en in notable perfection, to say nothing of
many others in which it is at least as binding as in the average English
home.
POSTSCRIPT.--The American university system is a very large subject, to
which none but a specialist could do justice, and that in a volume, not
a postscript. Nevertheless I should like slightly to supplement the
above allusion to it. In the first place, let me quote from the
_Spectator_ (February 12, 1898) the following passage:--
"Some of the American Universities, in our judgment, come nearer to
the ideal of a true University than any of the other types.
Beginning on the old English collegiate system, they have broadened
out into vast and splendidly endowed institutions of universal
learning, have assimilated some German features, and have combined
successfully college routine and discipline with mature and
advanced work. Harvard and Princeton were originally English
colleges; now, without entirely abandoning the college system,
they are great semi-German seats of learning. Johns Hopkins at
Baltimore is purely of the German type, with no residence and only
a few plain lecture rooms, library, and museums. Columbia,
originally an old English college (its name was King's, changed to
Columbia at the Revolution), is now perhaps the first University in
America, magnificently endowed, with stately buildings, and with a
school of political and legal science second only to that of Paris.
Cornell, intended by its generous founder to be a sort of cheap
glorified technical institute, has grown into a great seat of
culture. The quadrangles and lawns of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton
almost recall Oxford and Cambridge; their lecture-rooms,
laboratories, and post-graduate studies hint of Germany, where
nearly all American teachers of the present generation have been
educated."
Some authorities, however, deplore the Germanising of American
education. A Professor of Greek, himself trained in Germany, and
recognised as one of the foremost of American scholars, confessed to me
his deep dissatisfaction with the results achieved in his own teaching.
His students did good work on the scientific and philological side, but
their relation to Greek literature as literature was not at all what he
could desire. This bears out the remark which I heard another authority
make, to the effect that American scholarsh
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