CHAPTER IV

THE YORKSHIRE COLLEGE

The Yorkshire College of Science, as it was first styled, had its origin in the general movement towards a fuller recognition of the duty of the community in regard to national education, of which the Education Act of 1870, the Technical Instruction Act of 1889, and the more comprehensive Education Act of 1902 were at once the signs and the practical outcome. The immediate cause of the creation of the College may, however, be said to have been found in the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1867. One of the reporters of that exhibition was a well-known Leeds merchant, the late Mr. Thomas Nussey. In a report in vol. iii of the General Reports, Mr. Nussey drew attention to the great advance that had been made since the London Exhibition of 1862 in the quality, style, and cheapness of production of the foreign exhibits. Whilst he was of opinion that Great Britain might still be said to maintain its pre-eminent position in the woollen industry, Leeds and the West Riding generally had failed in many classes to make the best use of their opportunities. He proceeded to point out to what in his judgment the great advance in the character of the continental production was due. He says:

There can be no doubt that the French, Belgian, and Prussian manufacturers are greatly indebted for their progress in this and many other industries to the very superior technical education which their manufacturers and workmen obtain by means of the schools instituted for special instruction, not only in design, but in everything which has any relation to each particular manufacture. Without education we cannot expect to have skilled workmen of the highest class, and to a fair general education must be added a special training under good masters in every branch of trade. The adoption of similar schools in Britain will before long become a necessity, and the sooner they are established the better.

Prompt effect to these opinions was given by two other members of the same family in a pamphlet, published in Leeds, entitled: “A Technical Institution for Leeds and District, proposed by George Henry Nussey and Arthur Nussey. Leeds: Edward Baines and Sons, 1867.” This institution was avowedly designed to serve the interests of the staple industries of the West Riding. Its projectors formulated a scheme of technical education which should in the first place combine the existing School of Art with a School of Weaving and Design, and should afford instruction in mechanical engineering; in the manufacture and dyeing of woollen and worsted goods; in weaving and designing; in the manufacture of linens, and of leather; in mining, metallurgy, and building construction. Two years later they sought to give a practical development of their ideas by establishing “The Leeds Art and Science Institute” in connection with the Science and Art Department, South Kensington. Six teachers and assistants were engaged and the classes were held in the evenings.

Other agencies, however, were at work tending to the same end. There is a small social organization in Leeds which has existed since 1849, known as the Conversation Club, and which, with less ambitious aims, has played much the same part in the intellectual life of the town that the famous Lunar Society did in that of Birmingham. In this club the idea of an Educational Council for Leeds took its rise, and out of this grew the Yorkshire Board of Education, of which Lord Frederick Cavendish, M.P., was President, and Sir Andrew Fairbairn, and Dr. J. D. Heaton, an active member of the Conversation Club and of the Educational Council, were Vice-Presidents.

The work of the Board up to the period of which we write had been mainly concerned with the provision of science classes and science teachers, in connection with mechanics’ institutions working in conjunction with the Science and Art Department.

In 1869 a meeting of the General Council of the Yorkshire Board of Education was held at the Town Hall, Leeds, with Lord Frederick Cavendish in the chair. It was attended by representatives of the more important industries in Yorkshire, as well as by persons interested in higher education. A resolution was carried “That in the opinion of this Council it is desirable that a College of Science should be established in Yorkshire”; and a committee was appointed “to investigate, consider, and propose the best means of carrying out the proposal.” Members of this committee naturally visited, in the first place, the neighbouring Owens College, and gained valuable information concerning its rise and progress and the nature of its operations, much of which was embodied in their report; others visited King’s College, London, in order to inspect its Department of Applied Science and Engineering Workshops. Correspondence was also entered into with the Endowed Schools Commissioners, who held out prospects of assistance for Exhibitions in Physical Science and in the Secondary Education of Girls.

The Committee presented their report in 1872. Their suggestions were limited by the probabilities of realizing them. Too ambitious a scheme would overreach itself: public support would probably be deterred by the very magnitude of the effort needed to give effect to it. On the other hand, no attempt would be worth making unless it afforded reasonable assurance of practical benefit. After full consideration the Committee recommended the establishment of the following professorships: (1) Mathematics and Engineering; (2) Chemistry; (3) Mining, Metallurgy, and Geology; (4) Experimental Philosophy; and they came to the conclusion that the minimum sum required for a beginning was £60,000, which they apportioned as follows: site and buildings, £25,000; endowment, in addition to students’ fees, £25,000; establishment expenses, £10,000.

The Council accepted the report, and at once appealed for subscriptions. Sir Andrew Fairbairn headed the list with £1,000, followed by like amounts from the Duke of Devonshire, Sir Titus Salt, Bart., Messrs. Beckett & Co., the Lowmoor Iron Company, and Messrs. Hargreave and Nusseys, members of which firm had started “The Leeds Art and Science Institute.” The project, however, made but slow progress: pecuniary support was difficult to secure, and the Committee were forced to realize that if a start was to be made something less than the £60,000 would have to suffice. It was therefore resolved to postpone all building operations and, when a sum of £20,000 had been raised, to make a beginning in temporary premises.

In April 1874 it was reported that the subscription list amounted to £25,000, and on the 30th of that month a meeting of the subscribers and donors was held in Leeds for the purpose of defining the Constitution of the proposed College and electing a Board of Governors. Lord Frederick Cavendish presided, and Dr. Heaton made a statement explaining the progress of the movement, and the steps it was proposed to take in order formally to constitute the College. In addition to the amount subscribed, the promoters were able to announce offers of help in money, as well as in science exhibitions, from the Endowed Schools Commissioners. The Clothworkers’ Company of London promised £500 a year to found a Chair of Textile Fabrics. But Dr. Heaton went on to remark:

The work is far from being completed; it may be said to be only commencing. The governing body have an arduous task before them, both in organizing the College and in still prosecuting the canvass for subscriptions. £20,000 neither represents the amount to be expected from the large and wealthy West Riding of Yorkshire, nor does it approach to the amount necessary to give permanency and full efficiency to the institution which we desire to establish. Although it is proposed to commence operations in a rented building, both because our present means would not permit of the purchase of a site and erection of buildings thereon, and because of the long delay which would be occasioned by waiting for the completion of a building yet to be erected, it is most desirable, indeed essential, that the College should ultimately possess its own buildings, appropriately constructed and arranged for carrying on its work with the greatest efficiency and convenience. We have often been asked if Government should not assist the work we have in hand. Continental Governments do provide for scientific teaching as applied to industry, and it might be well if our own Government did more to promote this great national work. In this country we have always been left to do more for ourselves by individual action and by voluntary benevolence; and our national self-reliance and powers of organization and practical benevolence are no doubt strengthened and developed by our people being left to their own resources. But inasmuch as all are interested directly or indirectly in the commercial prosperity of the nation, this does seem to be an object towards which (when it is once commenced by private exertions) some assistance and encouragement by the Government would be peculiarly appropriate.

In the early autumn of 1874 the Council proceeded to appoint the first professors of the College. The committee which drew up the scheme of instruction had recommended the inclusion of the subject of Engineering, with which should be associated the teaching of Mathematics by the same professor. However desirable it might be to make provision for instruction in the principles of Engineering—especially in Mechanical Engineering, in view of its bearing upon one of the most important industries of the town and district—the Council, for various reasons, were unable to give immediate effect to this particular recommendation. The subject of Mechanical Engineering, to be properly taught, requires the provision of workshops, laboratories, and an installation of costly plant. Even if the limited resources of the College had been sufficient at the time to make the most modest of beginnings, the temporary premises which had been leased would have been unsuitable for the purpose. Accordingly the authorities, with that characteristic Yorkshire caution which takes nothing on trust, goes no further than it can plainly see—nor, in the common phrase, puts out its hand further than it can draw it back again—decided to limit their appointments, to begin with, to Professorships of (1) Experimental Physics (with which they associated Mathematics); (2) Geology and Mining; (3) Chemistry. To the first Chair they elected the late Mr. A. W. Rücker, Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, and a Demonstrator in the Clarendon Laboratory—afterwards Sir Arthur Rücker, Sec. R.S., Professor of Physics in the Royal College of Science, London, and subsequently Principal of the reorganized University of London. To the second they appointed the late Mr. A. H. Green, formerly Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and a distinguished member of the Geological Survey, who subsequently became Professor of Geology in the University of Oxford. For the third appointment the Council selected the present writer, who had been a pupil, assistant, and demonstrator under the subject of this memoir at Owens College, and who, prior to his selection, had held the Chair of Chemistry in Anderson’s College, Glasgow, now merged into the splendidly endowed and equipped Royal Technical College.

The premises in which the College was first housed consisted of a disused Bankruptcy Court situated in Cookridge Street, one of the main thoroughfares leading out of the town. After a somewhat chequered career the building had been partially used as a school of cookery, with the unfortunate result that it had been largely consumed by a fire just prior to being taken over by the College authorities. Although not so spacious as Richard Cobden’s old house in Quay Street, Manchester, in which Owens College first started, the Leeds building, in some respects, was not ill-adapted to the purposes of the limited professoriate with which the Yorkshire College of Science began its operations. At all events, it accommodated without the slightest difficulty all the students who sought admission to its classes on its opening day.

The College began its work of teaching on October 26, 1874—somewhat later than the normal time of opening a session—owing to delays in completing the necessary structural rearrangements. But as there was no yearning anxiety on the part of anybody to learn, no special inconvenience or disappointment resulted. There was no preliminary flourish of trumpets; hardly so much as an opening speech. The initial ceremony was as simple as the appointments of the College were modest. Each of the three professors in turn gave an introductory lecture to an audience consisting of the members of the Council and such of the friends of the embryo institution as cared to attend. Some encouraging remarks were made by the Chairman, and so the College was launched. But for a time the students were few and their advent as far between as the visits of angels.

Still, as the session progressed and the existence of the place became gradually known the numbers slowly crept up, and by the end of the summer term they had reached twenty-four and the students’ fees had amounted to about £150. The authorities now determined to open the next session with an Inauguration Ceremony. October 6, 1875, is a red-letter day in the history of the College, for on that date one of the most notable and helpful gatherings ever held in honour of the College took place. The proceedings began at noon, when the College buildings were inspected by a specially invited company; thereafter there was the inevitable public luncheon and in the evening a general meeting in the Town Hall. On each occasion the Duke of Devonshire was in the chair. At the College meeting Lord Frederick Cavendish, its President, gave a short account of its origin and aims. They were there, he said, to take care that they did not through ignorance waste the natural wealth of the county, or stay the further development of the natural qualities of its people. Wealth, however, was not much in itself but only as a means. Were they quite certain that in the great wealthy industrial North they had made the same progress in intellectual culture and refinement as they had in wealth? He pointed to the example of Owens College: inspired by that College, they would try in Yorkshire if they could not do something of the same sort.

At the luncheon similar sentiments were uttered by the Dean of Durham, the Marquess of Ripon, Canon Robinson, Sir Edward Baines, and Mr. W. E. Forster. It was, however, at the evening meeting that the real success of the day was achieved. The Victoria Hall was filled with a typical Yorkshire crowd—alert, receptive, keenly interested, alternately critical and tolerant, yet ready to be swayed by those who knew how to reach their intelligence and rouse their enthusiasm. The Duke of Devonshire opened the proceedings with a dignified and impressive address, worthy of his high position as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and as President of the College in the neighbouring city of Manchester. He gave a broad and comprehensive account of the general state of educational activity in the country and indicated the directions in which it was tending. He pointed to the creation of institutions for secondary and higher education in our large centres of industry as a sign that the country was awakening to the fact that all our great branches of industry were founded on a scientific basis. Although the education—however indispensable it might be—of the eye and the hand could only be acquired by actual practice, it could be nothing short of prejudice to deny that the education of the intellect was also a matter of primary importance. The Duke affected no flights of eloquence. His diction was simple and unaffected, and a vein of strong, practical common sense ran through the whole of his remarks. His presence was not unfamiliar to a Leeds audience, but they never heard him to greater effect, or, it may be added, at greater length. His speech was said to be the longest he had ever made.

The late Lord Playfair, who as Dr. Lyon Playfair then represented a Leeds constituency, followed on the same theme. He recalled the fact that more than a generation had passed since standing on a Leeds platform he had acted as interpreter to his friend Liebig in warning his audience not to pride itself too much upon its industrial achievements, explaining how impossible it was for England permanently to preserve her manufacturing supremacy among nations, unless she bestowed more attention upon the sciences which formed the groundwork of her industries. Then, in one of those hortatory discourses with which he occasionally astonished and delighted an ill-informed House of Commons, he poured forth a wealth of facts in illustration of the movement in the industrial world which had rendered these modern colleges an imperative necessity.

Foreign nations had seen that their only chance of compensating themselves for our advantages in the materials of power and strength was to excel us in the intelligence and intellect applied to their use in production. They saw clearly that as new forces and their application were brought to aid industrial production, human labour was relieved from much of its drudgery, and that the conceptions of the brain became more important than the sweat of the brow. Look to Switzerland, as an example in point. She has no coal, and no seaboard by which she can introduce it. Separated from other countries by ice-clad mountains, and hemmed in by hostile tariffs, she still becomes an industrial nation. What has led to her great industrial industry? Not her water-power, for that she is only beginning to use effectively, but simply the educated intelligence of her whole population. Valleys in which a few years ago you only heard the tinkling of the bells of cattle as they strayed through the pastures are now busy with turkey-red works and calico print works. Our manufacturers shake their heads sagaciously, and say, “This is because the air and water of Switzerland are so well adapted for colours.” But the true explanation is contained in the answer of Opie, the celebrated painter, who being asked by an ambitious youth how he mixed his colours, replied “I mix them with my brains, sir.”

Every part of public education in Switzerland is well co-ordinated and organized. At Zurich, in addition to a university for general culture, there is a technical college larger than Buckingham Palace. And so Switzerland laughs at countries which look to raw materials as the source of their wealth, and imports cotton from the United States, tobacco from Havana, silk from Italy, and sends back to these very markets her finished products. Again, look at Holland, which is a reclaimed swamp, containing no mineral materials for industry, except in a small patch at Limburg. She also compensates for their absence by increasing the intellectual factor in labour. Every town of 10,000 inhabitants has its technical school, supported by the municipalities. Look at Germany, which, though it does possess valuable raw materials, cultivates with assiduity the intellectual factor of production. In war and in peace her population is able to be used to the greatest advantage. Europe has scarcely yet recovered from its amazement at the sudden development of that empire, though it had been laying the foundation for its prosperity in the educational organization which she gave herself when the wars of Napoleon taught her the sources of her weakness. Now, surely we should not close our eyes, in insular pride, to the means taken by other countries to increase their productive resources. France fully admits that her recent calamities were largely due to a want of enlightenment of her people. She is still far ahead of us in technical institutions, but her general and university education are very deficient. If you desire an example of a country which cannot progress because of the ignorance of her people, look at Spain. When the Duke St. Simon, once French Minister there, said, “Science in Spain is a crime and ignorance a virtue,” he explained in one sentence the cause of her misfortunes. A fertile country, washed by two great oceans, abounding in coal, iron, copper, and quicksilver, is unable to thrive because her people are ignorant.

The speaker then turned to the case of the institution whose formal inauguration had been the occasion of his address, and he proceeded, as a practical educationist, to give it and its projectors some advice.

Such colleges are likely to receive little support until the middle-class schools understand their duty to Society by making Science part of the effective instruction of youth. A port constructed for the reception of ships, before the ships themselves are built, has a dreary time to wait for their arrival, and so the managers of the new College must not be discouraged because it does not grow quickly.

Nor did he think it would be wise, at least in its infancy, to give to the College too much of a technical character.

Teach science well to the scholars, and they will make the applications for themselves. Good food becomes assimilated to its several purposes by digestion. Epictetus used to say that though you feed sheep on grass, it is not grass, but wool which grows upon their backs. What the College should aim at is to increase the science and intelligence of the community, and not to teach industries which they know a great deal better than the professors. The new College is only the local expression of a general movement for higher education. That movement has no doubt received its primary impulse from the conviction that our industrial population ought to be educated in the principles which underlie their occupations. But the object is higher than this. There is a desire to spread culture throughout the country, and not to concentrate it in one or two favoured localities. The older Universities are beginning to recognize this fact. Cambridge had made the bold experiment of trying whether, if the youth of the provinces would not go to her, they would receive educational missionaries sent to them. The older Universities could do much from their wealth and educational resources. They could easily spread enlightenment over England if they were earnest in the work.

No doubt our manufacturing and commercial classes require to be mellowed by culture, but our Universities must adapt that culture to the wants and spare time of busy communities. They cannot get hold of our great industrial centres in any permanent way unless they raise them in self-respect and dignity by giving them an intellectual understanding of their vocations, and upon that understanding they may engraft as much polite literature as they can. A college of science, such as we are inaugurating to-day, is admirable in itself, but it is not complete. Perhaps it even focuses the light too strongly on a particular spot, and for this reason it intensifies the darkness around. Its directors are too enlightened men not to see this, and I am sure they will aid in the co-ordination of your other educational resources. The ultimate effect of this may be that you may evolve a wider and more comprehensive college for higher education. I look to that time with hope, for differentiation of our colleges will be the best thing for learning and for vigour of intellect. Each great provincial town should have a college as a centre of intelligence, each a sun capable of warming and illuminating a region around it, not merely a moon to cast pale and cold beams as a reflection from a distant luminary.

Subsequent speakers, in so far as they went over the same ground, merely ploughed with Dr. Playfair’s heifer. The Marquess of Ripon was not discouraged by the small beginnings of the undertaking. All the experiences of the past showed that those institutions which had taken the deepest root, and which had flourished the longest and wielded ultimately the most extensive influence, had sprung from small beginnings. Our ancient universities had mainly sprung from individual effort, and from private endowment. We were not less wealthy than our ancestors who founded them. Surely we could do now what they did before us. He trusted that there was not to be any doubt as to the future of this institution. We were told that its managers had acted to a great extent upon faith; that they had been doing their work partly out of capital in the confidence that that capital would be repaid them by the good sense and generosity of their countrymen.

Of all those who followed, and who pleaded the cause of the College, none was received with greater heartiness and enthusiasm than Mr. W. E. Forster, and there was none whose speech had a deeper or more genuine note of sympathy and encouragement. There were perhaps special reasons for the warmth of the welcome with which he was greeted. The political circumstances of the time were peculiar, and Mr. Forster was known to be the undeserved victim of them. The Liberal party was then in opposition, and Mr. Gladstone earlier in the year had suddenly thrown up his position as its leader. Public opinion had designated Mr. Forster as one of the two or three politicians of eminence who might fitly be regarded as his successor. But a considerable section of the Nonconformist Radicals never forgave Mr. Forster for his action—or what they supposed to be his sole action—respecting the religious question in the Education Act of 1870. Led by the Birmingham League, they were determined to make his selection as the party leader impossible. The League party in his own constituency of Bradford passed a resolution hostile to his claims. Eventually, rather than divide the Liberal party, Mr. Forster withdrew from the contest, and Lord Hartington, whom all sections were willing to follow, was chosen. These circumstances were well known to everybody in that large audience, and most moderate-minded men in it had the fullest sympathy with what Mr. Gladstone called “the thoroughly genuine and independent character” whose natural ambition as a statesman had been so rudely checked by the sectarian rancour of political allies. This was his reward for the wise and statesmanlike measure of 1870—one of the finest achievements to the credit of the Liberal party.

As he stepped to the front of the platform to make his contribution to the cause of the College he was received with round after round of applause, and for some minutes he was unable to proceed. Men instinctively recognized that the effort for which he pleaded was but another link in the educational chain which he had done so much to forge—the Endowed Schools Act of 1869 and the great Education Act of 1870. His was but a short speech, but each strong, vigorous utterance went home. The College was to be as its name implied—a county institution—not merely of the town in which it happened to be situated. They might as well at once acknowledge that the call which had been made by civilization upon civilized people had not been so much responded to by England as it had been in some other countries. But they had awoke to the fact that a call was made upon them. They had a habit of being late, but not too late.

This demonstration had an immediate effect upon the fortunes of the College. One practical result was a considerable increase in financial support. Some of those who had already given, gave largely again; and many additional subscribers came forward. The existence of the College was made known throughout the length and breadth of the county. The Inaugural Ceremony met with a splendid “press.” One of the most gratifying features was the “uplifting” tone of the speeches: speaker after speaker pointed out what should be the true character of the institution: it was not to be a mere Trade School—not simply a Technical College but a centre of liberal culture and of higher education, containing within it the potentiality of a University discipline.

To those who had ears to hear, and an imagination to conceive, the future of the College was plainly indicated within the first twelve months of its existence. It was this aspect of its destiny that appealed so strongly to that eminent journalist and man of letters, the late Sir Wemyss Reid, at that time editing the _Leeds Mercury_, and to which he gave emphatic expression in those forcible leaders so characteristic of his pen. So long as he remained in Leeds, Reid proved a staunch friend of the College and was ever ready to do what he could for its welfare. Nor was the educational press in general at all backward in extending a welcome to the infant institution: certain members of the teaching staff did yeoman service in enlisting its interest and sympathy.

The result of this organized effort, in which all concerned—members of the Council, officers, teachers—worked with enthusiasm and unanimity, was seen in the record of the subsequent session’s work.

From this time onward the successive Annual Reports of the College constitute an unbroken story of continued development. It was not, of course, surprisingly rapid, but it was steady and continuous. The progress of the institution was general; it was to be measured by the gradual increase in the number of its teachers, in the character and range of their subjects, and in the sessional entry of the students. It is, perhaps, significant of the change that a quarter of a century had made in the attitude of the middle class towards educational matters that the growth of the Yorkshire College, during its early years, should have been relatively far greater than that of Owens College at the corresponding period of its existence. But there may have been other factors to account for, or at least to increase, the difference. The generally acknowledged success to which the Manchester foundation had attained at the time of the establishment of the Leeds College may have been, and probably was, by the force of example and desire of emulation, a potent contributory cause.

The courses of study at Owens College, so far as circumstances and its means would permit, were avowedly based, at the outset, on the examples of the older Universities. The little regard that was then paid to Science by the Trustees was indicated by the small stipend that was attached to the science chairs as compared with those on humanity subjects. There was no general recognition, even in the home of Dalton, of the beneficent part that science was able to play in the industrial life of the district. On the other hand, the Yorkshire College started wholly untrammelled by the traditions of ancient seats of learning, and its counsels were only remotely influenced by those who had been nursed in them. As its original designation implied, its projectors clearly recognized the value of science in relation to industry. They founded the College, indeed, in the strength of their conviction. They began, in fact, at a point to which Owens College had arrived when Roscoe made his influence felt upon its policy.

It cannot be said, however, that the educational aims of the governing body of the Leeds institution to begin with were very sharply defined; nor was the action of the Council always consistent. This was, perhaps, inevitable in a body which contained no professed educationists. Most of its members had everything to learn of the technique of education, and, as is not unknown in the history of similar institutions, it was some time before the Council could be induced to adopt formal means of availing themselves of the knowledge and experience of the academic element they sought to direct. At the outset there was no clear apprehension by them of the lines upon which the College should develop.

There were two distinct parties in the Council, and their views occasionally conflicted. The College had been ostensibly founded to serve the industrial interests of the district, and the support of many of its wealthy manufacturers had been enlisted solely on that ground. This fact led a certain section of the Council to attempt to impress upon the College the character of an institute of technology. Whilst they were willing enough to extend its science side so long as it bore directly upon industrial needs, they had but little sympathy with the _literæ humaniores_, and all attempts to include such subjects were viewed with disfavour as a departure from the original intentions of the projectors. But the majority of the Council soon came to have a higher conception of the true functions of the young institution, and it was only the limitations of their means—their poverty and not their will—that prevented them from attempting to realize their ideals. To this section the example of Owens College was, without doubt, a constant stimulus. It served eventually to direct the College upon the lines upon which it ultimately developed. But for a time this diversity of aim on the part of the government of the College made itself manifest with each attempt to enlarge its curriculum.

Fortunately the professoriate was of one mind on this question, and their unanimity was not without influence on the policy of the College. They recognized, of course, that there is no necessary antagonism between the two aims. Both should be developed _pari passu_: that is a condition demanded by modern necessities. It is the essential and characteristic feature of the higher education of the present time. The difficulty was to give practical effect to these views under the restrictions imposed by the financial circumstances of the College. But the fact that the Staff held them and not only gave expression to them, but sought to realize them so far as lay in their limited power secured for the Professors the appreciation and confidence of the governing body, and ultimately obtained for them a responsible share in its counsels.

In the first few years of its existence several circumstances conspired to enhance the public reputation of the College and to consolidate its position. In its second session the teaching staff received a great accession to its strength by the appointment of Mr. Louis C. Miall as Lecturer in, and afterwards as Professor of Biology. Mr. Miall had already established a reputation as a man of science, as an able and attractive lecturer and a sound and experienced teacher. He brought to the aid of his colleagues a wise judgment and a knowledge of local conditions which under the special circumstances proved most helpful. His appointment at this period was not without its significance as an indication of the broad and liberal views which the majority of the Council entertained as to the scope and functions of the College. It was a wise policy to attach to its fortunes all who could in any way serve its true interests, whether in teaching, in enlisting public sympathy, or in the management of its affairs.

At the beginning of the following session (1876) the professors, who had now formed themselves into an Academic Board holding regular meetings in order to discuss the educational affairs of the College, addressed a memorandum to the Council inviting them to consider the advisability of extending the curriculum so as to include Literature and Classics. They pointed out that they had frequent applications from students for advice as to obtaining the degrees of the University of London, or as to complying with the requirements for open science scholarships at the other Universities, but that, as at present constituted, the College was unable to afford the necessary facilities. They were of opinion that if the College were in a position to enable the students to obtain the science degrees of the University of London its usefulness would be considerably increased, and the wider curriculum might be expected to result in an augmentation of the yearly entry. The Council, on the whole, were not indisposed to consider the suggestion benevolently, but they regretted they were unable to take any action from lack of funds. The matter, however, was not allowed to drop. At that time Mr. Stuart and his syndicate at Cambridge were busy in their attempts to spread culture among the hives of industry, and their missionaries were at work in Leeds under the auspices of a committee of which the late Bishop of Truro (Dr. Gott), then Vicar of Leeds, and the late Sir Edward Baines, one of the truest and most zealous friends the College ever possessed, were active members. These gentlemen approached the governing body with a view of ascertaining whether some arrangement might not be possible whereby the work initiated by the University Extension Movement could be conducted by the College in a more systematic and permanent manner than hitherto, and they undertook on behalf of the Committee to be responsible, for a term of years, for a considerable proportion of the money that would be required to give effect to the suggestion. The result of the negotiation was the establishment of Chairs of Classical Literature and History, and Modern Literature and History, which were filled, respectively, by the appointment of Professor John Marshall, M.A., of Balliol College, Oxford, afterwards Rector of the High School, Edinburgh, a distinguished classic, and author of an English rendering of the “Odes and Epodes of Horace,” “Xenophon Memorabilia,” and other works; and Professor F. S. Pulling, B.A. (Oxon). This enlargement of the educational work of the College necessitated a slight but significant change in its designation: henceforward it became known simply as the Yorkshire College until it was raised to the rank of a university, when it took the name of the town in which it was situated.

The executive of the College now publicly expressed their conviction that there is no good reason against grouping in one institution the studies belonging to liberal culture, and systematic instruction in scientific and artistic principles and methods as applied to staple industries.

An event of hardly less importance in public estimation at this period was the purchase of a considerable fraction of the site upon which the handsome and extensive buildings of the University now stand. The decision to take this step was one of the most momentous departures in the history of the institution, and the writer well remembers how seriously and with what anxiety it was discussed by the small body which assembled in the office of the legal adviser to the College to confer with the Chairman of its Finance Committee on the subject. Mr. Francis Lupton, who at that period held the office, was an ideal custodian of its financial affairs. No man could be more prudent in their management: at the same time no one realized more fully that an ill-judged parsimony might be the worst form of economy, and that a timely expenditure might be the wisest investment. The two members of the Staff who were present at this interview, with the courage of faith and the enthusiasm of conviction, used their best endeavours to incline him to sanction what everybody who had knowledge of the financial condition of the institution could not but regard as a most onerous obligation. But in the end there was practical unanimity among those present as to the expediency and opportuneness of the step, and the event proved its wisdom.

The foundation-stone of the new College buildings was laid on October 23, 1877, by the Archbishop of York. As architect the Council had secured the services of the late Mr. Alfred Waterhouse, R.A., whose experience and success in the erection of Owens College seemed to them the highest possible qualification. By the generosity of the Clothworkers’ Company, who had voted the sum of £10,000 for the purpose, the authorities were enabled to take in hand without further delay the buildings designed for the Textile Industries Department.

The publicity given to these proceedings greatly strengthened the position of the College in the county, and especially in the West Riding. These events were no doubt such as must have come naturally and in the fullness of time, but their advent at this particular juncture was possibly accelerated by the action of Owens College in seeking for university powers. This movement on the part of Manchester had already engaged the attention of the Council of the Yorkshire College and was watched by them with no little apprehension. They realized that it was certain to have an important bearing upon the question of higher education in Yorkshire, both directly and indirectly, and that the future of the Yorkshire College was intimately bound up with it. It was therefore all the more necessary to prove to the world that Yorkshire men, in their own interests, were very much in earnest about their young institution; that they were determined to secure for it the fullest possible freedom of development and to extend and consolidate its position, unhampered by limitations to which it might conceivably be subjected by the presence of a relatively rich and powerful university close to its own area.

In the next chapter we purpose to indicate briefly the steps which led immediately to the foundation of the new university in Manchester and to show how the action of the Yorkshire College resulted in modifying its Constitution as originally contemplated.