"Our great Universities," he said, "Oxford and Cambridge, do
next to nothing towards this end. They are, as Signor Mateucci called
them, _hauts lycees_; and, though invaluable in their way as places
where the youth of the upper class prolong to a very great age, and
under some very valuable influences, their school-education, yet, with
their college and tutor system, nay, with their examination and degree
system, they are still, in fact, _schools_, and do not carry education
beyond the stage of general and school education." This is just in the
spirit of his famous quotation about the Oxford which he loved so well--
There are our young barbarians, all at play!
In 1875 he wrote: "I do not at all like the course for the History
School (at Oxford). Nothing but read, read, read, endless histories in
English, many of them by quite second-rate men; nothing to form the mind
as reading truly great authors forms it, or even to exercise it, as
learning a new language, or mathematics, or one of the natural sciences
exercises it.... The regulation of studies is all-important, and there
is no one to regulate them, and people think that anyone can regulate
them.
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