By the late eighteenth century, universities in England and Germany had lost their sense of purpose. The romantics then presented them with a new one, a new Idea of a university. In Germany, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and others stressed that universities must teach more effectively; in England, Coleridge and Wordsworth attached to the German Idea a desire to keep the universities part of England's national church.

MICHAEL HOFSTETTER is Associate Professor of History at Southwest State University in Minnesota.

Acknowledgements Preface The Confessional Idea of a University and its Fall The Genesis of the Romantic Idea of a University in Germany The Romantic Idea of a University in England The New Foundation in Berlin Cambridge and Oxford, 1830-1850 Whither the Romantic Idea of a University Bibliography Index