But the only way in which a College can establish its connexion with a profession is by having some of its Fellowships or other emoluments assigned to those who practise it, or especially suited to them by the conditions of tenure; and if these Fellowships could be obtained equally well by students from any College, then whether the Fellowship Examination were in Professional or strictly Academical studies, there would not in either case be any special reason why students intending to follow that profession should enter at that particular College.

The mere offering of prizes or lectures in a particular College on a particular subject would be insufficient to draw men to it, as the Professorial Lectures might be expected to supply all requisite assistance in these subjects, and a Student at another College who wanted any extra aid would obtain it from a Private Tutor. Hence the various causes which send men in general to the large Colleges would act with uncounteracted effect on the Students in Law and Medicine-indeed with especial effect, because a large connexion is thought to be particularly valuable in those Professions.

Again, a College might desire to reward one of its members. who was specially distinguished in some science, say Comparative Anatomy; already such distinctions have been allowed to have weight. But under the proposed system how could this be done? If the papers in the Examination were set in this subject, the College would be favouring one of its own men. Thus, to avoid all suspicion of unfairness, each College would have to adopt the same style of Examination from year to year, and practically the papers would be very nearly confined to classics and mathematics. The governing body would here be put in a position which it should be the main object of Statutes to render impossible. They would be forced either to do substantial injustice, or to evade the provisions by which they were bound.

We sometimes hear the case of Oxford mentioned as a proof that the small Colleges might dispose of their emoluments in the proposed way without losing their Students. But the circumstances of the two Universities have only just sufficient similarity to furnish us with a fruitful source of error.

At Oxford, as Students cannot live in lodgings, every College must be full, if there are as many persons in the University as

chambers in the Colleges. Of late, the Students having decreased, some of the Colleges have had their rooms empty.

Moreover, our great difficulty, the overwhelming preponderance of one or two Colleges in numbers and connexion and resources does not there exist, the pre-eminence of Christchurch in these respects being quite inconsiderable as compared with that of the larger Colleges here. With us the circumstances are altogether different. There is hardly any limit to the number of men which a College of large means might receive; and even if a limit were fixed, this would probably be done by fixing a high standard, perhaps a competitive one, for an entrance Examination, and the smaller Colleges would still suffer all the ill consequences attendant on the loss of their able men.

I do not believe that a concentration of the clever and studious men is good even for them; I have reason to believe that it gives rise to a kind of pedantry and priggishness and an undue, because an exclusive, estimation of intellectual endowments; but I am quite certain, on the other hand, that the complete absence of them would have a most injurious effect on the tone and energy of a College. And if such a limit were fixed, and the smaller Colleges were to sink into comparative disrepute, the result would be, what now acts at Oxford disadvantageously, that many men, if they could not enter where they wished, would not enter at all.

Again, it is very important to bear in mind, that if at Oxford a College wished to make its Fellowships open at all, it could only proceed by an Examination; in the first place, no migration is allowed there from College to College; and in the second, the class lists, being arranged alphabetically, furnish no means of distinguishing between any two men in the same class. No doubt if our wranglers and first class classics had been arranged in the same way, we should have been obliged to have recourse to some further Examination also; but as they are arranged in order of merit, and that after Examinations which, on account of the care with which they are conducted, the number and ability of the candidates, and the repute of the Examiners, carry more weight than any Fellowship Examination could possibly do, there is no need for any further test. In consequence of every College at Oxford being sure, until lately, of as many students as it could hold, the competition between Colleges, which is a very important

motive power here, was never called out there to nearly the same extent; to this we may attribute the efforts which Colleges have always been making at Cambridge to throw open their Fellowships and Scholarships, and the more systematic form which College instruction has received by means of College Examinations.

Even if the circumstances at Oxford were similar to ours, which they are not, their recent diminution in numbers would prevent our appealing to their example in proof of the success of their practice.

The fact that two or three Colleges at Oxford, which do dispose of their emoluments something in the way recommended, hold a foremost place in repute, and have more applications for rooms than they can meet, is sometimes put forward to show that our small Colleges might do the same.

This argument is singularly inapplicable, for not only does it lose sight of the fact on which the whole matter turns, that at Oxford there are no large Colleges, in the comparative sense which that word has here, and that no College could become so; but it also puts aside the very material consideration, that these Colleges attained their high repute by being the only Colleges whose emoluments were to any large extent open, by which means they attracted a high class of Fellows and Scholars, and having gained a high character, were enabled in some degree to select their Students, and thus take up a still more advantageous position.

And no doubt if all the Colleges here, except two or three, were to be closely restricted in their elections to certain schools or counties, these excepted Colleges would thrive in like manner; but as nearly all our emoluments have been always in recent times disposed of by merit, no such results have ensued, neither could they under the generally open system, which it is proposed to establish; indeed, now that so much more is open at Oxford, no College will be able to gain the like distinction, though it may be long before the prestige of certain foundations disappears.

There are many other circumstances at Oxford, the smaller proportion of men reading for Honours*, the fact that their com

* The number of men taking their degrees in Honours at Oxford in the course of last year was 88, while the number of Pass-men was 246; with us, taking the various triposes together, the numbers are about 186 in Honours to 200 in the Ordinary Degree. At the Previous Examination in 1857, 230 men passed as candidates for Honours and 136 as candidates for the Ordinary Degree.

petitive Examinations are purely classical, which ours could not be, the greater need of immediate preparation in candidates for a mathematical than for a classical Examination, and the greater effect of local connexion, which are so different from what is the case with us, as to make it very dangerous to draw an inference from analogies between the Universities.

But there are other objections to the plan of bestowing all the Fellowships by examinations open to the whole University, not connected with its bearing on any class of Colleges, which of themselves seem to me to be fatal to it. First, this would extend the academical course of a man, who aimed at a Fellowship, to five or six years, as it is at Trinity College, where a somewhat similar system exists. I by no means deny the advantage of these additional years of study in some cases, and should be sorry that there should not be Fellowships in the University offering inducements to such matured reading; but I think it very unadvisable to demand such a prolonged course from all, both from pecuniary reasons, and because this long-continued reading for Examinations, is to some of the ablest men not only most distasteful, but positively injurious. I must say also from experience, that such a demand would deter many valuable men from coming to the University. The effect also of such a plan would be to keep a large number of bachelors in residence, constantly in feverish expectation of an Examination of an uncertain kind at some College or other, and so, occupied, not in digesting or increasing their knowledge, but in keeping it in a state for production at a short notice.

At Trinity College, candidates for Fellowships are reading for a definite Examination, which therefore answers the purpose of guiding their reading; but if every College examined when vacancies occurred, as for open Fellowships at Oxford, candidates would be kept in a state of uncertainty as to the time and nature of the Examinations awaiting them, which would cause excitement and distraction rather than any beneficial effect.

It would also be almost impossible to conduct the Examinations in a perfectly satisfactory manner. If in a combined Examination a certain proportion of marks are given for each subject, as for the Indian appointments, not only is the result made uncertain, but it leads to a servile pursuit of marks which, though less

objectionable for youngsters, would be the reverse of what we want to encourage in men of twenty-four or twenty-five.

Besides, if the questions are such as they should be to bring out thought and originality, it would often be impossible to adhere to any marks. How could two men be compared, one of whom had written two masterly essays on, we will suppose, the geometrical theory of parallels and some of the difficulties in the undulatory theory, while the other had shown great expertness in solving a number of ordinary problems?

Besides, no trust is ever placed in a short Mathematical Examination; it is well known that the results of each separate paper in the Senate House vary considerably, and the credit attached to the Triposes arises a good deal from the number of papers given, inasmuch as the effects of any particular piece of good or ill fortune are thus most likely to be eliminated. I cannot think that the verdict of a Fellowship Examination which contradicted the Tripos would be generally accepted, or that under the proposed plan the ability and good faith of our Examinations would remain so far beyond dispute as they are now.

The number of open Fellowships at Oxford up to this time has been so small compared with what it would be here, that even if other circumstances were more similar than they are, we could hardly judge of the effect of having twenty-five or thirty Fellowships to be competed for in a year. Besides, it should be remembered, that at Oxford the Fellowships are given not strictly by Examination but by election, and votes are influenced by other considerations than by the papers sent in.

I understand that some of the difficulties I have named, such as retaining men after their degree, have been felt to exist at Oxford, and that it is attempted so to conduct the Examinations as not to require or encourage special preparation. But I believe it to be impossible to examine in any subject, so that a person who has been reading for a year at the bar or otherwise engaged, should not compete at a disadvantage with one who has been preparing himself for the Examination up to the last moment; I am sure that it is impossible if Mathematics and Natural Philosophy enter largely into the Examination. Another injurious effect of this scheme would be, that it would seriously detract from the interest and value of the Degree Examinations.