[Illustration: _READING THE NEWDIGATE. Drawn by T, H. Crawford._]
However small its beginnings it was inevitable that the recognition of intellect should exercise the greatest influence--though not immediately and obviously--on the future of the University. _La carrière_ once _ouverte aux talents_--the fact being established and recognised that one man was intellectually not only as good as another, but a deal better--colleges could not help following the example set them; the first stirrings of ’inter-collegiate competition’ began to be felt, and after forty years or so (for colleges generally proceed in these and similar matters with commendable caution, and it was only the earlier part of the nineteenth century after all) began the gradual abolition of ’close’ scholarships and fellowships--those admirable endowments whereby the native of some specified county or town was provided with a competence for life, solely in virtue of the happy accident of birth. To disregard talent openly placarded and certificated was no longer possible. The most steady-going and venerable institutions began to be reanimated by the infusion of new blood, and to be pervaded by the newest and most ’dangerous’ ideas.
Nor were the outside public slow to avail themselves after their manner of the changed state of things. The possessor of a University degree has at all times been regarded by less fortunate persons with a kind of superstitious awe, as one who has lived in mysterious precincts and practised curious (if not always useful) arts, and at first the title of ’Honourman,’ implying that the holder belonged to a privileged few--_élite_ of the _élites_--whom a University, itself learned, had delighted to honour for their learning, could inspire nothing less than reverence. Also the distinction was a very convenient one. The public is naturally only too glad to have any ready and satisfactory testimonial which may help as a method of selection among the host of applicants for its various employments; and here was a diploma signed by competent authorities and bearing no suspicion of fear or favour. Presently the public began to follow the lead of Oxford and Cambridge, and examine for itself, but that is another story: schoolmasters more especially have always kept a keen eye on the class list. So an intellectual distinction comes in time to have a commercial price, and this no doubt has had something (though, we will hope, not everything) to do with the increase in the number of ’Schools’ and the growing facilities for obtaining so-called honours. But it is needless to observe that the multiplication of the article tends to the depreciation of its value. The First-class man, who was a potential Cabinet Minister or an embryo Archbishop at the beginning of the century, is now capable of descending to all kinds of employments. He does not indeed--being perhaps conscious of incapacity--serve as a waiter in a hotel, after the fashion of American students in the vacation, but he has been known to accept gratefully a post in a private school where his tenure of office depends largely on the form he shows in bowling to the second eleven.