professors: the students, according to their taste, their calling,
and their diligence, apply themselves to the proper masters; and in
the annual repetition of public and private lectures, these masters
are assiduously employed. Our curiosity may inquire what number of
professors has been instituted at Oxford? (for I shall now confine
myself to my own university;) by whom are they appointed, and what
may be the probable chances of merit or incapacity; how many are
stationed to the three faculties, and how many are left for the
liberal arts? what is the form, and what the substance, of their
lessons? But all these questions are silenced by one short and
singular answer, "That in the University of Oxford, the greater part
of the public professors have for these many years given up
altogether even the pretence of teaching." Incredible as the fact
may appear, I must rest my belief on the positive and impartial
evidence of a master of moral and political wisdom, who had himself
resided at Oxford. Dr. Adam Smith assigns as the cause of their
indolence, that, instead of being paid by voluntary contributions,
which would urge them to increase the number, and to deserve the
gratitude of their pupils, the Oxford professors are secure in the
enjoyment of a fixed stipend, without the necessity of labour, or
the apprehension of controul. It has indeed been observed, nor is
the observation absurd, that excepting in experimental sciences,
which demand a costly apparatus and a dexterous hand, the many
valuable treatises, that have been published on every subject of
learning, may now supersede the ancient mode of oral instruction.
Were this principle true in its utmost latitude, I should only infer
that the offices and salaries, which are become useless, ought
without delay to be abolished. But there still remains a material
difference between a book and a professor; the hour of the lecture
enforces attendance; attention is fixed by the presence, the voice,