examination at the end of the year might include not only conic sections and special trigonometry, but also low mechanics. The grateful recollections which all Cambridge classical men have of Newton impel me to put in a word for him here. I could very much wish that the early books of the Principia, according to any standard translation, were generally read in our colleges.

The classical part of the annual examinations should be of the same nature as before; the books read during the year, or such portions of them as would afford sufficient material for six or eight good papers, half extracts for translations, half general questions; and some English to be translated into Latin.

The start gained this year would enable the good mathematicians to carry on their studies much further than at present during the third year. In fact, after the first term the class should be divided; those who pleased might go on with and beyond the Differential Calculus, and the larger portion begin to review their mathematical course from the beginning. The exercises in English composition, or written debates, should still be limited to one a month for two terms. At the end of the year there should be an examination on all the mathematics previously read. The earlier papers of this, containing no problems and only a few simple deductions and examples, besides the regular book formulæ, should be a pass examination, and those classical men who got through it should be released from any further mathematical studies. The higher papers, including problems and involving the

papers

Calculus, would counterbalance for the good mathematicians the proficiencies of the best classics in the Greek plays and other difficult subjects of the year. To make all the classics of the year, much more all the classics of the three years, the foundation of pass examinations for the mathematical or for all the students, would be exacting too much of them. As much should be selected as will make three subjects of respectable dimensions (say a Greek play, a book of Tacitus, and an oration of Demosthenes or Cicero), and the six in the examination referring to these should be the pass for a Degree, so far as classics are concerned. The student who acquitted himself the best in the whole examination (consisting of all the mathematics of the course and the year's classics, including translation from English into Latin) would be the first man of the year; and the first class should be of liberal dimensions—at least fifteen per cent. of the examinees. The "Junior Exhibition" I would abolish; that is, if it could be done without raising a mutiny.

During the last year I would not tell the students to be idle, as most of our college authorities do. Every one should continue to study either Classics or Mathematics. The whole senior class ought to be put through a thorough course of Logic-which is now ridiculously neglected, considering the great fondness for and attention to rhetoric and composition. Moral Philosophy comes naturally in connexion with Logic. Compositions and debates might also be more frequent-four or five in each term. The attendance at Lectures on the Natural Sciences I would not make compulsory, or if I did

it should not be for only one science at the students' option. In the last term of this year, near the end in fact of the whole course, there ought to be two general examinations, one in Classics, the other in Mathematics, and a third and shorter one in Logic and Moral Philosophy. At the risk of carrying out my imaginary details too minutely, and thus interfering with their general applicability, I will proceed to explain the principles on which these examinations might advantageously be conducted, particularly the classical one.

The students should be examined in passages chiefly taken from books not in the college course. If, for instance, Cicero's de Oratore and de Officiis formed part of the course, then give them an extract from the Tusculan Questions; if the Iliad formed part of the course they should have extracts from the Odyssey. The more difficult authors not usually read at our colleges it would not answer to use for some time, e. g. Pindar or Aristotle. There should be at least four translation papers with five or six extracts in each, a paper of English prose to turn into Latin, and one or two general papers containing questions on classical history, the ancient government and laws, the elements of prosody and principles of grammar. There would also be some viva voce in the examination. The Mathematical Examination should take place sufficiently long after or before the classical, to allow those students who were desirous of taking honors in both (a practice which I would neither encourage nor discourage) to have an opportunity of doing so. The candidates at both examinations I would divide into four

classes, those in the first three should be considered as having taken honors, and a list of the three classes (the names in each class arranged in order of merit) should be published by authority. No student should have his degree who was not able to pass in the fourth class of one of the examinations.

The Logic and Moral Philosophy examination should be open to all who had taken honors in either of the others. Many of the answers to questions in it would naturally take the form of short extempore essays. It would be a rare chance for really clever men to show themselves, and there need be no danger of political or sectarian party allusions intruding themselves into it.

Such a scheme as this nominally diminishes in many respects the amount of labor required from the students, but really gets a great deal more out of them in one sense and puts a great deal more into them in another. It goes upon the principle that it is better to learn a little at a time and thoroughly, than to pretend to learn a great many things together and learn them very superficially. Very possibly every feature of it can and will be fearfully picked to pieces, but with my present lights I believe it to be all feasible, and have not the slightest doubt that if feasible it would be most beneficial.* I am persuaded that in course of time it would

* Of the police and government regulations nothing has been said, but there is one point which I cannot refrain from expressing my opinion about. The morning recitation between chapel and breakfast, which prevails in many of our colleges, ought most certainly to be done away with. Some of the students are half asleep at it, some

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cause the students to enter at a later age and better prepared, attract donations for Prizes, Scholarships, and Fellowships, raise up a class of resident graduates from among whom private tuition could be supplied, and ultimately combine almost all the advantages of the English system, with the proficiency in rhetoric and composition which is in some respects natural and necessary to our people, and which under such a plan, being attained at a later period, and based upon some real training and knowledge, would not then prove so hollow and barren as it now does.

of them more than half hungry, some of them less than half dressed. Their bodily discomforts prevent them from really profiting at all by the intellectual exercise they mechanically drag through. Nor is it, in many cases, beneficial to the health to remain so long fasting in the morning. The young men should be allowed another hour of sleep. There is neither reason nor religion in pulling them out of bed at six during a New England winter, with the snow knee-deep, or indeed during winter anywhere. The feelings excited by it are very much the reverse of devotional.