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.