continually oppress him; he will have lost irretrievably the pride of rectitude-a pride which is honorable and righteous, and has nothing reprehensible in it. My conduct on that occasion has been a continually recurring source of mortification to me, which the lapse of years cannot obliterate, and the recollection of it has frequently interposed to check me in plans of improvement for myself and others. [The looseness and carelessness with which college and university oaths are administered and taken, the utter uselessness of some of them (owing to the obsoleteness of their subject matter), the oppressiveness of others to conscientious men, and their general influence on the relations of the Church and the Universities to the outer world,-all these points have frequently come up for discussion. The Commission of 1850-'51, recommended (though somewhat cautiously), alterations in a more liberal sense. Two or three years ago, the whole machinery for conferring B. A. degrees was brought to a stand by a Jew's coming out first in the mathematical tripos. As the Senior Wrangler has to take his degree alone and before all the others, he is an essential and indispensable part of the programme. It was necessary to pass a special "grace" or note of the Senate, in order that Mr. H- might take his degree without the oaths. Not only have the oaths on taking the B. A. Degree at Cambridge been abolished within the last three years, but all the other tests of various sorts for Fellowships, Memberships of the Senate, etc., have been removed by the University Tests Bill of 1871, 34 and 35 Victoria, ch. 26.] THE По22oì AND THE CIVIL LAW CASES. "Nos numeri sumus."-HORACE. DURING the week of interval between the examin ation for Mathematical Honors and the publication of the Honor list, takes place the examination of candidates for an ordinary degree, popularly called the rooì, and by abbreviation, the Pöll men. Their number is greater than that of the candidates for Honors in the proportion of four to three, but as the range of subjects is more limited, the papers shorter, and the examiners more numerous, the classification of the men goes on nearly pari passu with their examination, and the list is issued on the same day as that of the candidates for Honors. There are on an average about two hundred Poll men, and it is a most striking instance of the minute subdivision in vogue at Cambridge examinations, and the introduction of competition wherever possible, that every one of these two hundred men is arranged in order of merit according to his marks, except some fifteen or twenty who have just succeeded in passing, and who are bracketed together at the end, and familiarly known as the "Elegant Extracts."* The head man is called Captain of the Poll, which is deemed among the non-reading *I write of this arrangement as one actually existing, though in strict correctness I should use the past tense when speaking of it. For the alterations which have been made in the Poll, see the chapter on "Recent Changes at Cambridge." men almost as great an honor as Senior Wrangler or Senior Classics among the reading ones. case. As an impression appears to prevail in some literary quarters of our country that the great bulk of English University students study and know very little, and the hard-reading men are very few in number, it may be worth while to look once more at the facts and figures of the The proportion of Honor men to Poll men is, as has been already remarked, in round numbers, one hundred and fifty to two hundred, or three to four, that is, three-sevenths of the whole. Now, though most of the Junior and some of the Senior Optimés have not worked hard at Mathematics throughout their whole Undergraduate course, we have to take out of these the Classical men, who have been busily employed in their pet pursuit. Still, after allowing for these, there may remain some thirty idle men on the Honor list, and against these we must put about the same number of reading men among the πολλοί. For insufficient preparation of some Poll men, particularly those who are oμaveis, and have taken up the Church late in life, gives them enough to do in preparing for their Little Go and Degree examinations, after the time occupied by the College examinations is deducted. There are also many men every year contending for the Captaincy of the Poll, some for the honor, such as it is, others because it will help them to get Poll pupils afterwards. The first thirty men, or so, in the Poll, have their subjects polished up with great care, and may be called all but perfect in them. (I had personal assurance of this from a friend who was one of the Poll examiners.) We have, therefore, three sevenths of the Undergraduates faithful students, while about one man in nine (that is to say, all the First Class of the Tripos, and nearly all the Wranglers) is a very hard stu dent. I imagine there are not many Universities or Colleges in the world of which more could be said with truth. The fixed subjects for the Poll examination are the Acts with all the History, Geography, Antiquities, and "cram" generally pertaining thereto; Paley's Moral Philosophy, three Books of Euclid, Arithmetic and low Algebra, and certain portions of Mechanics and Hydrostatics. The movable subjects are a Greek and a Latin author as in the Little-Go. These are declared two years in advance, so that there is plenty of time to polish them up. Besides the degree in Honors and the ordinary degree, there is but one other way of obtaining a B. A. It is in Civil Law. Not more than a dozen or fifteen men-sometimes not so many-avail themselves of this outlet, which is generally considered something even below the Poll-unjustly I suspect, for the candidates must at least have attended the Professor's Lectures for three consecutive terms, to say nothing of what is required in the examination. The lectures generally follow the order of subjects in Halifax's Analysis of the Roman Civil Law. The principal text books in my time were these: Corpus Juris Civilis. Harris's Justiniani Institutiones. Heineccei Antiq. Rom. Syntagma. -Elementa Juris Civilis. Vinnii Comment. in quatuor Libros Institutionum. Blackstone's Commentaries. [This examination has since been merged in the Moral Science Tripos. See chapter on recent changes.] THE CLASSICAL TRIPOS. "Cave ne titubes,"-HORACE. "Mind your eye!"-H. WALKER, ESQ. HE time now drew nigh when the few picked men, THE who had resisted the temptations of idleness and escaped the perils of Mathematics, were to fight out their last great battle. Trinity Scholars, University Prize men, outsiders from Small Colleges, double men (these the fewest of all) mustered from all quarters. We made a very small show numerically, only twentysix candidates out of the whole year, which might be set down in round numbers at three hundred and fifty men. At least five who had intended to augment our numbers were killed off in the Mathematical Tripos. Nineteen of us were reading for the First Class, so that there was a pretty extensive prospect of sells. Out of the twenty-six sixteen were Junior Optimés, so that allowing a few to be trying their luck in Classics only for the chance of piecing out an inferior Mathematical degree, it was pretty clear that full half of the candidates had read Mathematics for no other purpose than to enable them to display their knowledge in the Classical Tripos. Of the remainder, five were Wranglers, four of these Double men, and the fifth a favorite for the Wedge.* Two men who had been rivals all the way * The last man is called the Wedge, corresponding to the Spoon in Mathematics. This name originated in that of the man who was last on the first Tripos list (in 1824), Wedgewood. Some one suggested that the wooden wedge was a good counterpart to the wooden spoon, and the appellation stuck. |