[1] The Slade Professorship, recently instituted, is a step towards mending this matter, however.
It is somewhat curious after this to consider an attempt made by King Charles the First, in the eleventh year of his reign, to supply these admitted deficiencies of University instruction: to found an Academy in which general and fine-art education should be combined.
A committee, consisting of the Duke of Buckingham and others, had been appointed in the House of Lords for taking into consideration the state of the public schools, and their method of instruction. What progress was made by this committee is not known. One result of its labours, however, was probably the establishment of the _Musæum Minervæ_, under letters-patent from the king, at a house which Sir Francis Kynaston had purchased, in Covent Garden, and furnished as an Academy. This was appropriated for ever as a college for the education of nobles and gentlemen, to be governed by a regent and professors, chosen by 'balloting-box,' who were made a body corporate, permitted to use a common seal, and to possess goods and lands in mortmain. Kynaston, who styled himself _Corporis Armiger_, and who had printed in 1635 a translation into Latin verse of Chaucer's _Troilus and Cressida_, was nominated the first regent of the Academy, and published in 1636 its constitution and rules, addressed 'to the noble and generous well-wishers to vertuous actions and learning.' The Academy--'justified and approved by the wisdom of the King's most sacred Majesty and many of the lords of his Majesty's most honourable privy council,'--its constitution and discipline being ratified under the hands and seals of the Right Honourable the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England and the two Lord Chief Justices--professed to be founded 'according to the laudable customs of other nations,' and for 'the bringing of virtue into action and the theory of liberal arts into more frequent practice.' Its aims were directed to the end that England might be as well furnished for the virtuous education and discipline of her own natives as any other nation of Europe; it being 'sufficiently known that the subjects of his Majesty's dominions have naturally as noble minds and as able bodies as any nation of the earth, and therefore deserve all accommodation for the advancing of them, either in speculation or action.' It was considered that a peculiar institution was required for teaching those 'most useful accomplishments of a gentleman'--the sciences of navigation, riding, fortification, architecture, painting, etc., which, if taught, were yet not practised in the universities or courts of law. Many of these sciences, it was admitted, were taught in London, 'in dispersed places;' but it was convenient to reduce and unite them in one certain place, and not to teach them perfunctorily and rather for gain than for any other respect--desirable, too, that youth should have, in a virtuous society, generous and fitting recreations as might divert them from too much frequenting places of expense and of greater inconvenience. The intention of the Academy was also to benefit gentlemen going abroad, by giving them language and instruction, with other ornaments of travel. 'There is no understanding man,' says the prospectus or advertisement of the institution, 'but may resent how many of our noblemen and young gentlemen travel into foreign countries before they have any language or knowledge to make profit of their time abroad, they not being any way able to get knowledge for want of language, nor language for want of time; since going over so young, their years of license commonly expire before they can obtain to sufficient ripeness of understanding; which no nation is known to do but the English: for what children of other nations come over to us before they are of able age and ripeness?' Another inconvenience arising from the want of the _Musæum Minervæ_ was stated to be the necessity many gentlemen were under of sending their sons beyond seas for their education, 'where, through change of climate and dyat, and for want of years of discretion, they become more subject to sickness and immature death.'