I am very sorry that you cannot dine with the P.C.S. [President of the Chemical Society—Roscoe himself] on the 16th. I intended you to have been there as Longstaff medallist! I am asking the officers and some of the Council.
You must all reserve yourselves for July 14th or 15th. The opening of the V.U. [Victoria University] and a Banquet at the Town Hall!!
The following letter (January 16, 1881) shows how cordial the relations between the sister Colleges had now become, thanks to the frank and friendly discussion between their representatives, and how loyally those in authority at Owens were prepared to carry out the compact:
Accept my sincere though tardy thanks for your beautiful photograph, which is a marvellous study of volcanic action.
I have lately heard that P⸺ has been making a statement (on whose authority I cannot think) that the Yorkshire College would not be allowed to join the V.U. Though I know that you would take this for what it is worth, I think that others may misunderstand, and I think that you should inform any one who reports such a statement that it is wholly without foundation. In the first place, the V.U. cannot refuse even if they desired to do so. In the second, I for one, and many with me if not all, will cordially welcome any addition to ourselves, for those who have to work the new University desire to have other competent persons to help to share their great responsibility.
Roscoe, in fact, from the very beginning of its career had always shown a sympathetic interest in the fortunes of the Yorkshire College. Badly housed and poorly endowed at its start, its early struggles and difficulties were watched by him with a kindly regard, based, no doubt, to some extent on the memory of his own experiences. He was not unfrequently in Leeds in those days, and his breezy optimism and cheerful confidence that things would come right, in spite of checks and disappointments, were at once stimulating and encouraging to the small band of young professors who were striving to mould the institution according to the pattern of that which he had himself done so much to fashion. An indication of that interest was manifested by his presence, in December 1880, at the formal opening of the new buildings which the College owes to the wise liberality of the Clothworkers’ Company. At the banquet which followed he responded to the toast of “The Victoria University,” and expressed, on behalf of the authorities of Owens College, the hope that before long the Yorkshire College would become one of the incorporated Colleges, and would help the Owens College to uphold the dignity and usefulness of the new University.
Roscoe took a leading part in shaping the curriculum of the new University, and at the meeting of the Court which settled its general lines he might be said to have been the mouthpiece of the party which succeeded in impressing upon it its characteristic features. What had to be considered were the needs of great industrial communities. What sort of knowledge do they desire, and what should they be encouraged to pursue? The discussion mainly turned upon the place which the classical languages should hold in the university courses. “Compulsory” Greek was no longer regarded as a practical question. Should “compulsory” Latin also be eliminated? Are these ancient languages, or either of them, still to be regarded as an indispensable part of a liberal education and an indispensable requisite for a degree? The claims of the Classics were not without defenders, but as a local newspaper pointed out in a leading article, curiously enough it would seem that among the stoutest of these were to be found some of the very men who might have been supposed to be the natural champions of the newer learning, and if orthodox academic traditions received a rude blow, it was because they were deserted by the very men who had been nursed in them. With two exceptions, the professorial members of the Court were unanimous in recommending that Latin should not be made obligatory for a degree. The Chancellor and Lord Derby supported the contention that whatever may be the value as mental food and training of the Classics when thoroughly mastered, the wretched minimum of ill-learnt Latin and soon-forgotten Greek prescribed in university examinations as preliminary to more serious studies possesses no educational value whatever. Perhaps the argument most decisive with the Court was that given by Roscoe. He said they had to consider the large number of persons who came to the Owens College for special instruction, and more particularly for engineering and mathematics, but who had never been at any school where Latin was taught. Those were the men who carried off the best engineering prizes, and for them it was that this door had wisely been kept open. They must not be guided by what Oxford or Cambridge had done, but by what was good for their own district and what was advisable at the present moment. Let them remember what a number of men such as he had mentioned there were in their neighbourhood, and how flourishing were the mathematical schools, and then let them say whether they could cut off those schools and men from university education. The “innovators” won the day by a majority of 2 to 1, and thus effected “the dethronement, never to rise again, of this mischievous idol.”
It was amusing to notice the perturbation which this departure from a time-honoured tradition caused in certain scholastic circles and among the self-styled “friends of culture.” But on the whole the action was favourably commented upon by the more influential newspapers and leading educational journals. It was regarded as the inevitable consequence of modern necessity, and of the gradual recognition that the traditions of mediæval schoolmen were not sacrosanct or necessarily the best adapted to new requirements.
In drafting the Constitution of the new University power was of course taken in accordance with established procedure, and in deference to the democratic tendencies of British seats of learning, to form the body known as Convocation, and those of the former students of Owens College who came within certain definitions were made its first members.