Notes

Abstract

IT is too early to estimate fully the effect of the magnificent endowments provided for by the will of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, but we are all able to admire the noble conception which aims at promoting a good understanding between England, Germany and the United States. It would be difficult to suggest a better means of accomplishing this than that outlined by Mr. Rhodes. Students from our colonies, the United States and Germany are to be encouraged to spend three years in the University of Oxford, where they will become familiar with our national characteristics. Nothing but good can come from the friendships which will thus be founded; and there will be a strong influence tending to bring the three nations into close relationship with one another, which will enable political and commercial questions to be discussed without the distrust usually connected with them. Rarely have endowments been made with so lofty an object; and with such an example we look hopefully to the future for other ties to bind nations together. For the present, a brief statement of the provisions of the will as regards education will be sufficient to show the scheme by which this unity of race is to be furthered. Sixty scholarships of 300l. a year each are to be founded for colonial students. The scholarships will be tenable at any Oxford college for three consecutive years, and twenty are to be awarded every year, this number being distributed among the various portions of the British Empire. Two scholarships of the same value are allocated to each of the fifty States and Territories of the United States of America. Moreover, in recognition of the encouragement now given in German schools to the study of English, fifteen scholarships of the value of 250l. a year, tenable at Oxford by German students for three years, are to be established. The will thus provides for scholarships amounting to nearly 52,000l. per annum, which means acapitaV sum of from one and a half to two millions. Some of the scholarships would have been made tenable at Edinburgh if the University there had been on a residential system; for Mr. Rhodes mentioned in his will that fifty or more students from South Africa were studying there, many of them attracted by the excellent medical school, but the want of a residential system made him refrain from establishing any scholarships in. connection with the University. Oxford, like Cambridge, has such a system, and the will suggests that “it should try to extend its scope so as if possible to make its medical school at least as good as that at the University of Edinburgh.” The world will now look to Oxford to increase the value of its medical school, and we shall wait with interest to see what developments are made. Mr. Rhodes's old college at Oxford, Oriel College, receives 100,000l., of which 40,000l. is for the erection of new buildings, as a fund to cover the loss to College revenue involved in the removal of houses to make room for them; 40,000l. to endow an increase of income of resident fellows working “for the honour and dignity of the College”; 10,000l. to increase the comforts of the High Table, and the remaining 10,000l. is to be a fund for providing for the maintenance and repair of the College buildings. A sum yielding 2000l. a year is set apart for the cultivation of Mr. Rhodes's property at Inyanga, and he directs in particular that irrigation should be the first object kept in view. Other objects to be borne in mind are experimental farming, forestry, market and other gardening, fruit farming, and the teaching of any of those things, and the establishment and maintenance of an agricultural college. Mr. Rhodes's gifts are both bounteous in amount anxl grand in intention; and they reveal a greatness of character not often found.