Sydney Smith | Page 5

see with a breaking heart) that they will soon come to a fearful termination." He praised a comparison of the Universities to "enormous hulks confined with mooring-chains, everything flowing and progressing around them," while they themselves stood still.
When pleading for a wider and more reasonable course of studies at Oxford, he says:--
"A genuine Oxford tutor would shudder to hear his young men disputing upon moral and political truth, forming and putting down theories, and indulging in all the boldness of youthful discussion. He would augur nothing from it but impiety to God and treason to Kings."
Protesting against the undue predominance of classical studies in the Universities, as at the Public Schools, he says:--
"Classical literature is the great object at Oxford. Many minds so employed have produced many works, and much fame in that department: but if all liberal arts and sciences useful to human life had been taught there; if some had dedicated themselves to chemistry, some to mathematics, some to experimental philosophy; and if every attainment had been honoured in the mixt ratio of its difficulty and utility; the system of such an University would have been much more valuable, but the splendour of its name something less."
The hopelessness of any attempt to reform the curriculum of Oxford by opening the door to Political Economy is stated with characteristic vigour.--
"When an University has been doing useless things for a long time, it appears at first degrading to them to be useful A set of lectures upon Political Economy would be discouraged in Oxford, possibly despised, probably not permitted. To discuss the Enclosure of Commons, and to dwell upon imports and exports--to come so near to common life, would seem to be undignified and contemptible. In the same manner, the Parr or the Bentley of his day would be scandalised to be put on a level with the discoverer of a neutral salt; and yet what other measure is there of dignity in intellectual labour, but usefulness and difficulty? And what ought the term University to mean, but a place where every science is taught which is liberal, and at the same time useful to mankind? Nothing would so much tend to bring classical literature within proper bounds as a steady and invariable appeal to these tests in our appreciation of all human knowledge. The puffed-up pedant would collapse into his proper size, and the maker of verses and the rememberer of words would soon assume that station which is the lot of those who go up unbidden to the upper places of the feast."
In 1810 he wrote, with reference to the newly-invented Examination for Honours at Oxford:--
"If Oxford is become at last sensible of the miserable state to which it was reduced, as everybody else was out of Oxford, and if it is making serious efforts to recover from the degradation into which it was plunged a few years past, the good wishes of every respectable man must go with it."
And again:--
"On the new plan of Oxford education we shall offer no remarks. It has many defects; but it is very honourable to the University to have made such an experiment. The improvement upon the old plan is certainly very great; and we most sincerely and honestly wish to it every species of success."
His opinions on the subject of the Universities did not mellow with age. As late as 1831 he wrote of a friend who had just sent his son to Cambridge:--
"He has put him there to spend his money, to lose what good qualities he has, and to gain nothing useful in return. If men had made no more progress in the common arts of life than they have in education, we should at this moment be dividing our food with our fingers, and drinking out of the palms of our hands."
It was just as bad when a lady sent her son to his own University.--
"I feel for her about her son at Oxford, knowing, as I do, that the only consequences of a University education are the growth of vice and the waste of money."
In 1792 Sydney Smith took his degree,[5] and now the question of a profession had to be faced and decided. It was necessary that he should begin to make money at once, for the pecuniary resources of the family, narrow at the beat, were now severely taxed by his mother's failing health and by the cost of starting his brothers in the world. At Oxford, he had dabbled in medicine and anatomy, and had attended the lectures of Dr., afterwards Sir Christopher, Pegge,[6] who recommended him to become a doctor. His father wished to send him as a super-cargo to China! His own strong preference was for the Bar, but his father, who had already brought up one son to that profession