tantism. At Marburg, Jena, Königsberg, and Helmstädt, universities of a professedly Protestant character were erected. These schools became the cradle and nurseries of the Reformation; and, humanly speaking, it may be said that the regeneration of Christian faith, in those times, was, on the Continent at least, the work of the German Universities. Nor can this, by any means, be considered as an accidental merit of theirs. On the contrary, there can be no doubt that the organic principle of the German Universities, given as it was at the erection of Prague, and faithfully preserved in all the subsequent universities — we mean their unrestricted independence of teaching and learning-was, as it were, a preliminary, if not the direct cause of the Reformation. Though England, at that time, had her Oxford and her Cambridge, though she had had her Wicliffe, her Thomas More, yet the impulse of the Reformation came to her less from her own universities than from Germany. While King Henry VIII. engaged in a dispute with Luther, Cranmer and his fellows turned their eyes to Germany; the reformers mostly looked to it for information on the questions that had begun to sway their minds. But whilst in Germany, the universities, backed by the people at large, carried the Reformation against the Emperor and the temporal powers; England, where the universities, as bodies, were more subject to traditional rule and authority, took in the beginning only a secondary part in the cause of the Reformation, and made it its own only in proportion as the changeable views of the sovereigns of the country imposed upon them the necessity of either acquiescing or opposing its movements. Unfortunately the German Universities lost in the next centuries a great part of their lustre and renown; not that they had become unfaithful to their mission, and renounced at any time their task; but the country was in general unhappy-and we must not wonder if, during a long period of continual slaughter and ravages, we find the thirst of knowledge subsiding, and people less eager to frequent or promote those seats of learning which had brought on them, together with all the light they had given, so much dissension and strife. No new univer sity was added to the old list and those which existed divided themselves into two opposite camps. Whilst the Saxon, the Prussian, and all the Northern Universities proclaimed Protestant principles, the Roman Catholic States of Germany, such as Austria and Bavaria, made their Universities strictly orthodox schools; they were not able to do so without cutting down the liberty of teaching and learning in a great many instances, and without reducing them to a kind of seminaries, with close inspection and superintendence from their governments. Though the Protestant princes kept themselves not always free from the reproach of having interfered with the learned schools of their countries, yet they allowed them throughout to retain their original organic principles, and dictated to their professors no creed, to their students, no mode of learning. Some decided improvements were gradually introduced, the most important of which was certainly the abolition of the Latin language in University lectures, and the institution of the German tongue in its stead - a merit which is due to the University of Halle and its professors. The political struggles of Germany called her Universities repeatedly again into the foreground. Thus, when the French invaded the country, and conquered a great part of the Prussian provinces, in consequence of the battle of Jena, the German Universities, and particularly Halle, became the haunts of the national party. The armies of Blücher, and the Black Band of Lûtzow and Körner chiefly consisted of German students, who, in their enthusiastic patriotism, had taken an oath to accept no quarter from a Frenchman, and to give none; but not to rest till the foe was expelled from the land. It is chiefly with such soldiers that the battles of Katzbach, Leipzig, Montmartre, and at last of Waterloo, were fought, and the yoke of the French usurper was ultimately broken. During the late internal struggles of Germany, the Universities took again the lead, as champions of civil freedom. It was not likely that institutions, so intimately connected with the progress and intellectual improvement of their country, should have espoused another cause than that of liberty and of social advancement. But their party has as yet been too weak; and the princes found means to counteract and defeat the bold projects of the Berlin and Vienna students by their cannons and their regular armies. It behoves us best to leave future events and impartial historiography either to justify or to condemn the policy which the German academies of 1848 and 1849 adopted, and not to pronounce, from our own feelings or reminiscences, a sentence which might appear one-sided to part of our readers. It is universally admitted that the seven Prussian Universities take a prominent rank amongst those of Germany. The largest, and yet the most recent of them, is that of Berlin. It was erected in 1810 by the late King Frederick William III., and has had the most illustrious names amongst its professors such as F. A. Wolff, Lachmann, Böckh, Zumpt, J. Bekker, among scholars; Rose, Mitzscherlich, Ehrenberg, Encke, Lichtenstein, on natural sciences; Schleiermacher, De Wette, Neander, Hengstenberg, in divinity; Müller and Dieffenbach, amongst physicians; and Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, among its philosophers. It has also the largest number of students, amounting at present to about 2,400, of whom only 1,800 may be said to frequent it with the view of perfecting themselves in one of the learned professions. Next to Berlin in point of numbers rank Breslau, Bonn, Halle, of between 700 and 1,000 students; finally, Königsberg, Greifswalde, and Münster, of between 200 and 400 students. Names like those of Bessel, Argelander, Niebuhr, Gesenius, Nitzsch, and Tholuck, will, to mention only a few of their stars, sufficiently establish their claims to intellectual merit. But others of the German States boast of universities highly noted for their success. Heidelberg adds the charms of a delightful neighbourhood to the excellent resources it offers for educational purposes, and this has sometimes the effect of inducing the academicians who frequent it to turn the former of these advantages to a far greater account than the latter. Göttingen, where Leibnitz and Luden once taught, was erected by George II., King of England, and Elector of Hanover. It was always famous in the classical and historical departments. Tubingen, in the kingdom of Würtemberg, has, amongst other excellencies, an impor Thus tant seminary for Protestant divinity joined to its University. Its divines form a distinct and imposing school of their own. Giessen boasts of that greatest chemist of the age, Liebig. Jena was till lately ill reputed in Germany, on account of the democratical and dissolute tone of its students. Leipzig, adorned by many great names, has lately lost one of the first scholars in G. Hermann, the veteran of classical erudition. Kiel, Rostock, Marburg, have establishments by no means to be despised, though they may not rank with those first mentioned. versities The Universities of the Southern and Roman Catholic districts of Germany are very different from the Protestant Universities. Their system is far more authoritative, their discipline more severe, their instruction more influenced by the secular and ecclesiastical powers. Bavaria has three uniMunich, Würzburg, and Erlangen. Austria has nine, amongst which Vienna and Prague take decidedly the lead. Olmutz, Gratz, and Inspruck are situated in the different German parts; Pesth and Lemberg in the Hungarian and Slavonic dominions; two, namely, Pavia and Padua, in the Italian provinces of the Austrian empire. All these establishments cannot be said to possess the organic principles with which the German Universities first arose, and which still characterise the Protestant districts. The governments, being afraid of the consequences that might attend the existence of independent educational institutions, rescinded the liberty of teaching and learning, and kept both students and professors under strict superintendence. Though they did not altogether abandon the lecture system, yet they submitted the academicians to an infinite number of obligations and restrictions, concerning their studies as well as their mode of living. All students' associations are forbidden and suppressed-a regular attendance and periodical examination required - every tendency that does not coincide with absolutism in matters temporal, and with the infallible authority of Rome in things spiritual, is excluded; and wherever. it faces the light of day, silenced by immediate removal from the University, or by confinement within the prison-walls of an Austrian citadelthose walls that closed themselves for seven years on the poor Silvio Pellico. The professorships are for a great part in the hands of Jesuits; and invisible spies surround the youth in his amusements and conversations. Such a system could, of course, but have the effect of crippling these institutions. And, in fact, it seems almost as if an intellectual curse lay on the Austrian Univerities; for though Vienna and Prague, as well as Munich in Bavaria, are better frequented and less obscure establishments than the rest of the Roman Catholic Universities in Germany, yet none of them can exhibit such a succession of literary and scientific celebrities, or men of such general European renown as the Protestant Universities of the North. When could ever genius and originality of thought prosper under the iron rod of despotism, or amidst the espionage of police scouts? And how can the young be inspired with a genuine love of knowledge and research, if they see their teachers submit, either willingly or unwillingly, to the dictates of an imperious and tyrannical govern characteristics which distinguish them from the British Universities. These latter have, from their earliest time, retained a system of their own, which we may shortly call the Tutorial system. With this the German University system, the professorial or lecture system, as we may denominate it, forms the widest contrast possible. In Germany, an University affords the student no occasion for tuition. It is but a place for public lectures, which those who choose may attend. As there is no tuition, there are no classes, no tutors or fellows; in short there are only professors who deliver the lectures, and students who attend them as their audience. Thus, instead of a variety of colleges, we find in a German University town only one large building, with a great number of halls (Hörsäle), where, at an hour previously announced by each professor, he meets those students who have declared, or mean to declare, their intention to attend his lecture. The reader must discard from his imagination all compulsion to learn, and all direct intercourse between the student and his teacher, who in most cases remain perfect strangers to each other, as they both live out somewhere in the town, and repair to the University but for the few daily hours that their lectures last. We will cast a closer glance at the mode of instruction. Travellers on the Continent, who have stopped but half a day or more at Bonn, Heidelberg, or Berlin, and have visited the Universities of these places, will, perhaps, remember the crowds of students walking up and down the passages, along the walks, bocages, or alleys in or near those buildings. When the clock has struck, they retire into the halls. Fifteen or twenty minutes are usually allowed for assembling. In the meantime every man takes his seat on one of the forms, puts his hat or bonnet by his side, unfolds his small portfolio, and produces an inkhorn, armed below with a sharp iron spike, by which he fixes it firmly in the wooden desk before him. At length the professor comes out of the professors' room, and walks up to the rostrum to take his chair. He addresses his audience with "Meine Herren," and delivers his lecture, either reading or speaking extempore. A few introductory remarks usually precede, in order to connect the lecture of the day with the last, whereupon the professor proceeds with his subject. This is the moment when the students take up their pens and begin to put down notes in their books. Some write down in short-hand every word and syllable that drops from the lips of their Mentor with a scrupulousness that amounts to superstition. Others select merely the more valuable crumbs that strike their ears. A few affect a sovereign contempt for learning by goose-quills and oak-applejuice, and appear only listening with profound attention. All seem scribbling, hearing, and learning for threequarters of an hour; when the University clock strikes again the magical three sounds, the professor shuts his book, the students wipe their pens, take hat, inkhorn and portfolio, and every one strives to gain the door, to return to his lodgings or to attend another lecture. This process, daily repeated, includes all the teaching of a German University. There are, it is true, attached to some lectures, a few meetings of a somewhat different nature, in which the students, under the presidency of a professor, explain or discuss chosen passages from sacred or classical authors, from medical writers, or ancient lawyers here essays are written and criticised by each member in turn; and government or the University have appointed prizes to those of particular merit. But these meetings (called Seminare) are attended only by few, and chiefly by poor students; whilst the great majority of academicians never think of visiting them, and derive all their college instruction from the lectures solely. With The lecture-system of the German Universities, as we have described it, has been imitated in a great many institutions out of Germany, with different success. In most instances it has been thought advisable to combine it with other methods which might better ensure or ascertain what progress the student has made, and whether he has really profited by the oral deliveries at which he has been present. such modifications it has been adopted at the Scotch Universities, at London University, in several Russian, Dutch, and some German high schools. However wise and well-calculated these alterations may have been in particular cases, and for the especial views of such establishments, they must be considered as deviations from the peculiar purpose and tendency with which the lecture system is practised and upheld by the principal German Universities, where it exists in its purest and unaltered nature. The principal aim and merit of this method is to offer the most independent and least authoritative mode of teaching, and to induce the student, by means of an animated and highly suggestive discourse, to exert his own individual judgment and industry, without the interference of his professor. It omits all direct tuition, in order to produce self-tuition; it avoids all compulsion to learn, all ushering, all superintendence, in order to leave an entirely voluntary application as the only spring of intellectual improvement; it refrains from examining the student, from testing his industry, from influencing or guiding more directly his studies, in order not to prepossess his mind with a dogmatical bias, or one particular school doctrine, but rather to leave his genius to its own unprejudiced bent, and to give his individuality a full and open field. It would be impossible that the loose and independent relation between the German student and his professor could prove salutary to the former, and satisfactory to the latter, if the student had not attained a high degree of mental maturity previously to his entering on his University course. This is a consideration of the highest importance, if we will appreciate correctly the German college system. Therefore we have to remind our readers that a German student has previously been educated at a German gymnasium, and has there been duly prepared for the University, during a space of nine years. For no student is admitted who has not delivered up at his matriculation an authentic testimonial from his gymnasium that he has passed the established final examination in presence of the examiners duly appointed, and before the Royal Commissioner sent for that purpose. All the elementary part of education, and a great part of what is taught at college in England, has been thoroughly acquired by the German student at one of the gymnasia, which are all equally well fitted for preparing for University life, and form, in fact, the natural basis of the Universities. They combine an extensive and methodical instruction with a strict discipline. From his tenth to his twentieth year, the student has there been well trained, and as it were drilled, by question and answer, by daily tasks and weekly lessons, by written exercises and memorial repetitions-in one word, by all the hacknied machinery of school tuition. In removing to college, he becomes emancipated from such intellectual guardianship; and, with the jacket, he has also left his years of mental minority behind him. Henceforth he is bidden to avail himself of the means of intellectual improvement, without any direct guidance or interference of a master. chooses his particular vocation out of the four learned professions-a most important step which precedes his matriculation. He chooses the lectures which he will attend, and the professors whom he will hear. He lives in complete independence outwardly and mentally, and is entirely master of his actions and of the use he will make of his time. He Thus, it appears that the professorial University system is based on the supposition that the student has attained already a high degree of moral and intellectual maturity; it can only sncceed under this condition. We must bear this in mind, whilst we reflect on its efficiency. Lectures cannot, by any means, be considered as the most efficient mode of teaching; we have not the slightest hesitation in admitting this. Indeed, how can a transaction, which assigns to the hearer a merely passive part, claim any high effect in imparting knowledge? But we must remember that the purpose of University lectures is rather to suggest thoughts, and to produce or direct selfexertion, than to inculcate certain principles. They afford to the professor an opportunity for laying down his views in an eloquent manner, and for expounding, in a connected delivery, and before an intelligent and unbiassed audience, the fruits of his life-long researches, which he could not do by instruction in the shape of lessons, or by doctrinal and practical tuition. At the same time he can give the student all the necessary hints that are needed to introduce him to his science; he will, of course, never forget to mention the sources and authorities whence further information may be drawn; he can advise the student what he must read, give him his criticism on publications or former doctrines on the subject, and thus a lecture cannot fail to become, in truth, a sign-post which shows him the way into the realms of knowledge. More than this is not intended by the lectures, for all the toil and responsibility of learning, which in the English colleges and in other schools is for a great part borne by the tutors, masters, or fellows, devolves in Germany on the student alone. The student is not submitted to any test of his improvements until he either desires to pass his examination for a degree, or for his capacity for holding office, which latter examination is not the business of a German University. It may be said, that institutions which thus decline to offer a guarantee for the success of education cannot be possessed of a praiseworthy method; for if nothing prevents the student from remaining in utter ignorance all the time of his University course, if he may miss the object of his staying, without being in time made aware of it, we cannot say that the Universities fulfil their task. To this we can only answer, that the German Universities are not, properly speaking, educating institutions in the same sense as the English colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. As they do not pledge themselves to educate young men, they cannot be justly reproached with missing that aim. Their design is but to afford young men the best possible opportunity for acquiring knowledge by their own efforts, and they should only be judged according to this their professed purpose. And let their history, let a glance at their actual state, show whether they have misunderstood their task, and whether they have overrated the self-educating abilities of the youth they have had to deal with. Some English writers, as Coleridge, have described the German lecture system, in a sarcastic way, as a great waste of ink and paper. They have been at a loss to conceive why a number of persons should meet to put down notes from the mouth of a professor, whilst they might ask him to send his lectures to the press, and might thus, for a couple of shillings, purchase all his wisdom in plain legible print, and peruse it at home at leisure, as if we lived yet in the middle ages, or as if Jansen's art had never been discovered? Even in Germany the mechanical use of the pen has often been censured, and we have often heard a few lines quoted, which are exquisitely illustrative of the difference between writing and knowing the summary of a lecture: "Der Studio muss in 's Collegium, Dass er die Wissenschaft allda erschnappe, "For lectures sound the student's bound, However, they who think thus are apt to overlook the great advantages which oral demonstrations offer over written or printed expositions. Our memory and our imagination receive infinitely deeper and more lasting impressions from a discourse which is held in our presence by a person in whom a science is, as it were, embodied, than from books on the same subject. We might quote an ancient authority for this truth, out of Plato's |