by—, and entered the University from their School.“ Nou will find these same words on the last Prospectus of the Grammar School, mentioned above, and under„Professional Exa- minations“ is added:„H. M. F. of— was capped a Bachelor of Medicine at Durham Uni- versity in June 1883. He gained the Charlton Scholarship, value£ 30, and four medals including the Gold Medal as being the best man of his year. Mr. F. began his Medical Studies after six years' tuition under—.“ Then on the same Prospectus under„Public Examinations“:„Of 142 Pupils sent to Public Examinations by—, 134 were successful, above 100 gaining distinction, etc.“ Under„Recent Successes“:„Of 40 pupils recently presented to the Cambridge University Local(Senior and Junior), the Medical Registration, the College of Preceptors, and the Pharmaceutical Examinations, 38 passed, etc.“ On another bill or list— I suppose it was the latest— may be read:„It appears from the Lists of the Michaelmas Examination of the Durham University, published October 13/h, 1888, that. a Pupil direct from the— Grammar School(it was the son of my first Principal, but his name is not given, I suppose on account of modesty) gained in open competition the Entrance Medical Scholarship, value£ 100. The Subjects of Competition were: The Gospel of St. Luke, in Greek. Latin Grammar. Caesar, De bello Gallico, Book IV. Vergil, Aeneid, Book IV. Euclid and Algebra. Arithmetic and English History. This result is the more pleasing to the masters, because it is the second time their Pupils have gained this Honour.“

The Universities grant prizes and scholarships, and try to induce as many candidates as possible to be examined by them. For instance. the University of London has offered at each Matriculation two prizes of 2 guineas each„to the Private Students who take the two highest places at the Examination“. To the student of the University Correspondence College, that is, to the pupil who is prepared by this College, which is connected with the University, a studentship of ten guineas and a half will be awarded, if he takes the best position in the Honours Division.— Prizes play, above all, a very important part at English Schools, especially at Public Schools. This may be much less the case at Private Schools; at least, at our School it was happily not the case, prizes being never given. There seems to have been a change in this at the Grammar School, for I read on the last Pro- spectus:„Scholarships and Prizes are awarded periodically by the Governors“.— Also the examinations, of which I shall speak presently, were not held at our School.

A sharp Protest was published by many distinguished Englishmen, in November 1888, against this absurd system of competitive examinations and prizes. This system with its inevitable evils of a physical, intellectual, and moral kind was vigorously attacked and rightly called a corruptio optimi.“„Again and again,“ runs a passage in it,„brilliant, young men once full of early promise, go down from the Universities as the great prize- winners, and do little or nothing in the after years. They have lived their mental life before they are five-and-twenty. The victory of life has seemed to them gained and know- ledge exhausted, almost before the threshold of either has been crossed.“Ü— Max Müller, the celebrated professor at the University of Oxford, complains that by this present system „England is losing its intellectual athletes who where a head and shoulders taller than the rest.— And if history teaches anything, it teaches us that no country remains great without really great men.— The mischief done is, I believe, most serious. It will poison the best, blood of England, if it has not done so already.“¹¹

At the end of each term, there are held aæxaminations at lhe Public and mang. Pritale Schools by the teachers, and, according to the results, prizes are distributed. Each pupil gets a number of questions in each subject, called examination-papers, which are to be answered in writing. If he has answered rightly all the questions in one branch, he gets, for example, a hundred marks or more. If he has not answered the questions well, fewer marks are given. All the marks given in the different branches are finally summed up, and the result is expressed by a figure representing several hundreds.

See The Nineteenth Century. November 1888.