the mere presentation of their case would be sufficient, with the powerful support it had, to obtain forthwith what they wished; worse, however, was in store for them.

With the issue of the Royal Commission on 2nd May, 1888, the first stage of the long controversy and struggle for the reconstruction of the University of London may be said to have ended. For ten years since in May, 1878, Dr. Pye-Smith and Mr. Anstie moved their resolutions in Convocation, affirming the desirability of the University being more closely associated with teaching-the discontent, that had even long previously existed with the position of the University in respect to higher education, had been gradually taking shape in various directions. During this period, as has been shown, from different quarters proposals were made to remedy what was on almost all hands recognised as a serious evil. Those who were alone satisfied with things as they were, were to be found in the Senate of the University, and to this fact was due the long delay in obtaining a remedy. The Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, the Metropolitan Medical Schools, and the medical profession generally, were crying out for reform in one direction, and finally formulated their requirements in a draft charter. A large body of outside opinion concerned with higher education in all branches, and specially, but not entirely, connected with the two chartered Colleges, University and King's, were actively interested in providing a University for London more in accordance with the needs of the higher learning, and more in harmony with the spirit of the times. At first as the Association for Promoting a Teaching University for London, efforts were made to co-ordinate the various educational interests, and then, in default of inducing the existing University to adapt itself as required, to make proposals. for a second University in London, which took shape in the form of the Albert Charter. Meanwhile within the University, first of all by Convocation, and much later by the Senate, schemes of reconstruction were prepared, and these, though not formally forwarded to the Privy Council, were submitted to the Royal Commission in the course of their sittings. The numerous discussions and conferences that had taken place in

the course of these ten years had no doubt done much to educate men's minds, and to indicate not only what was desirable, but also what it was possible to accomplish. At the same time it must be recorded that outside the circle of those immediately interested, neither the public at large nor the press took much notice of a question that after all was fraught with such importance to the country at large; perhaps whilst so much difference of opinion existed among those concerned, this attitude was to be expected, even though it was not wholly reasonable. The appointment of the Royal Commission, however, was eagerly welcomed by all parties as being the most direct and authoritative means of settling questions that there seemed but slight likelihood of being otherwise determined; though little was it anticipated that another decade of controversy would elapse, and yet another Royal Commission investigate the matter before a conclusion would be arrived at. Yet so it was, and as furnishing a groundwork for the intelligent comprehension of what ultimately came to be established the previous pages have been written.

APPENDIX.

I.

NOTE ON SOME EARLIER SUGGESTIONS FOR A UNIVERSITY OF LONDON.

VARIOUS proposals had been made from the middle of the sixteenth century for the establishment of a University in London, but of these the only one that took actual shape was the "noble foundation of Sir Thomas Gresham, who in 1548 had bestowed his large mansion and gardens in Bishopsgate Street as the residence for seven professors, and endowed it with revenues arising from the rents and profits of the new Royal Exchange which he had founded for the use of the merchants of London. Although this design at first encountered strenuous opposition from the authorities of Oxford and Cambridge, on the ground that the establishment of a new University would injure those older foundations, Gresham was no innovator or educational reformer. He had been educated at Cambridge. The trivium and the quadrivium, and the traditional discipline of the ancient Universities, were in his judgment the true foundations for the education of a merchant, as well as for that of a clergyman or a lawyer. It was with a view to place at the disposal of the citizens of London means of academic instruction, cheaper and more accessible than those of Cambridge and of Oxford, that he established Gresham College. He required that seven professors-of Divinity, Music, Astronomy, Geometry, Law, Physic, and Rhetoric-should dwell together in one community, and should lecture daily to all comers.

For some unexplained reason, he confided

the choice of the first four of these professors to the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London, and the last three to the Company of Mercers, and gave to both bodies a share in the administration of the funds. For a short time all went well; the lectures of the early professors, among whom were Barrow, Dr. John Ball, Hooke, Petty, and Sir Christopher Wren, appear to have been well attended, and to have possessed the same disciplinal character as that of the professors' lectures in the older Universities. . . . But litigation, negligence, disputes between the professors and the governing body respecting money and the conditions of residence, combined to weaken the institution. The great Fire of London for a time interrupted the work of the College, and destroyed the principal source of its revenues. The lectures, even when resumed, became fewer and intermittent, and in 1768 the last pretence of maintaining a corporate life disappeared, and the professors were compensated for the surrender of their residences by an additional stipend of £50 a year. It is rather to the