What, then, is the economical aspect of knowledge when it has arrived at this third stage? Here it is not so much wealth in the sense of a permanent source of enjoyment, as wealth in the sense of being the fructifier, the fuel, of the great and necessary industry of public instruction. As coal is not produced by Nature for our convenience, but in the accomplishment, so to speak, of her own ends: so knowledge is created by the savant, not for the sake of its use in education, but for the sake of its truth. And both the one and the other are free to be taken by those industries which need them.

Now we have been much alarmed of late by the consideration that our supply of coal may eventually come to an end, bringing with it as its apparently inevitable consequence the decrepitude of industry. But what if the perennial supply of new knowledge were to be dried up? What would become of education? We know what would become of it, because, we have had experience of such a period, when the fountains of knowledge were closed, within historic times. In the Middle Ages, the larger part of the knowledge of the ancient world had been lost, and the fruitful methods for the increase of it, had perished. What was the character of medieval education? It was essentially an education in words, in logical distinctions; an indefinite morcellement of a restricted intellectual area, the means for extending which had perished; in a word, it was Rhetoric, die Phrase in der Wissenschaft,' which we

have before noted as tending to take the place of science, when science becomes stationary.

To sum up. It would appear that the conclusions to which the consideration of the whole subject have led us are these :-

1. That the various artificial means by which scientific research has been hitherto supported are attended with grave disadvantages to science itself.

2. That, therefore, the only means of maintaining knowledge which remains, is that of public endowment.

3. And that the application of endowments to the maintenance of scientific research is economically sound, because, although knowledge is a kind of wealth there are apparently insuperable difficulties in the way of making it an exchangeable commodity, out of the sale of which the scientific observer can make a living.

Did space permit, I might draw attention to some other very interesting considerations which arise out of the discussion of this question, as to the beneficial effect which purely abstract ideas-such as e.g. that of the universal brotherhood of mankind-have exercised indirectly on the production of wealth by bringing about changes in the relations of men and nations to one another. But I will content myself with recalling a single instance of the public endowment of research, which was made three hundred years ago, and which has lately been thus described:

:

'Of all the happily situated mental labourers who have worked since the days of Horace, surely Tycho Brahe was the

happiest, and most to be enyied. King Frederick of Denmark gave him a delightful island for his habitation, large enough for him not to feel imprisoned (the circumference being about five miles), yet little enough for him to feel as snugly at home there, as Mr. Waterton in his high-walled park. The land was fertile and rich in game, so that the scientific Robinson Crusoe lived in material abundance; and as he was only about seven miles from Copenhagen, he could procure everything necessary to his convenience. He built a great house on the elevated land in the midst of the isle, about three quarters of a mile from the sea, a palace of art and science, with statues and paintings and all the apparatus which the ingenuity of that age could contrive for the advancement of astronomical pursuits.

'Uniting the case of a rich nobleman's existence with every aid to science, including special erections for his instruments, and a printing establishment that worked under his own immediate direction, he lived far enough from the capital to enjoy the most perfect tranquillity, yet near enough to escape the consequences of too absolute isolation. Aided in all he undertook by a staff of assistants that he himself had trained, supported in his labour by the encouragement of his sovereign, and especially by his own unflagging interest in scientific investigation, he led in that peaceful island the ideal intellectual life. Of that mansion where he laboured, of the observatory where he watched the celestial phenomena, surrounded but not disturbed by the waves of a shallow sea, there remains at this day literally not one stone upon another; but many a less fortunate labourer in the same field, harassed by poverty, distracted by noise and interruption, has remembered with pardonable envy the splendid peace of Uranienborg.'1

The Intellectual Life, by P. G. Hamerton. Macmillan, 1873. Pp. 435-7.

This was the princely fashion in which the sixteenth century thought fit to endow research; is it too much to hope that this should be the scale on which this or some future generation shall again think fit to maintain and cherish it?

V.

RESULTS OF THE EXAMINATION-SYSTEM
AT OXFORD.1

By ARCHIBALD HENRY SAYCE, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of
Queen's College, Oxford.

IN the Edinburgh Review for April, 1874, there appeared an article in which the results of applying the system of competitive examination to admission into the Indian Civil Service were subjected to a rigorous examination. The writer came to the conclusion that while the objections urged against the system at its first starting have not been justified, the actual working of it has disclosed other objections of so serious a nature as to involve its entire condemnation. The ostensible reason for abolishing the old system of patronage was, that it failed to secure the right men; the same objection holds with equal force against the present system of examination. If patronage afforded no guarantee of mental power, examination affords no guarantee of what is even more important, character and ability to manage the affairs of a great empire. Indeed the mere cleverness that comes to the top in a competitive exa

This essay was contributed to the Fortnightly Review of June 1875.