unwashed hands. If the good seed is to yield its hundredfold harvest,
it must not be scattered amidst the stones of ignorance, or the tares
of undisciplined indolence and wantonness. On the contrary, the soil
must have been carefully prepared, and the Professor should find that
the operations of clod-crushing, draining, and weeding, and even a good
deal of planting, have been done by the Schoolmaster.

That is exactly what the Professor does not find in any University in
the three Kingdoms that I can hear of--the reason of which state of
things lies in the extremely faulty organisation of the majority of
secondary schools. Students come to the Universities ill-prepared in
classics and mathematics, not at all prepared in anything else; and
half their time is spent in learning that which they ought to have
known when they came.

I sometimes hear it said that the Scottish Universities differ from the
English, in being to a much greater extent places of comparatively
elementary education for a younger class of students. But it would seem
doubtful if any great difference of this kind really exists; for a high
authority, himself Head of an English College, has solemnly affirmed
that: "Elementary teaching of youths under twenty is now the only
function performed by the University;" and that Colleges are "boarding
schools in which the elements of the learned languages are taught to
youths." [3]

This is not the first time that I have quoted those remarkable
assertions. I should like to engrave them in public view, for they have
not been refuted; and I am convinced that if their import is once
clearly apprehended, they will play no mean part when the question of
University reorganisation, with a view to practical measures, comes on