Great religious excitement and religious discussion
being in abeyance, for once, the energy of the place goes out in
teaching. The last reforms have made Oxford a huge collection of
schools, in which physical science, history, philosophy, philology,
scholarship, theology, and almost everything in the world but
archaeology, are being taught and learned with very great vigour.
The hardest worked of men is a conscientious college tutor; and
almost all tutors are conscientious. The professors being an
ornamental, but (with few exceptions) MERELY ornamental, order of
beings, the tutors have to do the work of a University, which, for
the moment, is a teaching-machine. They deliver I know not how many
sets of lectures a year, and each lecture demands a fresh and full
acquaintance with the latest ideas of French, German, and Italian
scholars. No one can afford, or is willing, to lag behind; every one
is "gladly learning," like Chaucer's clerk, as well as earnestly
teaching. The knowledge and the industry of these gentlemen is a
perpetual marvel to the "bellelettristic trifler." New studies, like
that of Celtic, and of the obscurer Oriental tongues, have sprung up
during recent years, have grown into strength and completeness. It
is unnecessary to say, perhaps, that these facts dispose of the
popular idea about the luxury of the long vacation. During the more
part of the long vacation the conscientious teacher must be toiling
after the great mundane movement in learning.
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