It requires, needless to say, the utmost wariness and care on the part of those who regulate, and on the part of those who are engaged in, education, to keep this inferior literature in its place. If it were allowed to make its way authoritatively into our schools and Universities, or indeed into any of our educational institutions, the consequences would be most disastrous. It is not so much that it would disseminate error as that it would become influential in more serious ways, æsthetically in its influence on taste, morally in its influence on tone and character, intellectually in lowering the whole standard of aim and attainment in studies.
That the evils which have been described admit of no remedy at present, or perhaps in the present generation, may be fully conceded. But they may be palliated if they cannot be cured, and they must be palliated by the agents to whom we may ultimately look for their cure, education and fearless criticism. As their origin may be mainly ascribed to the failure of the Universities to adapt themselves to new conditions, so on the willingness of the Universities to repair their error must depend all possibility of rectifying the results of it. From its organization at the Universities everything comprehended in the system of liberal study takes its ply; its standards are there determined, its methods formulated, its aims defined. As a subject of teaching, and as the result of teaching, in its relation to theory and in its relation to practice, it there receives an impression which is permanent. It has been so with classical scholarship, and with Philology; it has been so with Philosophy and Theology, with Jurisprudence and History. What has been imparted in the lecture-rooms of Oxford and Cambridge has orally, and by the pen, become influential wherever these subjects are represented. There is not an educational institute in Great Britain or in the colonies, there is not a serious magazine or review on which it has not set its seal. We have a striking illustration of this in the case of Modern History. Some thirty years ago it was practically unrepresented, either at Oxford or Cambridge. Since then its study has been organized. What has been the result? It has become one of the most flourishing branches of learning. It has reduced chaos to order; it has raised its teaching, and by implication its literature, to a very high standard; it has put the _canaille_ of sciolists and fribbles into their proper place; while disciplining energy it has directed it to fruitful objects; it has revolutionized the study of the whole subject.