1848 AT CAMBRIDGE CARRIED. 127 plan of reform itself, but as this will be chiefly directed against a plan of reform, whatever may be its extent, I trust that the intrinsic value of the measure will be kept up to a mark sufficiently high to have made it worth while to provoke and encounter that opposition. I hope soon to hear of the result of the meetings of the Syndicate, and wish only to remind you that while Parliament is sitting, and the enemies of the University may any moment take the initiative, there is periculum in morâ. 'Ever yours truly, 'ALBERT.' No one can read the list of distinguished men who formed the Syndicate without seeing that the question of reform was now practically safe. At all events, the result proved that it was so. By the 8th of April they had agreed to report in favour of a scheme of studies broad enough to satisfy the demands of all moderate reformers. This, it was proposed, should not come into operation until the Michaelmas term of 1850. As, therefore, there was no reason for hurrying the decision of the Senate upon the subject, it was not brought before that body until the 31st October, after their minds had been fully prepared to receive it favourably. It was then carried by a triumphant majority. It has hardly ever been known,' says Dr. Phelps, in his letter announcing the result to the Prince,' that so many votes should be given except on occasions of elections.' Writing to Colonel Phipps a few days later (3rd November), at the close of his year of office as Vice-Chancellor, after expressing his gratitude to the Prince for the attention bestowed upon everything which as Vice-Chancellor it had been his duty to bring before him, Dr. Phelps adds: The commencement of his Royal Highness's presidency over us is, I trust and believe, the date of a new and glorious era in our academic history, 128 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 1848 an era that will be marked with liberality and extended usefulness.' Knowing how deep the Prince had at heart the question. which had been thus far advanced to a satisfactory solution, Lord John Russell was among the first to snatch a moment from the cares of office to send his congratulations. 'I wish,' he writes to Mr. Anson, you would lay before the Prince my congratulations on the success at Cambridge. It is an excellent beginning.' The press with one accord were loud in their acknowledgment of the triumph that had been achieved. The Times wrote: ... 'The change in the curriculum of Cambridge education, which was announced yesterday, has taken everybody by surprise. We knew the event must come, but we did not look for its attainment without a long and arduous struggle. . . Many hundreds of young men, taken from the highest families in the three kingdoms, will every year have cause to bless the change, which opens a career to their praiseworthy desire for immediate distinction, and fits them for a more important sphere of action in after life. Whatever may be the profession or calling they may choose for the future, Cambridge now affords them a fitting nurture. But for one fortunate event the country might have waited long enough for the change which has opened so many sealed books to the curiosity and industry of the youth of England. The nation owes a debt of gratitude to the Prince Consort, the Chancellor of the University, for having been the first to suggest, and the most determined to carry out, the alteration in the Cambridge system.' The Examiner, in one of those trenchant articles by which Mr. Fonblanque had made himself a power among journalists, spoke with no less warmth: Of the five Graces offered to the senate of Cambridge University last Tuesday, three will long be selected for remembrance. By the first it was made incumbent on all candidates for a degree, in addition to the modicum of classics and mathematics at present 1848 APPROVING REFORMS. 129 exacted, to attend at least one term of lectures in Laws, or Physics, or Moral Philosophy, or Chemistry, or Anatomy, or Modern History, or Botany, or Geology, or Natural or Experimental Philosophy, or English Law, or Medicine, or Mineralogy, or Political Economy, and to show a certificate of examination satisfactory to that one of the Professors whose lectures they may have chosen to attend. The choice of the particular science to be thus added to the book of Euclid, the chapter of Thucydides and the pittance of Christian Evidences, is left wholly to the student himself; but without its cultivation to this moderate extent, he cannot go in for his degree. The second and third Graces are more important. One established a new Honour Tripos in the Moral Sciences, and the other a new Honour Tripos in the Natural Sciences. For the first the places are to be determined by the examination in Moral Philosophy, Political Economy, Modern History, General Jurisprudence, and the Laws of England; and for the second, by an examination in Anatomy, Comparative Anatomy, Physiology, Chemistry, Botany, and Geology. . . 'We have intimated that the Graces were opposed, but passed by decisive majorities. .. Wonderful is it, as Erasmus remarked on a similar occasion, how some men will cling to their old ignorance with their hands and feet, and not suffer themselves to be torn from it! and the number of such men would have prevailed on this occasion, we are gravely told, but for the influence of the new University Chancellor, his Royal Highness Prince Albert ! The student of Saxe-Gotha is reported to have weighed Cambridge in the balance, to have found it out to be a sham, and to have resolved that some truth should be put into it. If this be so, we congratulate the country on its Prince and the University on its Chancellor; and are glad to find that the exuberant inaugurative festivities of Trinity College have borne solider fruit than a bishopric to Dr. Whewell.' Even the wits of Punch, who had been by no means prone, up to this time, to recognise the merits of the Prince, could not withhold their tribute to his success upon the present occasion, and the pencil of Leech celebrated his 130 RECOGNITION OF PRINCE'S INFLUENCE. 1848 triumph in one of his most suggestive cartoons, with the inscription 'H.R.H. Field-Marshal Chancellor Prince Albert taking the Pons Asinorum, after the manner of Napoleon taking the Bridge of Arcola.' CHAPTER XXX. THE Chevalier Bunsen, with whom the Prince had frequently discussed the details of a desirable University Reform, writes to him on the 8th of November: I forgot yesterday to congratulate your Royal Highness on the success of your plan of Reform for Cambridge, which has been achieved with so much patience and persistency. A similar movement is now on foot for Oxford, through Arthur Stanley. Eight days ago, at the Literary Club Dinner, I led good Sir Harry Inglis and the Bishop of Oxford to speak of the start that had been taken by the sister University. I got [Professor] Owen to join in the conversation. Monsignor Wilberforce took the view, that the students, it might be feared, instead of studying the principles of the Natural Sciences, would only get formulas by heart. On this point Owen enlightened him, that the very reverse was intended. But I thought to myself, " And what will you do then? And if the young folks are (like yourselves) are (like yourselves) so unscientific, who is to blame?" But, in truth, the greatest physiologist or botanist may be a Dissenter, and how dare he teach in Oxford's sacred halls? ... In Rome itself I did not meet with more contracted notions, or rather with none so contracted, in so far as the Natural Sciences are concerned.' Singularly enough, on the very same day 'Monsignor Wilberforce,' in writing to the Prince, with a copy of a Charge to the Clergy of his Diocese, says: Few things could give me greater pleasure than to know that it appeared to |