Let us now only reflect how different altogether is the practice in France. A man is put in the list of competitors for a few weeks, amongst such young people as frequently have not written two lines; have taught scarcely a single year; and now, after giving in some stated proof, are often in their twenty-fifth year endowed with an irrevocable title, which may be held till their seventieth year without doing any thing; which, from the first day of their nomination to the end of their life, draws the same salary, whether they have many hearers or few; whether they distinguish themselves or not; whether they thenceforward live in ignorance, or become celebrated men!
Another great disadvantage in France is, that in this country the different faculties of which a German university is composed, are separated from each other, scattered about, and in this isolation are as it were, lost. Here are faculties of science, in which lectures upon chemistry, physics, and natural history, are held, without a medicinal faculty at their side, which might thence derive benefit; there--faculties of law, and of theology, without history, literature, and philosophy. So are there perhaps twenty miserable faculties scattered over the whole surface of France, and nowhere a genuine home for science. Thence comes it, that in France study is for the most part so unphilosophically pursued; although able professional men are accomplished in jurisprudence and medicine, the studies which are there the most in esteem.
We leave it to the English reader, who is better acquainted with the universities of his native land, than we are--to decide, how far the deficiencies here attributed to the French universities also affect those of Britain. Oxford and Cambridge, the two most ancient universities of England, have remained true to the old institutions, to the old mode of living altogether in colleges, which the German public has long abandoned as not answering the purpose. They have a greater self-dependence and independence than the German ones, which are submitted to the superintendence of the state. Yet the German institutions in this respect reap many advantages, so long as the government is no despotism. Through such high-standing Boards, boards which respect the interests and claims of all parties, and administer to them all justice with strict impartiality, the chairs of science are preserved from incapacity; the meritorious are made known and elevated; obstructions are removed; help is duly administered, morals are protected, defects are remedied, better and more effectually than can be done by a corporation alone, and without such a well-disposed and wise superintendence of their interests; and which places the university in a condition to exercise a fresher and more unimpaired strength in the great pursuit of science and of accomplishment, and with more decisive effect; and to remain mistress of the great movement of inquiry and of knowledge.
That the advantages of the German High-schools are, however, acknowledged in England, is proved by the foundation of the liberal University in London in the year 1825, wherein they have sought to combine many of the German plans, whose value was recognised, with the old English ones. But yet more than by this fact, is paid the tribute of recognition of the excellence of the German High-schools, by the great number of young men who, not alone from the European countries, but from distant regions of the earth, hasten to place themselves at the feet of their teachers.
No country has so many and such excellent universities as Germany,--and the proofs of their advantages exist in the great number of illustrious learned men and authors, which quench their thirst of knowledge at these immortal wells of science; men, whose creations daily more and more receive abroad their just recognition, and in no country more than in England.
THE
[GENERAL BEER-COMMENT OF HEIDELBERG.]
Many a one is a more true Diogenes, not when he is in
the tub, but when the tub is in him.