A plan of education prepared with a view to competitive examinations-to which the colleges will always be devoted while competitive examinations measure their comparative success-has two capital defects: it influences only a very small proportion of those who are submitted to it; and it addresses itself to the lowest parts of their intellectual and moral characters. If we suppose that twice as many persons are candidates for such honours as actually obtain them, and if we add a certain number who are more or less influenced by the fear of being “plucked," we should arrive at the total number of persons to whom the influence of the examinations extends. It is obvious that it is very much less than the total number of persons examined, and that those who are not influenced are precisely those to whom the guidance of others would be most valuable. A large proportion of the undergraduates are, of course, to a very considerable extent idle and self-indulgent; a good many are absolutely stupid; a few are energetic and clever. It probably matters little whether you succeed or not in driving into the head of a thoroughly stupid man as much Greek as will enable him to see that the authorised version of the New Testament is a translation, and as much mathematics as will enable him to remember for about a fortnight before and after his degree examination that two straight lines cannot enclose a space, and that two sides of a triangle are greater than the third-all that can be really done for such a person is, to give him encouragement to pass his three years inoffensively, and to receive the indirect influence of the University kindly. Nor do we think that there is any very particular use in giving some ten or fifteen remarkably energetic youths a certificate that they have displayed great diligence, much readiness, considerable coolness, and an aptitude for acquiring and reproducing particular kinds of knowledge,-they are pretty sure to make these facts sufficiently apparent to all whom they may concern in the ordinary transactions of life; but there is a very large class of persons who are by no means stupid, by no means indocile, and yet not qualified by nature either for keen personal competition or for continuous self-sustained exertion. persons will be diligent if they are taught, and will be idle if they are not taught; and upon their diligence or idleness depends the question whether the years which they spend at college shall be amongst the most useful or amongst the most useless years in their lives. The system of examinations directs its attention exclusively to the first two classes, and altogether fails to influence the last. If a man is ready, shrewd, self-reliant, and energetic, it stimulates him into unnatural and often injurious activity in a contracted sphere. If he is extremely stupid, it plagues him into an effort, the effects of which disappear as soon as it has These been made, whilst the effort itself is remembered only as a disagreeable episode in his life; but if he is just of that character which most requires and would be most benefited by a teaching and guidance which would excite his attention and win his respect, it either leaves him altogether uninfluenced, or inspires him with a low easily gratified ambition, leading to the acquisition of those second-rate honours which seem to have been devised for the express purpose of fostering vanity without attesting merit. The influence of these examinations, restricted as it is, is not by any means of the healthiest kind. Their natural result is, that the end is entirely lost sight of in the means. Men try to get knowledge, not for the sake of the knowledge, nor for the sake of the mental discipline which is given by its acquisition, but because knowledge gives marks, and marks lead to fellowships. Hence the tendency of a system of examinations is to confine all education to those subjects which are best fitted for that purpose. The curriculum is confined in the first place to mathematics and classics. The mathematics have a natural tendency to dwindle into analytical tricks, and the classics to run into mere philology. This was so strongly felt at Cambridge, that some time since a board of mathematical studies was appointed for the express purpose of controlling the natural eagerness of the examiners to set an undue value upon mere feats of strength as contrasted with sound scientific knowledge. The remedy was creditable to the University; but it is obvious that it was calculated only to repress a particular symptom of a disease which, in one form or another, must always be the consequence of a system based exclusively on competitive examinations. Further and most significant illustrations of this fact are to be found in the miserable failure of the moral and natural science triposes established some years since. Whatever opinions may be entertained as to the utility of such studies, as compared to classics and mathematics, no one, we suppose, will doubt that they are in themselves more likely to attract the attention of young men; but this has been so little the case, that the number of persons who have taken honours in the moral science tripos has been only about eight a year, whilst in the natural science tripos it has been only five or six. The reason is, that the whole University system is so exclusively based upon competitive examinations, that the study of subjects unsuited for such examinations is a mere pretence, and cannot under the existing system be efficiently carried out. A less notorious but equally striking illustration of the same thing is to be found in the view which the undergraduates themselves take of the different papers in a college examination. The exami nations at Trinity College, for example, are composed partly of mathematical, partly of classical, i.e. philological, and partly of historical and literary questions relating to the authors whose works are the subjects of examination and to the times in which they lived. It might have been supposed that the students, at any rate, would attach more importance to the last class of papers, and would take more interest in them than in the other two; but this is so far from being the case, that they are, or were, always spoken of emphatically as "cram" papers, because it is precisely upon those subjects that the greatest amount of credit can be got by merely mechanical tact and study. It requires a considerable amount of really scientific knowledge to solve difficult mathematical problems, or to construe well a difficult passage from the classics; but it is the characteristic of the system of education by examinations to degrade the study of what ought to be the most interesting of all subjects-history, morals, and literature, as distinguished from philology-into a mere affair of analysis and memoria technica. The moral effects of this system are as bad as its intellectual effects. Not only does it tend to prevent the growth of any real love of knowledge, but it antedates the struggles of life, and robs the student of much of the freshness of what ought to be his happiest years. Any one whose recollections upon the subject are fresh will bear out our assertion, that a large class of persons go to the University solely with a view of getting a fellowship, which would enable them either to take orders or to enter one of the lay professions upon independent terms. To such a class the precise nature of the accomplishment for the acquisition of which they are to be rewarded is matter of comparative indifference. Human nature would be very different from what it is, if, with so many cheap places of education as now exist, this class were not a large and increasing one. The intense eagerness which pervades every portion of English society to rise in the world, to "succeed" in one shape or another, sends up yearly to Cambridge a whole set of students hungering and thirsting after degrees which will be both creditable and profitable to them, and which will raise them some steps in the social ladder. In one point of view, no doubt this is a very favourable symptom, and a subject for congratulation,-we should wish to see the wish for a good education as widely felt, and the means of gratifying that wish as widely diffused, as possible; but it is the desire of education itself which we wish to see increased, not the desire of the money and rank supposed to be its consequences, which is already abundantly powerful. Whatever measures may render the Universities more easy of access to the great body of the nation, we would cordially support; what ever would induce a larger number of persons to devote the time necessary for the purposes of University education to the instruction of their sons (a far more difficult task), we should approve of still more strongly; but we have no wish at all to see the Universities degraded into mere arenas, in which the performance of certain mental feats is rewarded by the payment of 14001. or 15007. and a considerable accession of social importance. Allow the University to be the scene of a constant selfish scramble for money-prizes, and its higher purposes will, after a time, be altogether forgotten; yet this is the direct and inevitable consequence of the present system of competitive examination. It would be hard to find a more forcible exposition of this evil than that which is incidentally given by the commissioners in speaking of the character of the mathematical examinations : "It can hardly be denied, that an excess of book-work, called for in examinations, has a decided tendency to give industry an advantage over innate talent, or at least to place them more nearly on a level; and not merely industry (which, if well directed, and sanctioned by high motives, merits every recognition), but that perverse and obnoxious form of it, which, looking to the result of examinations only as a stepping-stone to worldly progress, is content thenceforward to throw overboard as an incumbrance, or to forget as utterly uninteresting, the acquirements of months or years of painful and grudgingly given toil. This is, in fact, the great vice of the examination system, or rather a perversion of it from its legitimate use (that of ascertaining that sanctioned studies have been effectually pursued), to which the University, as an educating rather than a prize-bestowing body, ought to lend itself as little as possible. Where college-emolument is the direct object and avowed end of an examination, as in that for fellowships, scholarships, &c., the ready production of knowledge, however incoherent, will always offer a temptation difficult to resist; but in the University examinations* those who have not this stimulus, and who resort to the University for education and for education only, should be protected from its injurious influence, and taught to rely rather on a moderate amount of knowledge, soundly and honestly possessed, than on a larger amount, got up for the purpose of exhibition, with little comprehension of its real bearings and connections. The evil of cramming' is so great, and its influence on the character, both intellectual and moral, so fatal, that we may be excused for dwelling on it somewhat at large. It originates, as already stated, in a misdirection of industry to the apparently honourable, and certainly advantageous, result of passing a good examination, rather * It must be remembered, that in thirteen out of seventeen colleges fellowships are conferred exclusively in accordance with the degrees taken, and in two others-St. John's and Sydney-chiefly on that principle. It is only at King's, where all the scholars become fellows, and at Trinity, where the examinations are independent of the degrees, that this is not so. Ꮓ than to the acquirement of sound knowledge for its own sake; and will never be eradicated, but continue to reappear in some form or other, while the results of examinations have the direct influence which they actually have on the prospects of those who undergo them. The causes of this influence are beyond the control of the University, and lie deep-seated in our social system, where they are daily acquiring new power." We cannot agree with the commissioners in considering that the remedy for this state of things is to be found principally, or even to any very great extent, in improved regulations about examinations. It appears to us that a far more efficient remedy is to be found in the vigorous prosecution of the measures which they have themselves proposed for the reconstitution of the University as a body, distinct from and superior to the colleges, imparting instruction to the undergraduates upon its own principles, and by the agency of its own officers. In order to carry out such a plan, the Report proposed, amongst other things, the establishment of several new professorships, and of a class of public lecturers subordinate to the professors, to be engaged for the most part in catechetical teaching. It further recommended the establishment of one general and of several special boards of studies, to be charged with the general supervision of the subjects lectured upon, with a view to producing something like uniformity of plan and purpose amongst the various professors. Some of these boards have been, we believe, already established by the University itself; but we regret to observe that the bill contains no reference to the general board of studies, notwithstanding the remonstrances of the commissioners. The Report further proposes, that the course of study at present necessary for the B.A. degree should be considerably modified; and that, after passing through an examination in classics and mathematics analogous to the previous examination, or, as it is popularly called, the 'little-go,' the students should be allowed to pass four terms more in attendance on the lectures of some one or more of the professors and public lecturers, with a view to obtaining a place in some one of the existing or future triposes. Our own opinion is decidedly opposed to this change. We do not think that three years and a quarter is at all too long a period for steady continuous application to a given set of sub-jects, nor do we think it is by any means desirable that the Cambridge calendar should be further encumbered with abortive triposes. The existing state of things has many faults; but it is at least sufficiently definite. The alteration proposed by the commissioners appears to us to halt between two systems. It gives half to the colleges and half to the University; and inasmuch as it leaves untouched the whole system of mathematical |