Examiners only. For, in this scheme, there is no opportunity of testing, by questions such as the occasion and the preceding answers may suggest, whether the verbal reply to the questions be really accompanied by any intelligent thought in the mind of the examinee. And the answers of each person being unknown to his fellow-students, there is no public manifestation of the excellence which obtains success; which, in a more open system of examination, operates beneficially, by the example which it offers, and the sympathy which it draws. Even if the questions be published, still the kind of knowledge which the Examiners consider as meritorious is very vaguely and ambiguously indicated by the questions, as I have already said. The standard of excellence is nowhere exhibited to the public, and is to be found only in the breasts of the Examiners. However highly the Examiners may be esteemed for ability and integrity, the want of any habitual manifestation of that which they consider excellence, must involve the minds of candidates in perplexity. Those candidates who are eager for success, will try to obtain guidance from those who are supposed to have any peculiar sagacity, or peculiar information, which may enable them to foresee the course of an Examination, or the judgment of Examiners. They will try to procure, as their Private Tutors, those persons who have recently been successful in the Examinations; or, if the constitution of the University allows it, those who have been, or are to be, Examiners; and will receive their instructions with passive and unquestioning mind, not as the means of understanding languages and sciences; but as being, for their purpose, the standard of truth and of excellence.

157 The evil will again be increased, if the Examiners are not permanent officers, or members of a permanent official body, but a perpetual succession of persons new to the office. For a body of Examiners,

permanent, or slowly changing, has its traditions, which give a certain degree of fixity to the matter and method of the Examinations, even when they are left free by the laws but when there is not this influence operating in favour of fixity, each new Examiner will have a propensity to put forwards his own favourite subjects, and to introduce the newest steps, which, as he conceives, have been made in the application of knowledge, and the mode of presenting it. Hence the Examinations will, in their subjects and course, undergo perpetual innovations, which will still more drive the candidates to seek guidance in such Private Tuition as I have described; and will prevent that patient and persevering study of standard truths and models, which I have mentioned as essential to the beneficial influence of Permanent Educational Studies.

158 I do not draw the above sketch of the evils belonging to a system of mere Examinations, as a representation of what exists among ourselves; but as a picture of what we are to avoid. We have at work among us some of the tendencies which I have pointed out; and the consequences which these tendencies, when fully developed, must, as we have seen, produce, are strong reasons for repressing and counteracting them. One main means of doing this is, as I have said, to secure a correspondence between the Examinations of the University and the College Lectures; and also, with regard to some of the subjects of our teaching, a correspondence between the Examinations and the Lectures of the Professors. And I shall proceed to offer some remarks on the way in which this correspondence may be established and preserved.

I have already stated that, in order to make our Education really an intellectual culture, we ought to have our Permanent Studies established among us in a Standard Form; namely, Classical Authors, and Standard Systems of Elementary Mathematics (54).

Having such a Standard Form for our studies, we shall not have much difficulty in accommodating our Examinations to our Lectures, and our Lectures to our Examinations. But there are some further remarks with regard to the means of securing such a correspondence, which apply to Progressive as well as to Permanent Studies; and these I shall now proceed

to state.

160 There is one arrangement which will naturally give rise to that correspondence of the Lectures and the Examinations which we have seen to be so desirable and important; namely, that in which the Lecturers or Professors are themselves the Examining Body; for they will then, of course, so shape their Lectures as to prepare their pupils for the Examinations; and so conduct the Examinations as to encourage and reward attention to their instructions. Objections are sometimes made to this arrangement; but where it is attainable, its advantages much preponderate*. It is conceived that it may tinge the whole course of study with the mannerism of the Professors or Lecturers: but this danger is slight, especially when the Lectures and Examinations are public, and the mode of appointing the Lecturers or Professors such as to make them able and zealous officers. The value of any branch of literature or science as an element of Education, will be little impaired by its bearing traces of the mannerism of the teacher; besides which, the system is no less likely to be affected by the mannerism of the Examiners, when they are a distinct body from the Teachers. If the Examiners be a body more rapidly changing than the Professors or the Lecturers, the danger is greater on this side; for, as I have already said, in a body of Examiners so consti

*

See Principles of English University Education, p. 60, for remarks on this subject.

tuted, there is a tendency to the love of novelty and the infusion of individual notions. If we had a body of Professors and Teachers established as a permanent Examining Body, it might be expected that their Examinations would be more stable, coherent, and definite, than those of a rapidly changing series of Examiners.

161 But there is a real and weighty objection to the identity of the Teachers with the Examiners, in the difficulty of carrying it into effect upon a large scale. For if teaching be a laborious task, examining a large number of men in subjects of great extent is no less so; and the combination of the two offices, to be discharged with reference to the whole University, would make the task of the University Teachers too oppressive. It is only in bodies of moderate extent, as single Colleges, that such an arrangement can be practised; and even in such cases, other Examiners are generally combined with the Teachers, partly as a relief of the labour, and partly as a mode of making the whole College participate in the business of Education. But in a University, where the Examinations include Candidates who have received their instruction in different Colleges, the Examiners, so far, at least, as the subjects of College Lectures, namely Classics and Elementary Mathematics, are concerned, must be a body distinct from the Teachers; although, of course, many of the same individuals may belong to both. And we must consider other ways than the identity of the acting persons, by which the necessary correspondence of Teaching and Examinations may be secured, and the evils of a system of mere Examinations avoided.

162 I have already said that the evils of a system of Education depending entirely upon Examinations for its efficacy, are much greater in a system of mere paper Examinations; in which the answers of the examinees are given upon paper, and afterwards read and judged by the examiner.

An Examination conducted vivá voce, the questions being asked and the answers returned by word of mouth, has several advantages over an Examination on paper. One of the greatest of these, supposing of course the University in general to be admitted to the Examination-hall, is its publicity. The questions and the answers are heard by all who choose to hear, and there is a constant and ready means of learning the course taken by the Examiners, and the character of the performances which are approved. The Teachers can constantly compare their course of instruction with the standard of excellence on which the Examiners proceed, and can compare both with that Idea of a good Educational System, to which both ought to conform. Moreover the University Examination conducted viva voce, naturally gives interest and importance to College Lectures, which are conducted in the same manner, and which may thus become a preparation for exercises to be performed before the University. Again, the knowledge, quickness, and happiness of expression which are displayed by a student who passes a vivá voce examination well, will draw to the proceeding a degree of sympathy which can never be given to a paper examination. Add to which, that special difficulties and points of importance naturally become prominent in habitual subjects of oral Examination, and become familiar to the minds of students by attendance at the Examinations. On all these accounts a public oral Examination is a good instrument of Education.

163 Though Examinations conducted vivá voce have these advantages, they have, in a great measure, been superseded by paper Examinations in the University of Cambridge. This has arisen from various causes; and among others, from certain inconveniences attendant upon viva voce Examinations, and certain advantages or supposed advantages in paper [PT. I.]

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