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that no one comes with a view to learning chiefly. I remember a rash youth who stated to his friends that he was studying mathematics with a view to improving his mind. It became a standard joke against him ever afterwards. The ordinary undergraduate considered it as equivalent to a confession of idiocy. It savoured of priggishness to proclaim a wish for mental improvement; but to secure that object by means of mathematical study was almost incredible folly.

Indeed, it is perfectly obvious that nothing can be more absurd than to make five hundred young men (about the annual number of freshmen) give up three years to reading classics or mathematics for their own sake. Perhaps fifty of them may be improved by such a discipline. As for the remainder, nothing but custom could persuade parents or sons that the best use to be made of the three years after eighteen is to make ignorant youths into third-rate classics and mathematicians-especially as they are immediately to forget all about it. The "gymnastic" theory, as applied to those below the firstclass, is a mere farce. If our only inducement was the

knowledge which we have to communicate, we should have to offer a more varied bill of fare. Fortunately we have a great many others, and we are able to go on quietly with our two old-established dishes, just as a public-house in beautiful scenery can attract visitors, though the only variety in dinner is that they eat up one side of the sheep and down the other. If any one doubts this, he may ask himself whether he would recommend a stupid lad of eighteen living in London, who was to enter a profession in three years' time, to pass the intervening years in attending third-rate lectures on Greek and Latin. If he would, the lad would, I think, be stupid indeed to take his advice.

For those who take to the training kindly, and reach the top of the tree, it is a very different question; for them, I fully believe our intellectual training to be excellent, though even for them it would, but for the endowments, be rather an expensive luxury. It is rather a severe tax upon any man's time and brains to spend three precious years, not in learning something, but in learning to learn something; I repeat, however, that for

those who become really proficient, I believe the polish attained to be worth the trouble of attaining it.

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It will now, I hope, be evident what is the meaning of our attachment to the old studies. We have great prizes to give away for learning. over, those prizes are the great stimulus for learning, and we depend necessarily more upon them than upon the attractions of the learning itself. We thus prefer not the studies which are most useful, but those which afford the best tests of merit. The old examinations have been carefully and elaborately worked into a system by long-continued efforts of our ablest teachers. They now afford a most delicate and scrupulously fair test of the merits of rival candidates. It is one, moreover, of which the nature is perfectly recognized in every school in the country. Without becoming too technical, I could not explain all the difficulties; but it is obvious that there would be great difficulties in introducing any new-fangled test in its place. In classics and mathematics, in short, we believe that we have the best and most widely-known race-course for rival candidates to run.

It is long, and hard, and perfectly fair, and by long experience we can tell to a nicety who has won and by how much. It is a matter of secondary importance to decide whether it is the best course to develope all the powers of the competitors. But it is very easy to construct a supplementary theory to prove that it is the best, and to slur over the fact that the improvement of learning is not the main object, but the incidental result, of our system. In my next letter, I will speak of its influence upon the manners and customs of the competitors themselves.

V.

READING MEN.

I HAVE endeavoured to point out one or two leading peculiarities of our educational system. To put it shortly, we do not attempt to educate directly, but we hold out tempting baits which can only be won by a process involving education. The best intellectual wrestler wins the prize, and he must practise diligently and train steadily to have a chance. The effect upon the competitors is twofold. Those who enter for the highest prizes are subjected to a sharp mental stimulant for three or four years; they generally learn at least the art of close and patient thought. With those who seek not to win honour, but to avoid disgrace, the case is very different.

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