When we bear in mind this devotion to Oxford, it is not surprising that he dealt very gently with the defects of English Universities.  In 1868 he laid it down that the University ought to provide facilities, after the general education is finished, for the cultivation of special aptitudes.  “Our great Universities,” he said, “Oxford and Cambridge, do next to nothing towards this end.  They are, as Signor Mateucci called them, hauts lycees; and, though invaluable in their way as places where the youth of the upper class prolong to a very great age, and under some very valuable influences, their school-education, yet, with their college and tutor system, nay, with their examination and degree system, they are still, in fact, schools, and do not carry education beyond the stage of general and school education.”  This is just in the spirit of his famous quotation about the Oxford which he loved so well—­

    There are our young barbarians, all at play!

In 1875 he wrote:  “I do not at all like the course for the History School (at Oxford).  Nothing but read, read, read, endless histories in English, many of them by quite second-rate men; nothing to form the mind as reading truly great authors forms it, or even to exercise it, as learning a new language, or mathematics, or one of the natural sciences exercises it....  The regulation of studies is all-important, and there is no one to regulate them, and people think that anyone can regulate them.  We shall never do any good till we get a man like Guizot, or W. von Humboldt to deal with the matter, men who have the highest mental training themselves, and this we shall probably in this country never get.”

In the wittiest of all his books, and one of the wisest, Friendship’s Garland,[10] he thus summarized the too-usual result of our “grand, old, fortifying, classical curriculum.”  To his Prussian friend enquiring what benefit Lord Lumpington and the Rev. Esau Hittall have derived from that curriculum, that “course of mental gymnastics,” the imaginary Arnold replied:  “Well, during their three years at Oxford, they were so much occupied with Bullingdon and hunting that there was no great opportunity to judge.  But for my own part, I have always thought that their both getting their degrees at last with flying colours, after three weeks of a famous coach for fast men, four nights without going to bed, and an incredible consumption of wet towels, strong cigars, and brandy-and-water, was one of the most astonishing feats of mental gymnastics I ever heard of!”

It must be admitted that his effect on the Universities was not very tangible, not very positive.  It was not the kind of effect which can be expressed in figures or reported in Blue Books.  One cannot stand in the High Street of Oxford, or on King’s Parade at Cambridge, and point to an Institute, or a college, or a school of learning, and say:  “Matthew Arnold made that what it is.”