The large amount of attention that has, during the last few years, been attracted to all questions bearing upon the higher education of this country, and the increasing public interest in all that is connected with the two older English universities, might alone seem sufficiently to justify the appearance of the present volume. It may not however be undesirable to offer some explanation with regard to the method of treatment which, in researches extending over nearly seven years, the author has chiefly kept before him.

A very cursory inspection of the Table of Contents will suffice to shew that the subject of university history has here been approached from a somewhat different point of view to that of previous labourers in the same field. The volume is neither a collection of antiquities nor a collection of biographies; nor is it a series of detached essays on questions of special interest or episodes of exceptional importance. It is rather an endeavour to trace out the continuous history of a great national institution, as that history presents itself, not only in successive systems and various forms of mental culture, but also in relation to the experiences of the country at large; and at the same time to point out in how great a degree the universities have influenced the whole thought of the educated classes, and have in turn reflected the political and social changes in progress both at home and abroad.