cally idle for the rest of the day; but the fit came too strong upon me, and I fell to writing Elegiacs, and afterwards looking over marked passages.* If there are no Sundays in Revolutionary times, there are very apt to be none the fortnight before a Cambridge Examination. But Sunday work is seldom of any profit, even temporally speaking, and mine was no exception to the rule. It would be as great a bore to the reader as to myself were I to recall in detail all the chances, perils, and disasters of that week; how, when I had carefully practised writing Elegiacs, and acquired a tolerable command over them, Hexameters, of which I had not written three copies in two years, and probably not five in my life, were set the first morning; how, after lying awake from nervous excitement the whole night before the Greek Iambics, I dozed off towards morning and very nearly overslept the paper; how I was frozen up on Thursday morning, the weather having changed from mild to very cold, as if for my special discomfiture, so that half my Greek Prose went up nearly illegible and without accents; and the report spread that I had broken down completely, or, as a Johnian elegantly expressed it, was squashed. Suffice it to say, that the five days were over at last, and I was left nearly delirious. A friend, who had been ill himself during an examination, and could therefore appreciate my condition, carried me out for a As a Cantab reads, he marks any particularly strange word or difficult passage for future reference; this is a great assistance to him in running over an author rapidly. Interleaved copies of works are very common, and besides these, many men keep notebooks to set down at length any difficulties they meet. To have "got up" a book thoroughly, almost means that you have prepared a new edition of it. long walk on Saturday morning; that night I made up for the lost sleep of the six preceding, and on Sunday was in my usual state, with the exception of a propensity to eat and drink all that came in my way, which lasted a full month till the waste of the system had been repaired. The same evening I called on my right-hand neighbor in the examination, whose style of work, busy as I was, had occasionally fallen under my notice. He was one of the candidates for Senior Classic, had read almost everything, and written verses ever since he was twelve years old. His learning was great, his Composition wonderfully rapid and elegant, his taste generally unexceptionable; but he was not very clear-headed or accurate, and therefore always liable to make slips of the pen. His rival was a respectable Mathematician, and had just taken a Wrangler's degree, was much behind him in speed, elegance, and quantity of knowledge, but fearfully accurate, and never forgetting anything he had once learned. My neighbor, who knew exactly his own strong and weak points as well as those of his old schoolmate and antagonist, endeavored to overpower him by weight of learning and brilliancy of execution. He had read almost every single passage that was set, and to show that he had done so, wrote at the head of every translation paper he sent up the author's name and that of the particular book or play. The bit of Theophrastus which was set us on the last day he had by good fortune read over the very night before. As I was pretty well up in it myself, though my acquaintance had not been so recently renewed, I felt no hesitation in glancing at his work since I did not wish to borrow from him. He was writing his notes in Latin, and getting up his paper exactly as if he were editing the extract. Of his Composition the following may serve as a specimen. It is a translation of the lines by Aubrey de Vere, "Again those sounds sweep on," &c., quoted in the Appendix (Classical Tripos Papers, 1845), and is given exactly as he wrote it out in the Senate House, occupying less than an hour in the task. "Rursus murmur adest, adest, Rursus destituit me placitus furor, Cum devota Deus monia deserit, Vibrant suavisionis quas aliquis piis, Ille acclinis humo dum jacet, exuit Castigatiqe gravis, moret identidem Non desiderio levi." It deserves to be enumerated among his claims that he wrote a beautiful hand, delicate as a woman's, and withal very legible. After all he was only bracketed Senior Classic, some errors of syntax in his Greek Iambics, and other inaccuracies, having brought him down to the level of his less learned and showy, but more safe competitor. Some allusion He was very fond of English poetry. to the examination it was not possible to forego, but we soon disposed of the shop with our tea, and then read, criticized, and very generally talked over the poets of the new school-Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Miss Barrett— for some hours, till, as I rose to go, somewhere about the witching hour, he stopped me with, "Now stay a little longer; I have some capital brandy that was sent by a friend-an old parson in the country." "The "old parson in the country was sufficient guarantee for the orthodoxy of the liquor, which indeed proved worthy of its clerical paternity. So we sat well into Monday morning, drinking grog and talking of all the poets in all the five or six languages that we knew more or less about. Such are a reading-man's relaxations after the intense examination work. The Classical examiners are not bound to declare the result of the Tripos on any specified day. They consequently take their time about it, getting up amicable little fights among themselves as to the comparative merits of different men. They are usually a month in deliberation, although the four Composition papers are the only ones which they all examine: each one is sole arbiter of marks on the paper and a half of translation which he sets. Meanwhile some of the expectants have the additional amusement of going in for the Chancellor's Medals. On the present occasion but three candidates presented themselves, and two of these were morally certain of the two medals beforehand. rest of us had nothing to do but to worry ourselves looking over the papers, finding out mistakes, and speculating on our chances, or else, more wisely, to leave the place, and forget the whole subject as far as possible. I went to London, saw various sights and acquaintances, and afterwards visited a friend who was then a private tutor at Eton, the opportunity being a good excuse and occasion for what I had some time wished-a little personal insight and examination into an English Public School. The A VISIT TO ETON. ENGLISH PUBLIC SCHOOLS. "A Parliamentary return of all that is taught at Eton during ten years of pupilage in the nineteenth century, ought (if any thing can) to surprise the public into some uneasiness on the subject." IT EDINBURGH REVIEW, Jan., 1845. T is a singular spectacle for an American to see numbers of youths eighteen or nineteen years old, who in his own country would call themselves and be called young men, leaders of fashionable society perhaps-going about in boyish costume, and evidently in the status of boys. What increases the singularity of the appearance is that the Englishman's physical development is more rapid than that of the American-of the Northern States, at least; thus the Etonian of nineteen is as old in appearance as the New Yorker or Bostonian of twenty-one. They all wear white cravats and black beavers; caps are forbidden, otherwise there is no uniformity of costume, and the juvenile round jacket is as common as the manly coat upon strapping young fellows nearly six feet high. Still, however you may dress persons of that age, it is not possible to confine them entirely to the discipline of boys; the upper forms will walk out into the town of Windsor, and should one of them meet a tutor he takes refuge in a shop, the tutor, by a long established fiction, making believe not to see him. There are always several hundred boys at Eton; at that period (1845) it numbered more than seven hundred. About one-tenth of these are Collegers. These Collegers are the nucleus of the whole system, and the only origi |