tendants, he eluded Otho's attempts to prevent his crossing the Alps. In making his way towards Coire, the bishop of which was the first to acknowledge his authority, he crossed mountains of a prodigious height, almost uninhabited and covered with everlasting snow. The Abbot of Saint Gall met him with sixty lances; and with this pretence at an army -"with an empty purse, but a heart full of hope "-Frederic commenced his perilous enterprise. Driven away from a monastery in which he hoped for repose after his depressing fatigues, by the tidings that Otho was close at hand with two hundred kinghts, he turned his hastiest steps towards Constance, where he found the gates shut, and learnt that a few sergeants and menial servants of the emperor were already established in the palace. In vain his followers raised the once potent war-cry-Hohenstauffen! The citizens crowded the walls and saw and heard all with silent terror. The bishop himself, upon whose aid Frederic had confidently reckoned, remained silent. All seemed lost. The emperor might come up at any moment with such superior forces as would have for ever crushed the hopes of the Hohenstauffen family. But Frederic's good fortune prevailed. The Bishop of Constance, having recognized his friend the Abbot of Saint Gall whilst calling to him, his resolution was instantly taken -the gates were opened. Frederic entered, heard himself saluted the King of the Romans, and was conducted in triumph to the palace which had been prepared for his rival Otho. This was the fatal point on which hinged (apparently) success or total ruin. Otho missed the hour and it never came to him again.

We can allude only to the battle of Bouvines, fought between Philip Augustus of France (the ally of Frederic), and the Emperor Otho (which is very spiritedly told by M. de Cherrier), the loss of which so crippled Otho, that Frederic's complete success became henceforth comparatively easy and sure. Otho's death, in a short course of time, left Frederic in full possession of his ancestral throne.

Our limits warn us to pause here; and, more especially, as the third and fourth volumes of M. de Cherrier's very interesting and able work have not reached us. We can only say that the events of Frederic's stormy life are told so as to sustain the reader's interest throughout. By the death of Innocent, Frederic lost his best friend: other Popes arose who "knew not" Frederic, and whom they viewed, therefore, merely as the master of vast possessions, a portion of which menaced the territories of the Church. Hence, his life was

VOL. XXXIV.-E

spent in constant struggles with the Church, and with those of his Italian subjects whom the Popes Honorius III., Gregory IX., and Innocent IV., urged to rebellion against him-a contest so fruitless of decisive results that it ultimately exhausted the strength of the House of Suabia. The relentless hatred of Gregory and Innocent against Frederic was, in truth, against a detested family and his coveted inheritance; but upon no principles of Christianity can their proceedings be justified. It is a black page in the history of the Papacy, which its advocates have, therefore, sought to defend by the most unscrupulous attacks on Frederic. This part of M. de Cherrier's labours has, therefore, much historical interest and value and appears to be conducted with impartiality. Frederic's death remains to be told-the succession and early death of Conrad the Fourth-and the cruel death of Conradin by Charles of Anjou; and then the eventful history of the Hohenstauffen will have been concluded.

Upon the value of the events to which we have called the reader's attention, Mr. Hallam makes the following remarks:

"The death of Conrad brings to a termination that period in Italian history which we have described as nearly co-extensive with the greatness of the House of Suabia. It is, perhaps, upon the whole the most honourable to Italy-that in which she displayed the most of national energy and patriotism. A Florentine or Venetian may dwell with pleasure on later times; but a Lombard will cast his eye across the desert of centuries, till it reposes on the field of Legrano" (Middle Ages, vol. i., p. 379, sixth edition).

We must indulge ourselves with but a few laudatory sentences on a work which has given us much pleasure and instruction. M. de Cherrier's style is clear, rapid, picturesque, and effective. The impatient reader will not find his attention taxed and wearied by elaborate philosophical discussionsthat is to say, not in the first two volumes, which alone have been the subject of our remarks. Further: the historical student will find himself provided with ample materials for forming a confident judgment of important persons and events, which, with less and imperfect information, is always felt to be presumptuous by him whose conscience controls. him in forming his opinions alike of the living and of the dead.

51

ART. III-1. Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the State, Discipline, Studies, and Revenues of the University and Colleges of Oxford: together with the Evidence and an Appendix. London. 1852. 2. A Discourse on the Studies of the University. By ADAM SEDGWICK, A.M., Woodwardian Professor. Cambridge. 1834.

3. On the Principles of English University Education. By WILLIAM WHEWELL, A.M., Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge (now D.D., Master of Trinity, &c). London. 1837.

4. The Educational Institutions of the United States: their Character and Organisation. Translated from the Swedish of P. A. Siljestrom, M.A. By FREDERIKA ROWAN. London: John Chapman. 1853.

VISITORS to Walmer Castle were lately, and perhaps still are, shown in the great duke's "own room" a small mahogany table with a common green baize desk upon it, placed near a high-backed chair covered with yellow calico, in which they are informed the duke was wont to sit; and during the last autumn-the escorting housemaid was accustomed to add-"his grace was never pleased if a great, big, blue-book was not placed upon the desk, over which the dear old gentleman would sit poring for hours." The "great big bluebook" thus shudderingly alluded to by the Walmer Castle domestic was the " Report" which stands at the head of this paper, which the duke is known to have been carefully perusing within a few hours of his death. We are not surprised at the honest housemaid's evident horror of this unwieldly mass of paper; and can, perhaps, somewhat more correctly than her simple self, appreciate the steadiness of purpose, the devotedness to duty, which enabled the duke to grapple with its omnigenous contents. To a man advanced in years, and unfamiliar as the duke was with academical life, the perusal of buttery details, hall-dinners, gate-bills, and college-lectures, must have been extremely tiresome; though to a regular university man the "Report," with its gossipping appendices, filled with a very hodge-podge of curious information, is by no means, barring its bulk, a heavy book to read. Contrary to what might be expected, the communications addressed to the commissioners by the elder members of the university are brief, unaffected, and very much to the purpose; while those

of the younger ones are mostly wordy, pretentious, garrulous. "Talking age" forsooth!-To read the verbose epistles of some young Oxford reformers is a more wearying task than to listen to ten Nestors in their dotage. The simplest propositions which have been current for the last three hundred years are enunciated with an air of solemn importance befitting the announcement of some stupendous discovery! The homely adage, Ne sus Minervam, repeatedly rose to our lips as the obtrusive vanity of youngsters, evidently feeling themselves the " coming men of a more illuminated age, was thrust upon us in every other page of their letters; but the charitable reader, who is not easily provoked, may from the whole mass gather both profit and pleasure, instruction and entertainment. To give a synopsis of this multitudinous medley is not our present purpose; for we would then occupy not merely the space allotted to the longest of our articles, but exclude all other subjects from this number of our Review. We wish rather to offer some remarks-based upon long university experience-on university reform generally, and the existing state of public opinion thereon; and endeavour moreover to ascertain to what extent that university extension is practicable about which so much vague declamation has been poured forth and so many profitless pages written.

There is no phasis of the English social system respecting which such misapprehension, or rather such absolute ignorance, prevails, as upon the life academical of Oxford and Cambridge. Those who have not worn the trencher-cap themselves, however generally well-informed and accomplished they may be, know no more intrinsically of the English universities than Biblical antiquarians do of the real organisation of the schools of the prophets in Samaria and Judea, or a modern traveller does of the existing colleges of Ispahan or Pekin.

We can give from our own personal experience an example of the mode in which anecdotes of Oxford life increase in bulk by rolling. We were some years ago with a party of lionesses and country cousins at the Angel-inn, High-street, Oxford, which many of our readers may be aware is a few yards down the street eastward of University College. A smart summer shower poured a small torrent down the kennel, along which a cork went floating by. A merry Oxonian, observing one of the young ladies watching this cork, waggishly remarked, "Oh! you will presently see lots of corks: there's a college just above us, and the men are now at wine.” Some months subsequently, in a distant northern county, we

heard it gravely asserted, by way of illustrating the drunken habits of Oxford, that port wine was commonly to be seen in the gutters. Upon our stoutly contradicting such an absurd fiction, we were referred to a young female relative of our own, who had actually witnessed the disgusting fact with her own eyes! A short examination enabled us to ascertain that the single cork, with the young gownsman's sportive remark about the men at wine, had given birth to this monstrous exaggeration! Our simple story will, of course, remind many of Peter Pindar's "Three Black Crows," but it is nevertheless entirely true.

This misapprehension, however, should not be slighted or sneered at as a trifling or contemptible thing by university men, but as far as possible should be removed from the public mind: for it is not merely torpid negative ignorance which bestirs not itself for either good or harm, but has a disposition to ripen into mischievousness when operated upon by energetic and unscrupulous writers, who represent the universities as the depositories of enormous wealth, entrusted to them for national purposes and scandalously perverted to private gain and personal indulgence.

It would be very easy for the University of Oxford to enlighten the public mind as to its suspected possession of enormous wealth by opening its chest and showing how scanty are its stores and in what driblets they are collected. The fact is revealed, in all the distinctness of figures set forth in this "Report," that many colleges, which present a stately front and maintain a large establishment of fellows, scholars, and servants in apparent affluence and substantial comfort, have not the revenues of many a third-rate Yorkshire squire, whose rent-roll would be sneered at by a Liverpool merchant prince. We regret, therefore, that a freer financial exposition was not made to the commissioners, whatever their title to enquire might be; for sure we are that the most obstinate or eager enemies would, by such disclosure, have been convinced that the spoliation of the university would yield but poor plunder. The commission may have been unconstitutional and illegal, as her Majesty's Solicitor-General, confessedly one of the soundest lawyers of the day, has deliberately pronounced; or it may be valid and correct, as other distinguished lawyers, though of far inferior professional reputation to Mr. Bethell, have insisted. Nevertheless, we regret that the university and all its colleges and halls, after recording whatever protest they had pleased, had not unreservedly disclosed their revenues, and management, and dis