sciences, "as the term university expresses," "" are to be taught; everybody is to be set to learn everything. But was

*This paper was written after the appointment of the first Commission to inquire into the Reform of Oxford University in 1852, and soon after the publication of Dr. Newman's Lectures on "The Idea of a University" in Dublin.

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it necessary to have so great an apparatus for so small a work? Is this what the Catholic Church is to do for us? to build new lecture rooms, to overteach a few pupils, to try (and fail) to induce mankind at large to search and seek for universal knowledge? Why did she come so far? We could do that for ourselves.

In our notion, the object of a university education is, to train intellectual men for the pursuits of an intellectual life. For though education by training or reading will not make people quicker or cleverer or more inventive, yet it will make them soberer. A man who finds out for himself all that he knows is rarely remarkable for calmness. The excitement of the discovery and a weak fondness for his own investigations -a parental inclination to believe in their excessive superiority-combine to make the self-taught and original man dogmatic, decisive, and detestable. He comes to you with a notion that Noah discarded in the ark, and attracts attention to it as if it were a stupendous novelty of his own. A book-bred man rarely does this; he knows that his notions are old notions, that his favorite theories are the rejected axioms of long-deceased people: he is too well aware how much may be said for every side of everything to be very often overweeningly positive on any point.

It is of immense importance that there should be, among the more opulent and comfortable classes, a large number of minds trained by early discipline to this habitual restraint and sobriety. The very ignorance of such people is better than the best knowledge of half mankind. An uneducated man has no notion of being without an opinion; he is distinctly aware whether Venus is inhabited, and knows as well as Mr. Cobden what is to be found in all the works of Thucydides: but his opinionated ignorance is rather kept in check when people as strong-headed as himself, as rich, as respectable, and much better taught, are continually avowing that they don't at all know any of the points on which he is ready to decide. And when those who are careful have opinions, they are in general able to bear the temperate discussion of them. Education cannot insure infallibility, but it most certainly insures deliberation and patience; it forms the opinions of people that can form the opinions of others.

This, too, is a function that increases in difficulty with the increase in civilization. As society goes on, life becomes more complicated and its problems more difficult. New perplexities, new temptations, new difficulties, arise with new circumstances; every walk in life is clogged with tedious difficulties, and thronged with countless competitors, and overrun with infinite dangers. The moral problems, the political problems, the social problems, the religious problems, require a greater stress of understanding; we were in

simple addition, we are in the differential calculus. Take the case of politics in this country now, and as it was a century and a half ago. In Queen Anne's time the question was, whether the Pretender should be king [and] whether Popery should be the religion of the state, and that was nearly all: on so large an issue, very inferior and illiterate minds were quite competent to form a sound judgment. Sir Roger de Coverley, for example, who believed in witchcraft, and was not a college man, was quite able to reject the pope and receive the Queen "God bless her." But how the poor old gentleman would have been confounded in the present day! What would he have thought of Free Trade, Protectionism, and Caucasian Christianity? He would, we fear, have reflected in this wise on the General Election : "You see, though I can't quite tell (for I am getting old) what Lord Derby has done with all his old principles, I shall vote for young John Rising, who intends to support him, for you know his father, Sir John, was my very old friend, and knew more of fox-hunting than any one in Worcestershire, notwithstanding some were so foolish as to think me his equal; and though the Chancellor of the Exchequer is said in London to be a Jew, I could not deny but the poor in my county was more comfortable than ever." This was good influential reasoning in the first year of the eighteenth century, but it won't do now, we want men to get up facts, weigh principles, suggest illustrations, appreciate arguments; and this is the use of learning.

So too in religion: how differently are we placed nowadays, in this Babel of sects and the deluge of criticism, from the old times when the choice was between two or three distinct creeds, depending on common and conceded postulates, and differing only in the respective correctness of a few not too complicated deductions ! Now that the postulates are gone, who is there that can estimate the insuperable task of (as it is phrased) making a religion? And in the minor subjects of taste and refinement, with the growth of literature, the increase of luxury, and the advent of æsthetics, who can too highly estimate the difficulty of reviewing works of art, and criticizing styles, and comprehending the German speculations? And in the practical concerns of life, though a prolonged education rather interferes than otherwise with a perfect and instinctive mastery of a narrow department, though it disqualifies men for special or mechanical labor and the petty habits of a confined routine, - yet for affairs on a considerable scale, for a general estimate on general probabilities, and for changing the hand and the mind from one species of pursuit to another, a carefully formed mind and a large foundation of diversified knowledge are indisputably wonderful and all but indispensable aids. Men who blindly and instinctively follow