THE FIRST COURT OF EMMANUEL COLLEGETHE FIRST COURT OF EMMANUEL COLLEGE
The income of Burwell rectory and of a farm at Barton, The trading profits of the University Press; and one new source of income—the annual contribution from each of the colleges, in proportion to its revenues, provided for by statute in 1882. The vice-chancellor delivers an annual statement of expenditure, which includes the upkeep of the Senate House and Schools, of the University church, the Registrary’s office, the observatory, museums and lecture rooms, and a yearly contribution to the library: the salaries of professors and public examiners, and the stipends and salaries of university officers and servants.[255]
College wealth and property.
The original property of colleges was in land, benefices, and plate. The portable property was laid by in achestkept in the muniment room: here title deeds, charters, rare books, college plate, and legaciesin speciewere treasured; the last being drawn upon for the purpose for which they were bequeathed until exhausted. Benefactors to a college presented it with a “chest,” and hence the “University Chest” is still the name for its revenue. Queen Eleanor presented a “chest” of a hundred marks to the university in 1293 (“The Queen’s Chest”); and Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk, enriched the public treasury with a thousand marks in the reign of Henry VII. when the “chests” had been “embezzled to private men’s profit”; a gift “which put the universityin stock again.”[256]The “Ely Chest” was given in 1320 by John sometime Prior of Ely and Bishop of Norwich, and the other principal givers were country parsons, university chancellors, a “citizen of London” in 1344, and Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter (“Exeter’s Chest”) in 1401.
The wealth of the colleges differs greatly. Trinity college has a gross income of over £74,000 and the next richest college is S. John’s. The poorer colleges have gross incomes varying from 4 to £9000.[257]The proportion contributed at Cambridge and Oxford for the royal loan of 1522 is interesting. At Oxford, New College and Magdalen contributed most, more than eight times as much as Exeter and Queens’ (£40) which gave least.[258]At Cambridge, King’s College and King’s Hall were the richest corporations and contributed the same sums as New College and Magdalen Oxford.
THE OLD COURT IN EMMANUEL COLLEGE The large stained-glass window of the Hall is seen on the right, and beyond that the window of the Combination Room. The Dormer window of Harvard’s room is seen on the extreme left.THE OLD COURT IN EMMANUEL COLLEGEThe large stained-glass window of the Hall is seen on the right, and beyond that the window of the Combination Room. The Dormer window of Harvard’s room is seen on the extreme left.
[pp.157-164] Meaning of a degree—the kinds of degrees—the bachelor—the ancient exercises of the schools called acts, opponencies, and responsions—the sophister—questionist—determiner—master—regent master—the degree ofM.A.—introduction of written examinations—the tripos.[pp.164-189] The subjects of study and examination: thetriviumandquadrivium—grammar—Aristotle’s logic—rhetoric—the three learned faculties—the doctorate—development in university studies—the development of the mathematical tripos—the senior wrangler—the classical tripos—Greek at Cambridge—the moral sciences tripos—philosophy at Cambridge—the natural sciences tripos—science at Cambridge—the language triposes—list of the triposes—changing value of the examination tests—the double tripos—present conditions for theB.A.degree—modern changes in the examinations—standard of the ordinary and honour degree, examples.[pp.189-201] Method of tuition at Cambridge—the lecture—the class—the weekly paper—the professorial chairs—readerships—lectureships—Lambeth degrees—degrees by royal mandate—honorary degrees—the “modern subjects”—and the idea of a university.
[pp.157-164] Meaning of a degree—the kinds of degrees—the bachelor—the ancient exercises of the schools called acts, opponencies, and responsions—the sophister—questionist—determiner—master—regent master—the degree ofM.A.—introduction of written examinations—the tripos.
[pp.164-189] The subjects of study and examination: thetriviumandquadrivium—grammar—Aristotle’s logic—rhetoric—the three learned faculties—the doctorate—development in university studies—the development of the mathematical tripos—the senior wrangler—the classical tripos—Greek at Cambridge—the moral sciences tripos—philosophy at Cambridge—the natural sciences tripos—science at Cambridge—the language triposes—list of the triposes—changing value of the examination tests—the double tripos—present conditions for theB.A.degree—modern changes in the examinations—standard of the ordinary and honour degree, examples.
[pp.189-201] Method of tuition at Cambridge—the lecture—the class—the weekly paper—the professorial chairs—readerships—lectureships—Lambeth degrees—degrees by royal mandate—honorary degrees—the “modern subjects”—and the idea of a university.
AUNIVERSITYdiffers from other scholastic institutions in conferring “degrees.” Having taught a man hissubject it offers him a certificate that he in his turn is able to teach it: the “degree” originally signified nothing more nor less than the graduate’s competence to profess the faculty in which it was obtained. This certificate of proficiency referred to the “three faculties” of theology, law, and medicine, to which was added later “the liberal arts.” The titles of “master,” “doctor,” and “professor” were at first synonymous. A master was a doctor in his subject, capable of professing it. The title of “master,” however, clung to the faculty of arts, that of “doctor” to the three liberal or learned professions.
The following degrees are now conferred: in arts, the bachelor and master (B.A.,M.A.); in divinity, the bachelor and doctor (B.D.,D.D.—formerlyS.T.P.,sacrae theologiae professor); in laws, bachelor, master and doctor (LL.B.,LL.M.,LL.D.[259]); in medicine, bachelor and doctor (M.B.,M.D.); in music, bachelor, master, and doctor (Mus.B.,Mus.M.,Mus.D.); in surgery, bachelor and master (B.C.,M.C.). Besides which a doctorate in science (Sc.D.), and a doctorate in letters (Litt.D.), are conferred on graduates in laws or in either of the last four faculties who have made some original contribution to the advancement of science or learning.[260]
THE LAKE AND NEW BUILDINGS, EMMANUEL COLLEGE The building is known as the Hostel, and was erected between 1885 and 1894.THE LAKE AND NEW BUILDINGS, EMMANUEL COLLEGEThe building is known as the Hostel, and was erected between 1885 and 1894.
The bachelor and exercises of the schools.
The title of bachelor originally marked the conclusion of a period of study; it was not a degree, and bestowed no faculty to teach. Here, as elsewhere, a bachelor was an apprentice or aspirant to another status or position; and he remainedin statu pupillarias he still is in theory to-day.[261]
It is only in modern times that the conferring of a degree follows upon a set written examination. For six hundred years the aspiring bachelor and master obtained their status by public disputations in the schools. Public exercises, called “acts, opponencies and responsions,” were regularly held during the period of probation, and the student advanced to the degree of master by steps which recall the rites of initiation in the catechumenate. After his first year the “freshman” became a “junior sophister”[262]in one of the faculties, and began to attend the school disputations, without however taking part in them. In his fourth year, as senior sophister, he qualified to be “questionist,” and presented himself as such at the beginning of Lent with ceremonies which turned him into a bachelor; ceremonies in whichthe Cambridge bedell figures as a veritable deacon. The procession was formed on Ash Wednesday and introduced into the arts schools by the bedell, who exclaimed: “Nostra Mater, bona nova, bona nova!” and “the father” (the presiding college senior) having proceeded to his place, the bedell suggested to him the stages of the ceremony:Reverende pater, licebit tibi incipere, etc. After this day the new bachelor was no longer a questionist but a “determiner” who determined in place of responding to the propositions raised in the schools. This status continued through Lent, and hence the incepting bachelor was described asstans in quadragesima.[263]
The master of arts.
In due course the bachelor “commenced master of arts,” the inception taking place in Great S. Mary’s church on the day of the “Great Commencement” the second of July. This is the traditional time of year for the granting of degrees, and the ceremony is still called “Commencements” in Cambridge and in universities which, like Dublin, are derivative institutions. The status now attained was that ofregent master,i.e.a junior graduate whose
THE CLOISTER COURT, SIDNEY SUSSEX COLLEGE The new buildings on the left of the picture were designed by Mr. J. L. Pearson and erected in 1890. In the distance we see the large mullioned window of the Hall, which is part of the old college building begun 1596.THE CLOISTER COURT, SIDNEY SUSSEX COLLEGEThe new buildings on the left of the picture were designed by Mr. J. L. Pearson and erected in 1890. In the distance we see the large mullioned window of the Hall, which is part of the old college building begun 1596.
business it was to teach the subjects he had himself been taught, for a period of five years; after which he became a non-regent, or full master.[264]The obligation to teach was part of the university theory of studies; so that when a Cambridge professor of our own time astonished his hearers by declaring “I know nothing of political economy, I have not even taught it” he was speaking in the spirit of the university maximdisce docendo. It was the scholar who had taught who was calledmagisteranddoctorin old times, not the men who, as is the case nowadays, “go down” with no other qualification than that of the bachelor and are nevertheless allowed in due time to writeM.A.after their names. For thedegreeofM.A.has virtually ceased to exist: no one now “commences master,” and the master of arts is simply the bachelor who has spent three years away from the university, in which he has had time to forget what he once knew. Indeed as between the master and the bachelor the case is often inverted, and if the former is an ordinary degree man and the latter an honours man, it is the latter who is the master in his subject while the former is little else than a tyro. That the degree of master carries with it not one iota more of scholarship or experience is certainly not understood by the public, but the fact that it is understood elsewhere supplies the reasonwhy such a small proportion of men now proceed to take it.[265]
Written examinations.
It was not till the xviii century that written examinations were introduced, and from the day of their introduction the practice grew and flourished. Originally teaching and tests had both been oral, it was only as books became cheaper that the book in a measure supplanted the teacher, the written examination came to supplant the public acts and disputations, andthe writing down of knowledgebecame the characteristic feature of Cambridge training. “Then know, sir, that at this place, all things—prizes, scholarships, and fellowships—are bestowed not on the greatest readers, but on those who, without any assistance, can produce most knowledge upon paper.” “Read six or eight hours a day, andwrite down what you know,” is a tutor’s advice ninety years ago.
The tripos.
Thetripos, although it did not take shape till the middle of the same century derives its name from a custom of the xvith. On the day when the bachelor obtained his public recognition he had as his opponent in discussion one of the older bachelors who posed as the champion of the university. He sat upon a three-legged stool “before Mr. Proctor’s seat” and
DOWNING COLLEGE FROM THE ENTRANCE IN REGENT STREET These buildings are in the classical style and are all nineteenth-century work.DOWNING COLLEGE FROM THE ENTRANCE IN REGENT STREETThese buildings are in the classical style and are all nineteenth-century work.
disputed with the senior questionist. This stool ortripodwas eventually to provide a name for the great written examination of succeeding centuries—thetripos. The champion bachelor was addressed as “Mr. Tripos,” and his humorous orations were called “tripos speeches.”Tripos verseswere next written, and on the back of these the moderators, in the middle of the xviii century, began printing the honours list:[266]from thistripos list of namesthe transition was easy totriposas the name of the examination itself—the tripos examination. These disputations degenerated in Restoration times to buffoonery, but the principle of examination made steady progress,[267]and there were probably no tripos speeches after the Senate House was built. In the xvi and xvii centuries, however, great personages had acts and disputations performed for their entertainment; and the tastes of Elizabeth and her Scotch successor were consulted when “a physic act” was kept before the former, while “a philosophy act” was reserved for James.
There were declamations, which did not escape Byron’s ridicule, in the xix century, but the last general public “act” was kept in 1839. Theviva voceexamination in the “Little go” which was only discontinued 14 years ago, and theviva voceand the “act” for themedical degree[268]are the only survivals to our day of that oral examination by which the scholar in the public acts constantly responded to the living voice of themagister. For the first time in their long history silence settled down upon the schools, and the eye replaced the ear as the channel of knowledge.[269]
Subjects of study.TriviumandQuadrivium.
The subjects in which university students were from the first exercised, were those of the Romantriviumandquadrivium, and the three faculties of theology law and medicine. A special importance must be assigned to the school of grammar—the first member of thetrivium—at Cambridge. There is every reason to believe that it flourished there not only in the xiii century, under the patronage of the bishops of Ely, but also in the xiith. It was called the school of glomery (glomery, glamery, grammery)[270]and continued to be of importance till the xvi century, the last degree in grammar being granted in 1542.[271]Degrees in grammar were, nevertheless,
xii-xiii c.
considered inferior to those in arts. To begin with, grammar was only studied for three years, arts for seven; grammar made the clerk, arts the professor. The introduction of the “new art,” Aristotle’s
A.D. 1712.
analytical logic, increased the importance of the second member of thetrivium: the name of Aristotle was a name to conjure with, but no new texts came to light to add lustre to the acquirements of the classical grammarian. As to the third member of thetrivium, public rhetoric lectures were delivered in Cambridge by George Herbert (1620); but a century later Steele complains that both universities are “dumb in the study of eloquence.” There were still however rhetoric lectures in the xviii century, but they were not about rhetoric, and the public declamations in the senate house must be regarded as the last homage to this most ancient of arts, whose modern successor is the Union debating society.
The three liberal or learned faculties.
If the original Cambridge schools were grammar schools after the pattern of Orléans and Bury-St.-Edmund’s, then the introduction of the arts faculty—the trivium and quadrivium—was the first step towards the formation of auniversitas; and its appearance in the xii century would account for the university status of Cambridge in the opening years of the xiii century.[272]The first of the three learned faculties to take its place in the university was divinity, and with the rise of the earliest colleges provision was made for the study of the two faculties of theology and law. The faculty of medicine was the last to gain a footing. Cambridge never became famous as a school of any of the faculties in the sense in which Paris represented divinity, Bologna law,Montpellier medicine. The study of the civil and canon law was, however, prominent in the xv and early xvi centuries, but was shorn of its ecclesiastical moiety during the chancellorship of Thomas Cromwell when Peter Lombard and Gratian were banished the Cambridge schools.[273]Of the two universities Cambridge alone retains a recognition of canon law in the title of its bachelors masters and doctors of laws,LL.B.,LL.M., andLL.D., a title commuted at Oxford into ‘bachelor and doctor of civil law,’B.C.L.andD.C.L.The medical progress of the early xvi century which had been marked by the foundation in 1518 of the Royal College of Physicians reached Cambridge by means of two great men, Linacre from Oxford and its own distinguished son John Caius. Peterhouse had been the first college to admit medical studies, but our naturalists and physicians of later times, not content with the fare provided for them in England, took their degrees at the continental schools. Medicine, the last to obtain recognition, is now the most prominent representative of the learned faculties at Cambridge. Until 1874 when a theological tripos was formed, admitting to a degree in that subject only, theology was studied as part of the mathematical tripos. Law was taken as an additional subject, and degrees in divinity and law were proceeded to separately, as now.Satisfying the examiners in the theological, law, or natural sciences tripos does not admit the student to any but the arts degree. Medical students need not, however, graduate in arts, but may proceed at once, after taking the Previous Examination, to read for theM.B.degree.[274]In addition they must keep an “act,” which consists in reading a thesis previously approved by the Regius Professor of Physic. Having read the thesis (of which public notice is given) in the schools, the candidate is orally examined by the presiding Regius Professor of Physic. After this he becomes anM.B.[275]
A candidate who has obtained honours in Parts I. and II. of the law tripos or honours in Part I. in addition to an arts degree, is eligible for the degree in laws and may proceed to take theLL.B., theB.A., or both. Any candidate may “incept in law” (LL.M.), without further examination, who has taken a first class in both parts of the law tripos. If he has notthis qualification he must have attained an honours standard in one part of the tripos, or be a qualified barrister or solicitor, or their equivalent in Scotland. In this case he must submit a dissertation on law, its history, or philosophy. The doctorate of laws is obtained after making an application in writing and sending in an original written contribution to the science of law. TheLL.M.cannot incept till six years have elapsed from the end of his first term of residence, and five years must elapse between the master’s and the doctor’s degree.
The doctorate.
A master of arts or of laws becomes a bachelor of divinity after subscribing certain declarations required by statute and preaching a sermon in the University church. Four years later he must “keep an act”orprint a dissertation, in Latin or English, upon some matter of biblical exegesis or history, of dogmatic theology, ecclesiastical history or antiquities, or on the evidences of Christianity. The “act” is kept in the same way as that for the medical degree, and includes aviva voceexamination. To proceed to theD.D.the same preliminary formalities as for theB.D.must be observed,[276]and a dissertation be printed on one of the same subjects. Five years must elapse between the two degrees, except in the case of aB.D.who is also anM.A.of at least twelve years’ standing. In fact the lapse of time is all that remains of incepting and proceeding to the higher degrees.
Development of university studies.
Until hard upon the close of the xv century there was no development in university studies. Erasmus in 1516 describes them as having consisted until thirty years previously in nothing but Alexander (the grammar text-book at Cambridge) the “Little Logicals,” the old exercises from Aristotle, thequaestionesfrom Duns Scotus. The study of mathematics, the new Aristotle, a knowledge of Greek, had all come within the last few years.[277]
The development of the mathematical tripos.
Gradually the study of these “arts” yielded to the mathematical tripos. The subjects which had been intended to embrace a general education dropped out,[278]those which dealt with mathematics or mathematical physics encroached more and more, till in 1747 the historic tripos with which the name of Cambridge is identified was fully established. The conviction of the paramountcy of mathematical reasoning had been emphasised at the university by the discoveries of Newton, and when its mathematical studies were consolidated in the xvii century under the influence of Newton’s tutor, Isaac Barrow, “philosophy” was understood to mean the mathematical sciences, and continued to mean this and this only in English mouths till the threshold of our own times.[279]“By thestudy of the great relations of form,” writes an old Trinity student from the other side of the Atlantic, the Cambridge man acquired that “breadth of reasoning,” that power of generalisation, and perception of analogy “in forms and formulae apparently dissimilar,” which characterise the scientific mind. A study which bestows accuracy of scholarship, the perception of order and beauty, and “inventive power of the highest kind,” was that “in which for two hundred years all, and now more than half of the Cambridge candidates for honours exercise themselves.”[280]
Wranglers.
Euclid and Newton filled the Cambridge horizon, and summed, as we have seen, all philosophy and all “arts.” Theology itself ceased to rival the mathematical disputations which became the business of the schoolspar excellence, and which were of such importance that the name ofwranglerswas exclusively applied to those most proficient in them, and “the senior wrangler” held the first position in the university. To attain this place it was necessary to have “fagged steadily every day” for six or eight hours. The quality of a man’s work would tell for nothing in the final result if he had neglected, with this end set before him, to practise that meremechanical “pace” which would serve him in the great week.[281]
The classical tripos.
In 1822 the classical tripos was added. The history of classical studies at Cambridge is of special interest. The introduction of Greek into this country was a movement due directly to our universities: students of Oxford first learnt the language in Italy, but Cambridge as a university first gave it an academic welcome. The last echoes among Englishmen of the most wonderful idiom the world has heard resounded in the school of York, when John of Beverley, Wilfrid, and Bede could be described as Grecians, and where Alcuin taught Greek. More than seven centuries later the efforts of Fisher chancellor of the university of Cambridge with the co-operation first of Erasmus and then of Croke, re-established Greek in an English seat of learning.[282]
TRUMPINGTON STREET FROM PETERHOUSE Part of the new buildings of Pembroke College are seen on the right, and the Tower of the Pitt Press, commonly called by undergraduates “The Freshers’ Church,” is seen in the distance. The entrance to Peterhouse is behind the tree on the left of the picture.TRUMPINGTON STREET FROM PETERHOUSEPart of the new buildings of Pembroke College are seen on the right, and the Tower of the Pitt Press, commonly called by undergraduates “The Freshers’ Church,” is seen in the distance. The entrance to Peterhouse is behind the tree on the left of the picture.
Greek at the universities.
Erasmus had given up his dream of studying Greek in an Italian university and had settled down three years before the close of the century at Oxford on hearing that Grocyn was teaching there.[283]He had known some Greek before he went to Oxford, and he knew but little when he left, for its acquisition was still his great pre-occupation when he accepted Fisher’s invitation and went to Cambridge. The work of Grocyn and Linacre left no trace in their own university. When Colet introduced the study of Greek into his new school, Oxford showed itself hostile; when the Greek of Erasmus and Croke had taken permanent hold in Cambridge, the Oxford students rose up in arms against the Cambridge “Grecians,” and dubbing themselves “Trojans” sought street brawls with the “Greeks.” Finally, Sir Thomas More himself wrote a protest to his old university, which, he wrote, was engaged in casting ridicule on those who “are promoting all the interests of literature at your university, and especially that of Greek.” “At Cambridge, which you were always accustomed to outshine, even those who do not learn Greek are so much persuaded to its study in their university that they praiseworthily contribute to maintain a salaried professor who may teach it to others.”[284]
Colet took Greek into our public schools, in faceof the hostility of his university; it was the Cambridge Grecians settled by Wolsey at Cardinal College who established it at both universities, and it was men like Ascham, Sir Thomas Smith, and Cheke who introduced it as Cambridge learning to the world outside. It has been well said that classics “kept a firm hold on the Cambridge mind.” The mantle of Erasmus Croke and Cheke fell upon Bentley and Porson who had no rivals among English classics and critics, and the services rendered by Cambridge as a university in this direction have been maintained by the present generation of scholars.[285]
Colloquial Latin and Greek.
By order of Thomas Cromwell “two daily public acts one of Greek the other of Latin”were to be held in all the colleges.[286]The Commonwealth Committee tried to revive the colloquial use of Latin and Greek in 1649, but the use of Latin in halls and walks ceased in this century, though it lingered in the college lectures, the declamations, and the “acts and opponencies.” It lingered also in the college chapels, but the only relic now remaining is the Latin grace in hall. The study of the classics themselves declined at Cambridge during the reign of Charles II. and Gray laments, while Bentley was still living, that these studies should have “fallen into great contempt.”[287]
The moral sciences tripos.
It was the introduction of the classical tripos which gave a foothold for mental and moral philosophy. Occupation with Greek metaphysics, contact with the Greek mind, brought into relief the one-sidedness of the mathematical mind. It also placed the two methods in sharp contrast. For hitherto a fundamental antagonism between mathematical and metaphysical method had been unsuspected. It was not till the dispute between Whewell and Hamilton that the idea was pressed home that there were two philosophical methods, not one; that not only the reasoning which begs but the reasoning which questions the premiss has a right to be heard; that there was a philosophy of formal proof and one of philosophic doubt; that axiomatical reasoning lay on the one side, and the enquiry into the validity of the reasoning process itself on the other.
Psychology.
It was indeed by way of psychology that this other philosophy gained a foothold in the university. It was the contact with the scientific temper of Cambridge of psychology and psycho-physics—the modern sciencepar excellence, the point of contact between the experimental method and mental philosophy, the fine flower of science since Darwin, its complement, its interpreter—which ensured the introduction of a moral sciences tripos. This it was which won recognition for an organon other than the mathematical. Metaphysics captured Cambridge based upon psychology, and here the two have never been divorced.
The problem of education at Cambridge before 1851 had been entirely concerned with the mutual relations of mathematics, physics, and classics. The two historic triposes had between them ousted even Locke and Paley, the relegation of which to the ordinary degree work nullified, for all serious philosophic purposes, the “grace” of 1779 which had devoted a fourth day to examination in “natural religion, moral philosophy, and Locke.”[288]Whewell who had lectured in 1839 as professor of casuistry on moral philosophy, was chiefly instrumental eleven years later in forming the new tripos. The college which took the leading part was S. John’s, where the Rev. J. B. Mayor was fellow and afterwards examiner; and the first man admitted to a fellowship for his attainments in this direction was a Johnian who came out senior moralist in 1863. When the tripos was framed, within twenty-five years of the final disappearance of all mentalphilosophy from the higher schools at Cambridge, it included papers on logic and psychology, on metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy and political economy. The political subjects now form a tripos to themselves, the Economics tripos created in 1903. Hort was a candidate in the first examination (1851) and L. B. Seeley in the third: until 1861, when Whewell and Leslie Stephen were among the examiners, the tripos was taken in addition to one of the others, and did not confer a degree.[289]
That vampire of the Cambridge schools, mathematics, had absorbed not only philosophy and the arts but also the natural sciences. It had been however through one of the great metaphysicians, Robert Clarke, that Newton’s physics had taken their place in the Cambridge curriculum, and Locke and Newton were there side by side, and had entered there together. It seemed, then, a simple revival and continuance of these traditions when the natural sciences tripos was formed in the same year as the moral sciences.
Empirical science at Cambridge.
Empirical science at Cambridge dates from Linacre and Caius. The Puritan masters of the university discountenanced science, discouraged the university’s higher mathematics, but were led by their liking for the open bible greatly to favour the study of Greek. It is a remarkable fact that the natural ally of the reform movement was “Greek” not naturalscience.[290]Greek and “heresy” were equivalents; Caius, the ardent champion of medicine and empirical science in Cambridge, was one of the last to cling to the old “popishe trumpery.”[291]Just two hundred years before the publication of the “Origin of Species,” someone writes to Sir Thomas Browne the author ofReligio Medici, from Darwin’s college at Cambridge, saying that there were then (1648) “so few helps” at the university for the student of medicine and science. With the Restoration scientific interests were revived, London setting the fashion to the seats of learning. But even at the close of the xviii century—that dark age of the universities—there was a professor of anatomy and there were lectures on “human anatomy and physiology” at Cambridge.[292]A few years later there was no physiology and the only physical study was astronomy.[293]Such
PEASHILL The Chancel of St. Edward’s Church is seen behind the stalls in the roadway, and the Tower of Great St. Mary’s in the distance. On the right is the Old Bell Inn and the old town pump is in the foreground.PEASHILLThe Chancel of St. Edward’s Church is seen behind the stalls in the roadway, and the Tower of Great St. Mary’s in the distance. On the right is the Old Bell Inn and the old town pump is in the foreground.
was the state of affairs two or three decades before the creation, in 1851, of a tripos which included physiology, comparative anatomy, chemistry, geology, botany, and mineralogy. The examination now comprises papers in 8 subjects, and is divided into two parts: chemistry, physics, mineralogy, geology, botany, zoology and comparative anatomy, human anatomy, and physiology. In the second part the last paper is upon human anatomy and vertebrate comparative anatomy. Cambridge owes its present prominent position as a teacher in the scientific world to the remarkable development of its scientific laboratories and equipment. For the purposes of the natural sciences tripos it possesses some of the finest laboratories and museums in the kingdom. The great Cavendish laboratory was built in 1874, the chemical in 1887, the engineering in 1894-9, the new medical school in 1904 with the museum of geology, while the same year saw the erection of the most complete botanical laboratory in England. Cambridge therefore which is “the most ancient scientific school in the country” is also among the best equipped.
The study of modern languages.
Within a century of the decay of Norman French in England, a knowledge of modern languages began to assume value. Throughout the Tudor epoch it was those ecclesiastics and lawyers who were also linguists to whom the diplomatic posts and the secretaryships of state were entrusted. Latin did not cease to be the common official medium, but the growth of national dialects gave to a knowledge of thesethe importance which they must always possess for the diplomat and the trader. “Esperanto” will not take its place until nothing is spoken anywhere but Esperanto.
Some progress was made in these studies in both the universities in the xvi century:—“Petrarch and Boccace in every man’s mouth—the French and Italian highly regarded: the Latin and Greek but lightly,” writes Gabriel Harvey to Spenser: but the xixth opened at Cambridge barren of anything linguistic, ancient or modern, eastern or western, except the uncouth Latin of the schools.[294]The first languages tripos was formed in 1878 for the Semitic languages; the Indian languages tripos (1879) now forms part, with the Semitic tripos, of the Oriental languages tripos created in 1895. In 1886 the “medieval and modern languages” tripos came into being.
List of the triposes.
The complete list of Cambridge triposes with the date of their introduction is as follows:—(1) Mathematical 1747.[295](2) Classical 1822. (3) Moral Sciences 1851. (4) Natural Sciences 1851. (5) Law 1858.[296](6) Theological 1874. (7) Historical1875.[297](8) Medieval and Modern Languages 1886. (9) Mechanical Sciences 1894. (10) Oriental Languages 1895. (11) Economics 1903.
Changing value of examination tests.
The value of the tests to which degrees have been attached in the past has varied considerably, and the same is true of the present. TheM.A.degree in the xvi and following century was obtained with little or no examination; the disputations, as we have seen, were often idle forms, but the improvement in methods dates from 1680 when the proctors were replaced bymoderatorsas overseers in the sophisters’ school. Fifty years later the building of the Senate House opened the new era, and the next twenty years (1730-50) saw rapid progress; so that the Cambridge degree was still something better than the Oxford when at the end of that century aspirants for degrees at both universities were adequately described as “term-trotters.”[298]The conspicuous university learning of the xvii century was untested and unstimulated by any adequate examination test; but earlier still the sheer number of years passed at a university must have had a value which is now lost. Seven years was the rule at Cambridge in the xv, xvi and xvii centuries, and the early history of the oldest of Cambridge colleges showsus the Peterhouse students residingall the year round.[299]Nowadays the standards of the honour and “poll” degree[300]are so wide apart that the terms bachelors and masters of arts applied equally to all degree work, are misleading. “He only wanted to take his degree, he did not work much” someone said to me a short time ago, and one felt one knew that degree. The honours class standard is also variable, and “a good year” raises the first class standard unduly.