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cumstances of its introduction as such, the extent of its diffusion, both orally and in writing, the recorded facts relating to its discontinuance, and the traces of it that have descended to recent times, and even to the present day.

7. Explain the following words with reference to their etymologies:-alms, bishop, deck, doubt, fade, frail, hermit, journal, kind, minister, miscreant, monk, passion, patience, priest, surgeon.

8. State the changes of signification which the following words have undergone within the period in which the language has assumed its present form:-apprehend, censure, defend, disagreeable, Dutch, fear, graceful, imperious, ingenuity, kindly, let, lover, pretend, prevent, quick, resent, sad, tall.

9. Discriminate the meanings or legitimate applications of the following words:-acute and sharp; eager and keen; great and large; language, tongue, and speech; mortal, deadly, and death-like; grave, weighty, heavy, and cumbrous; wicked, sinful, criminal, depraved, and guilty.

10. State the objections that there are to the common spelling or received meanings of the following words :-bridegroom, causeway, could, island, livelihood, miniature, posthumous, shamefaced.

11. Note and explain whatever seems to be obscure or peculiar in the expression of the following passages from Bacon's Essays:

"All rising to great place is by a winding stair, and, if there be factions, it is good to side a man's self whilst he is on the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed."

"God never wrought miracle to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it."

"The mind of man is more cheered and refreshed by profiting in small things than by standing at a stay in great."

"It is the solecism of power to think to command the end, and yet not to endure the mean."

"Books will speak plain when counsellors blanch; therefore, it is good to be conversant in them, especially the books of such as themselves have been actors upon the stage.'

"When things are once come to the execution, there is no secrecy comparable to celerity; like the motion of a bullet in the air, which flieth so swift as it outruns the eye."

"An ant is a wise creature for itself, but it is a shrewd thing in an orchard or garden."

"It is the nature of extreme self-lovers as they will set an house on fire and it were but to roast their eggs."

"It is the care of some only to come off speedily for the time, or to contrive some false periods of business because they may seem men of despatch."

"Above all things, order and distribution and singling out of parts is the life of despatch, so as the distribution be not too subtile."

"Some are never without a difference, and commonly by amusing men with a subtility, blanch the matter."

"When a man's stock is come to that that he can expect the prime of markets, and overcome those bargains which for their greatness are few men's money, and be partner in the industries of younger men, he cannot but increase mainly."

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It draws the eye strangely, and makes it with great pleasure to desire to see that it cannot perfectly discern."

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Upon the matter, in a great wit deformity is an advantage to rising."

"Cast it also that you may have rooms both for summer and winter; shady for summer, and warm for winter."

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"It is better dealing with men in appetite than with those that are where they would be."

"Some embrace suits which never mean to deal effectually in them."

"Kings had need beware how they side themselves, and make themselves as a faction or party."

"In cases of great enterprise upon charge and adventure, a composition of glorious natures doth put life into business."

"Virtue was never so beholding to human nature as it received his due at the second hand."

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'Judges ought to be more learned than witty, more reverend than plausible, and more advised than confident."

"As for conflagrations and great droughts they do not merely dissipate and destroy."

"There appear to be two extremes......Both these extremes are to be avoided; which will be done......if the points fundamental and of substance in religion were truly discerned and distinguished from points not merely of faith, but of opinion, order, or good intention."

"Likewise glorious followers, who make themselves as trumpets of the commendation of those they follow, are full of inconvenience."

"Glorious men are the scorn of wise men, the admiration of fools, the idols of parasites, and the slaves of their own vaunts."

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.
3 P.M. TO 6 P.M.

Three only of these questions to be attempted.

1. Write a short but careful exposition of what appears to you to be the true conception of any one of the following characters of the Shakespearian Drama: Hamlet, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Lear, Falstaff.

2. Compare, or contrast, the Poetical Genius of Shakespeare with that of Milton.

3. Describe an Earthquake, a Volcanic Eruption, or a Shipwreck.

4. Write a narrative of the Indian Mutiny; not dwelling on details, but sketching rapidly the course of events, and so presenting a clear summary of what has happened down to the capture of Lucknow, with as little expression of opinion as possible.

5. The influence of public schools on English life.

ENGLISH HISTORY.

10 A.M. TO 1 P.M.

1. Write a life and character of Strafford.

2. Sketch the course of the principal events of the contest between the Crown and the Parliament from 1642 to the execution of the King.

3. Relate the history of the Petition of Right.

4. Describe Monmouth's Rebellion.

5. Give the history and provisions of the Declaration of Rights and the Bill of Rights, and explain the difference between them in regard to the Dispensing Power.

6. Trace the fortunes of the house of Stuart after 1688.

7. Give a sketch of Marlborough's campaigns.

8. Describe the series of events, both political and military, which ended in the acknowledgment of the independence of the United States of America.

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

3 P.M. TO 6 P.M.

Three only of these questions to be attempted.

1. Write an essay on the Elizabethan age.

2. Describe as vividly, and at the same time as accurately as you can, some one event or scene in English history.

3. Describe shortly, but as picturesquely as you can, any place that you have seen at home or abroad.

4. Write a letter from Milton to Richard Cromwell on the consolation afforded by the cultivation of literature in adversity.

5. Write a short essay on any one of the following subjects, treating it in your own way:-London; The British Empire; India; Language.

ENGLISH HISTORY.

10 A.M. TO 1 P.M.

1. Describe distinctly, in so many sentences or short paragraphs, the political position of South Britain at the following dates :-The middle of the 2nd century; of the 4th; of the 6th; of the 8th; and of the 10th: indicating the changes of population, of language, of religion, and of name, as well as of government, through which the country passed in those eight hundred years.

2. Sketch the course of events from the accession of Harold the Second to the coronation of William of Normandy; noticing the leading circumstances of the battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings, and comparing the latter with the battle of Flodden.

3. Explain what is generally held to have been the origin of the Courts of King's (or Queen's) Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer; the meaning of the titles of Chancellor and Justices in Eyre; and the original nature of Trial by Jury.

4. Explain the claim of Edward III. to the crown of France, stating precisely the several principles of succession which it involved or assumed.

5. Hallam mentions five great checks on the royal authority at the accession of Henry VII. Enumerate them.

6. State the origin, the powers, and the chief encroachments of the Court of the Star Chamber.

7. Give a short sketch of Scottish History during the reign of Henry VIII. 8. Give a distinct account of the succession of Parliaments throughout the reigns of James L. and Charles I.; noting briefly the most remarkable proceedings in each.

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

3 P.M. TO 6 P.M.

1. Give an account of the Brut of Layamon, or of the Ormulum, or of the Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, or of the Chronicle of Robert de Brunne, or of the Visions of Piers Plowman; noticing the date, authorship, language, form of verse, and subject.

2. Give a similar account of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, or of Gower's Confessio Amantis.

3. Sketch the origin and growth of the English drama to the appearance of Shakespeare.

4. Estimate the influence exercised by popular poetry on the character and spirit of a nation, and quote any striking passages that you may remember from English or Scottish ballads.

5. Compare Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden, Pope, and Wordsworth; first, in respect of the general spirit and manner of their poetry; and, secondly, in respect of their versification.

6. Sketch the biography of Pope, or of Swift, or of Johnson, or of Burke, or of Scott.

7. Give a short account of the principal English works of Francis Bacon; arranging them either in the order of time, or according to the departments to which they belong; and noticing generally the subject of each, and the manner in which it is treated.

8. State the argument of Milton's Monody of Lycidas, and explain the expressions printed in Italics in the following passage:

"For so to interpose a little ease,

Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise;
Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled,
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,

Where thou perhaps, under the whelming tide,
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,

Where the great vision of the guarded mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold;

Look homeward, angel, now, and melt with ruth:

And O! ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth."

9. Describe the course of the action either in Milton's Comus, or in his Samson Agonistes.

10. Compare Bacon and Burke, first as thinkers, and secondly as writers. 11. Characterize succinctly any six of the most distinguished English poetical writers of the present century, and any six of the most distinguished English writers in prose during the same period.

12. Enumerate and characterize briefly the principal English Parliamentary orators of the last and the present century.

13. From which of Shakespeare's plays is each of the following passages taken? Mention the character who utters them, and the context in which they occur, and explain the peculiarities of idiom and the allusions contained in them :

1. "But earthly happier is the rose distilled

Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn,

Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness."

2. "The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And, as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."

3. "I should not see the sandy hour-glass run
But 1 should think of shallows and of flats,
And see my wealthy Andrew docked in sand,
Vailing her high-top lower than her ribs,
To kiss her burial."

4.

5.

Why should I not, had I the heart to do it,
Like to the Egyptian thief at point of death
Kill what I love?

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages."

6. "Our revels now are ended: these our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

7. "It is the curse of kings to be attended
By slaves that take their humours for a warrant,
To break within the bloody house of life."

8. "How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds Makes ill deeds done!"

9. You, cousin Hereford, upon pain of death,
Till twice five summers have enriched our fields
Shall not regreet our fair dominions,

But tread the stranger paths of banishment."
10. "A pound of man's flesh taken from a man
Is not so estimable, profitable neither,
As flesh of muttons, beefs, or goats."

11. "She never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek; she pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat, like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at Grief."

12. "O! who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus,
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast,

Or wallow naked in December snow

By thinking on fantastic summer's heat."

13. "Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow, Being so troublesome a bedfellow?

O polished perturbation, golden care,
That keep'st the ports of slumber open wide
To many a watchful night, sleep with it now!
Yet not so sound, and half so deeply sweet,
As he, whose brow with homely biggin bound,
Snores out the watch of night."

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