universities that they forget the present. There is little or nothing
in England to compare with the magnificent generosity of individuals,
provinces and states, which is building up the colleges of the United
States and Canada. There used to be. But by some strange confusion of
thought the English people admire the noble gifts of Cardinal Wolsey
and Henry VIII and Queen Margaret, and do not realise that the
Carnegies and Rockefellers and the William Macdonalds are the
Cardinal Wolseys of to-day. The University of Chicago was founded
upon oil. McGill University rests largely on a basis of tobacco. In
America the world of commerce and business levies on itself a noble
tribute in favour of the higher learning. In England, with a few
conspicuous exceptions, such as that at Bristol, there is little of
the sort. The feudal families are content with what their remote
ancestors have done: they do not try to emulate it in any great
degree.

In the long run this must count. Of all the various reforms that
are talked of at Oxford, and of all the imitations of American
methods that are suggested, the only one worth while, to my thinking,
is to capture a few millionaires, give them honorary degrees at a
million pounds sterling apiece, and tell them to imagine that they
are Henry the Eighth. I give Oxford warning that if this is not
done the place will not last another two centuries.



VI.--The British and the American Press

THE only paper from which a man can really get the news of the
world in a shape that he can understand is the newspaper of his