Various changes in the system were made by statute at various times, until in August, 1850, a royal commission was instituted for a general inquiry into the state of the university and colleges-a commission whose report is said to have been the most comprehensive review of the entire university system ever published. Its recommendations were for the most part adopted and put in force, some by act of parliament in 1854 and some by means of ordinances framed by executive commissioners appointed by it for the several colleges.

Some of the more important reforms effected by this act of 1854 were these:

(1) There was created a new "congregation," to embrace all resident members of the "university convocation," which congregation soon became a great and "vigorous deliberative assembly, with the right of speaking in English," instead of Latin, as theretofore.

(2) The colleges, though deprived of what had been a monopoly for so long a time, thus opening the way to university extension through growth of private halls, were, on the other hand, now released from their bondage to laws enacted in the Middle Ages, invested with new constitutions and accorded new legislative powers. (3) The fellowships were thrown open to merit-a reform which had the effect of stimulating students and of placing the governing power of the colleges in the hands of able and progressive men.

(4) By the removal of many unwise restrictions upon scholarships they were thrown open to merit, while their number was greatly increased.

(5) It prohibited religious tests both at matriculation and on taking a bachelor's degree.

(6) On the part of the university, as such, there were added to the enlarged curriculum an improved system of examinations, an important museum of natural science, and an assurance of permanency in the means of extension was provided by a clause in the college ordinances to the effect that fellowships should be appropriated "for the encouragement of all the studies recognized by the university."

In commenting upon the reform acts of 1850 and 1854, especially the latter, Dr. Brodrick says:

Other salutary changes naturally grew out of this comprehensive reform, and far greater progress was made by the university during the thirty years immediately following it than in any previous century of its history. The impulse given to education reacted upon learning and research; Oxford science began once more to command the respect of Europe; the professoriate received an accession of illustrious names, and college tuition, instead of being the mere temporary vocation of fellows waiting for livings, gradually placed itself on the footing of a regular profession. Instead of drying up the bounty of founders, as had been confidently predicted, the reforms of 1854 apparently caused the stream of benefactions to flow with renewed abundance. Nearly all the older colleges have extended their buildings, mostly by the aid of private munificence. [A new one (Keble) has been established and an old one refounded under its original name (Hertiord), with an increased endowment.] Meanwhile, a new class of “unattached” or “noncollegiate" students has been created, the number of which rose to 284 in 1880, though it has since manifested a tendency to fall. The aggregate strength of the university has been doubled within the same period of thirty-two years, and the net total of undergraduates in residence has been swelled from about 1,300 to upward of 2,500, and the annual matriculations have increased in a like proportion.

The complete abolition of university tests was effected by an act of 1871, after successive years of petitions from the university. This act admitted nonconformists to the degrees and endowments of the university.

In 1873 a scheme was inaugurated for indirectly connecting the universities of Oxford and Cambridge with the middle class (or secondary) public schools, by which the said universities instituted the examinations of such schools by a joint board, representing the universities, and the granting of certificates to be recognized at Oxford and Cambridge.

In 1876 a bill, which had its origin in Gladstone's initiatory commission of 1872, inquiring into the financial condition of the colleges and the university, was introduced by the Marquis of Salisbury, who was at the same time chancellor of the university and an important member of the Government, with the intent to strengthen the university by such diversions of college funds as should seem proper. Somewhat amended, it was passed in 1877, instituting an executive commission with "sweeping powers of revision and legislation," which for the most part seem to have been wisely exercised. Accordingly the past half century has been characterized by many important changes for the better.

Passing in review the several halls, including two for women, the many colleges, with their stately and beautiful edifices of varied architecture, mediæval and modern, a stranger unfamiliar with the history of Oxford would doubtless look around inquiringly for the university itself. If persistent, he would find that it exists, though in an intangible form. It has its convocation house, its own libraries, especially the Bodleian; its museums, its special apparatus for teaching, and its own "university chest" or treasury. There are also at Oxford four nonresidential theological institutions, namely, Wycliffe Hall, Pusey House, Mansfield College, Manchester College. Mr. J. Wells, fellow of Wadham College, says:

I should say that Oxford is a federal republic of colleges. As every citizen of the United States is a citizen of some special State, so every Oxford man is a member of some college; and so the Bodleian Library and university chest at Oxford may compare with the institutions (Congressional Library and National Treasury) at Washington.

The institutions supported and controlled by convocation are these: The Bodleian Library, the Radcliffe Library (scientific), the Taylor Institution (modern languages), and the Sheldonian Theater.

The museums are: The Ashmolean, the university museum, the university galleries, the Pitt-Rivers (anthropological), the Indian Institute, and the botanical garden and collections.

The press, so fruitful of valued products, is known as the Clarendon.

The observatories available are the university observatory and the Radcliffe, the last named being under its own trustees.

The university is a sovereign body of some 13,000 men, whose names are on its books as well as on those of some one of the 23 colleges. They are resident and nonresident.

The federal government of the university consists of two branches, the legislative and the executive.

The executive officers of the university are:

(1) The chancellor, who is chosen by convocation for life and has been for centuries some nobleman of distinction, usually nonresident, whose powers are to a large degree judicial as well as executive, and whose duty it is annually to delegate his authority to a vice-chancellor of his nomination.

(2) The vice-chancellor, who, according to Louis Dyer, M. A., author of Oxford As It Is, is required to live at the university to see "that all statutory meetings, lectures, and the like, take place in due order, and that only worthy men be promoted to degrees;" to inquire into reported wrongdoing and punish offenders against the statutes; with the proctors and lesser officers to exercise a general oversight of all university records, registers, property, and affairs, as well as a guardianship of the rights and liberties of the university-to this end also serving as head of the vicechancellor's court.

(3) The proctors, senior and junior, who are chosen from among masters by the several colleges in rotation, and whose function it is to enforce the university and college discipline.

(4) Professors, lecturers, tutors, and other subordinate officers.

The legislative and administrative bodies which constitute the governing powers

are:

(1) The convocation-a body of some 6,000 graduates, who have taken the degree of M. A., or that of D. D., or D. C. L., or M. D., and who are resident or nonresident. It is the supreme body with the most important of appointive rights and the right of conferring degrees granted by either diploma or decree.

(2) The congregation—a comparatively small body, consisting in any given year of such members of the convocation as have resided in Oxford for at least one hundred and forty days during the previous academic year. Its function is to receive and approve or reject measures of legislation originated below, and finally to submit the same to convocation for approval or rejection without amendment.

(3) The hebdomadal council, composed of the vice-chancellor, the ex-vice-chancellor (during the first year of his retirement), the proctors, and 18 members elected by congregation. Its sole prerogative is to initiate measures and pass them on to the congregation.

(4) Delegacies (standing committees) of convocation, acting in its behalf: (1) In the work of superintending the instruction of selected candidates for the civil service of India; (2) in the training of elementary teachers; (3) in conducting local examinations; (4) in the examination of schools; and (5) in the extension of teaching to points outside of Oxford, the number of such at present being 200. Summer schools or vacation lectures come under the delegates for extension of teaching.

Mr. Wells, of Wadham College, has said: “The faults of the English universities have been mainly due to the fact that they have reflected only too faithfully the aristocratic organization of society in England. They have given their best to the few, but they have not reached the many." And yet he appears to have so long deplored this great fault as to have unduly lost heart and overlooked the many changes of recent years. The aristocratic element has not yet been extinguished; ecclesiasticism, though still supreme, has in good part yielded up its despotism of the medieval times; and the proportion of "pass" graduates will grow less and less under the changed condition of things brought about within the past few yearschanges so clearly and concisely set forth by the able warden of Merton College, already more than once quoted, that I can not do better than to borrow his words of the year 1900, namely:

The introduction of representative government into the academical constitution has not only cleared away many abuses, but has at once popularized and centralized university administration. The recognition of unattached students [connected with no college] has broken down the monopoly of colleges; the abolition of close fellowships has infused new blood and new ideas into the more backward collegiate bodies; the spontaneous development of numerous clubs and associations-athletic, literary, or political-has created many new ties among undergraduates, and weakened the old exclusive spirit of college partisanship. The "combined lecture system," under which the inmates of one college may receive instruction in another, has also favored a division of labor among tutors which is directly conducive to specialism in teaching. The great extension of the professoriate, including the new order of university readers, and still more the liberal encouragement of new studies, has infinitely expanded the intellectual interests both of teachers and of students; the admission of nonconformists and the progress of free thought have powerfully modified theological bigotry; the multiplication of feminine influences has undermined the ideal of semimonastic seclusion, and greatly increased the innocent æsthetic distractions which are the most formidable rivals of the austerer muses. The gulf between Oxford society and the great world outside, never very impassable, has been effectually bridged over in every direction. A very large proportion of professors and college tutors have traveled widely; many are well known in London as contributors to scientific and literary periodicals, or otherwise; while Oxford itself is constantly thronged with visitors from the metropolis. In ceasing to be clerical and aristocratic, the university has become far more cosmopolitan; all religions are there mingled harmoniously, nor is it uncommon to meet in the streets young men of Oriental race and complexion wearing academical costume.a

a Brodrick's History of the University of Oxford, pp. 220-221.

Dr. Brodrick also claims that "in the meantime a marked and widespread refor. mation has been wrought in the morals of the university," and that "the ostentation of wealth has been visibly diminished."

THE BODLEIAN TERCENTENARY.

[On the 8th of October, 1902, was celebrated the tercentenary of the Bodleian Library. In reference to this event the Fortnightly Review published (October, 1902, pp. 637-647) an historical review, by J. B. Firth of the institution, from which the following particulars are cited.]

Early this month the University of Oxford will celebrate the tercentenary of one of its most famous and picturesque institutions, the Bodleian Library. Its doors were first opened to readers on November 8, 1602, but the commemoration has been antedated by a month, so that it might not fall during term time, when the colleges would not have been able to offer adequate hospitality to the distinguished representatives of the chief libraries in this country and abroad, and of many foreign universities and learned societies, who are expected to be present. The event is of interest to all friends of learning and to all lovers of books, for the Bodleian, though not the largest library in the world, is certainly the most romantic and the most fascinating. There is no other which can compare with it in the charm of its setting; none which is so essentially the work of one pious founder. Who, for example, thinks of the British Museum as having grown up round the library which Sir John Cotton presented to the nation? Like the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and the Library of Congress at Washington, the British Museum is simply a great institution of State, supported by public moneys, thoroughly impersonal, and making little or no appeal to sentiment. But the Bodleian, or rather Bodley's Library-to give it the title by which it was always known during the first two centuries of its career-makes an intimate and personal appeal to all who climb the winding staircase which gives access to its ancient galleries and halls. The spirit of Sir Thomas Bodley pervades them; one feels instinctively that here is the handiwork of a single man, and that a single brain devised the whole magnificent scheme. The librarian is still Bodley's Librarian. Bodley is, and must ever continue to be, the presiding genius of the place.

As his praise will be on the lips of all those who attend the tercentenary of the opening of the library, a word may be said of the circumstances which induced him to embark upon such an enterprise. The University of Oxford was without a library when Thomas Bodley entered at Magdalen College in 1560, as a boy of sixteen. He had already been well grounded in all the voluminous learning of Geneva, whither he had been taken in childhood by his father, a Devonshire Protestant from Exeter, who had been driven to fly from England during the Marian persecutions. The youthful Bodley had studied Greek with Beroaldus and Constantius, and Hebrew with Chevalerius. Beza and Calvin had taught him theology, and as the fiery Knox was also living in exile in the Swiss city of refuge, Bodley probably had often "sate under" him and learned from his discourses the principles of religion and the applications of rhetoric. But when he went to Oxford he found the old university library denuded of books, and stripped of the shelves to which they had been chained. Even the benches of Duke Humphrey's library had been sold five years before, and the hall was desolate.

The story of this pre-Bodleian library is a curious one. There is no mention of a university library in Oxford before the beginning of the fourteenth century. Such few books as there were belonged to the colleges or to the monkish communities which had habitations there, and it was not until 1320 that Thomas Cobham, Bishop of Worcester, laid the foundations of a university library. The beginnings were small, merely a chestful of books kept in the University Church of St. Mary. Then, in 1367, a room 45 feet by 20 was built over the old house of congregation, which

stood in the northeast corner of the church. It was erected leisurely, for it does not seem to have been finished for forty-two years, and the enthusiasm of the authorities can hardly have been overpowering. This chamber, which also served the purpose of a lecture room for the Professor of Law, constituted the university library until it became inadequate to hold the books which were presented to it by Duke Humphrey of Gloucester. * *

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We can forgive much to the long-forgotten schoolmen of his day when we remember their admirable taste in architecture. In 1426 the divinity school-one of the most exquisite examples of late Gothic architecture-was begun. It took many years to build, and while it was rising from its foundation the duke sent down to Oxford large consignments of manuscripts. The university was not ungrateful; on the contrary, we find the authorities presenting a memorial to Parliament in which they declare that the duke has magnified the university with a thousand pounds' worth and more of "precise books," and they beseech the speaker and the Commons "in their sage discrecions to thank hym heartyly and also pray Godde to thank hym in tyme comyng when goode deedes ben rewarded." When the books became too numerous to be accommodated in the upper room of the annex of St. Mary's Church, it was determined, in 1444, to carry the divinity school a story higher and build a more commodious place for their reception. This is now the central portion of the Bodleian Library and still bears Duke Humphrey's name.

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In 1550 the library suffered a crushing blow. The boy king, Edward VI, in the zeal of his Protestantism, published an edict for "the calling out of all superstitious books, as missals, legends, and the like," and commissioners were appointed to visit the universities for that purpose. In due course they came to Oxford and presented themselves at Duke Humphrey's library. There they worked havoc. They carried out their instructions so literally that they destroyed every illuminated missal or manuscript on which they laid hands. It is probable, indeed, that they condemned volumes at a hazard without regard for their contents, and that the mere presence of a rubricated initial was held to be sufficient evidence that a manuscript was Papistical and idolatrous. Possibly, too, in the confusion caused by such a visitation, books were freely looted and stolen; but the fact remains that after they had completed their visitation the library stood empty. Edward VI was no enemy of learning, as his foundation of Christ's Hospital and other schools throughout the Kingdom plainly shows. The dispersal and destruction of the library at Oxford were due principally to religious bigotry, but one can not help suspecting that the commissioners had some private reasons for venting their spite upon the books of Duke Humphrey's collection. Apparently the university acquiesced without demur; at any rate, after the commissioners had gone, the authorities made no attempt to repair the mischief which had been wrought, and five years later a delegacy of five "venerabiles viri" was appointed to sell the benches and bookshelves which had formed the furniture of the Duke's library. They did as they were bidden to do; the hall was stripped bare, and from 1555 down to the day when Thomas Bodley refounded the library the university had no books.

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It was in 1598, then, that Bodley wrote to the vice-chancellor offering to refound Duke Humphrey's library. He was a man ideally fitted to undertake such a work, and his qualifications, as he himself explained, were fourfold. He possessed “some kind of knowledge as well in the learned and modern tongues as in sundry other sorts of scholastical literature, purse ability to go through with the charge, great share of honorable friends to further the design, and special good leisure to follow such a work." Like most of the Elizabethan worthies, he was scholar and man of affairs combined. He had married the widow of a rich Bristol merchant, and apparently made free use of the lady's purse. His friends included the most influential men of his time, and he had the remainder of his life before him in which to carry out his project. Naturally his offer was accepted with enthusiasm, for he took upon