those above mentioned, which would deserve to exclude the others; and if there were only one or two subjects, they would soon be exhausted, and the Examination would degenerate into technical conventionalities; (a declension by which Examinations of this kind have already upon former occasions fallen into disrepute at Cambridge.) To have a considerable circle of subjects, such as I have mentioned, would avert this danger; for, being brought into notice, one after another, year after year, they would all be known to those who follow the University studies for a few years. A group of four or five friends, differing each a year from one another, would be acquainted with the whole circle of these subjects: and we know how much the members of such groups impart to each other, in the way of literature and interest in literature. The whole range of the appointed subjects would be generally known to active students, as all the plays of Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides are generally known to students, in consequence of one or more of them being every year selected for special study in most of our Colleges. I am fully persuaded, that if such an Examination were instituted, the extension of the knowledge of the great works above mentioned which would take place in the University would be most rapid and striking.

335 But if certain subjects are to be prescribed beforehand as special subjects of Examination for each year, by whom are they to be selected? We have already several instances in which such selection is made by eminent officers of the University: but I must avow, that for this office I should be disposed to institute a new Board, a Board of Classical Studies; an institution which would, I think, have other advantages also. I would propose that this Board should be constituted in a manner similar to the Board of Mathematical Studies lately established. There should be, as the permanent element of this Board, the Regius

Professors of Greek, Hebrew and Divinity, and the Public Orator: and as the mutable element, the Examiners of the Classical Tripos for the present and two preceding years. Such a Board would be well fitted to select and announce the portions of the above books or other similar ones, which should form the substantial subjects for the Classical Tripos. The announcement might take place one or two years before the Examination, according to some fixed rule. The Board of Classical Studies might also discharge other offices similar to those of the Board of Mathematical Studies: they might have it for their duty "to consult together from time to time on all matters relating to the actual state of" Classical "Studies and Examinations in the University; and to prepare annually," or occasionally "and lay before the Vice-Chancellor a Report, to be by him published to the University." Such a Report might, for instance, give a sanction to the introduction of new subjects, from time to time, into the circle of subjects included in the substantial Examination. It would be convenient to the University to have some organ by which it could proclaim to the students that from henceforth some new work, ancient or modern, Cicero's Republic for instance, or Niebuhr's Rome, is to be a special subject of study.

The proposal of such a Board is connected with other suggestions which I have to offer with regard to the study of the Moral Sciences, and to those I will now proceed.

SECT. 3. The Moral Sciences Tripos.

336 The subjects included in the Examination for the Moral Sciences Tripos are the following: Moral Philosophy, Political Economy, Modern History, General Jurisprudence, and the Laws of England. The Examiners are the Regius Professor of

Law, the Professor of Moral Philosophy, the Professor of Modern History, the Downing Professor of the Laws of England, the Professor of Political Economy, and an additional Examiner appointed by the Senate. The time of Examination is soon after the Examination for the Degree of B.A., and all persons who pass that Examination are admitted as Candidates; as are also all persons who have passed the Examinations for the Degree of Bachelor of Civil Law or Bachelor of Physic.

The list of sciences included in this Examination was selected rather as comprising subjects already recognized in the University by the existence of Professorships tending to promote their cultivation, than with a view of offering a complete scheme of Moral Sciences. General Jurisprudence was understood to be comprehended in the Lectures and Examinations of the Regius Professor of Laws. Perhaps International Law might have been properly added to the above subjects. It is closely connected with these, forming, as it were, the intermediate step between Morality and History: and it has been, to a considerable extent, habitually treated of in the Lectures on Civil Law.

337 The more precise determination of the nature of the Examination for the Moral Sciences Tripos will be effected by the Examinations of the first few years. The Professors, who are also the Examiners, will, it is to be presumed, explain in their Lectures the course which their Examination will take; and will point out the books which the students must read, in addition to the Lectures, in order to prepare themselves for the Examination. I shall perhaps hereafter endeavour to present a plan of some portion at least of an arrangement of the above subjects, with a view to this purpose.

We have never, in this University, ceased to have

some tradition of a scheme of the Moral Sciences, fitted for general study. Rutherforth's Institutes of Natural Law is a work which contains such a scheme; and which is not yet obsolete, inasmuch as it is frequently quoted by writers, and used in other places of education; and is one of the books referred to in the Lectures on Civil Law given here. The substance of this work was originally delivered as Lectures on Grotius de Jure Belli et Pacis, in St John's College, Cambridge. It was published in 1754, and used among us much later; and many other works on Morality were published at still later periods, having reference to the pursuit of such studies in Cambridge, till we come to Paley's "Moral and Political Philosophy," which was the book mainly read in recent times; and indeed is still used among us; though of late years Paley's views are rejected by many members of the University. In several Colleges also, Moral and Philosophical Subjects have been retained up to the present time as Subjects of Examinations and Lectures; so that the study of the "Moral Sciences" (if they may be so called) has never been extinguished. It has, however, been so far thrown into the back ground by the predominant attention bestowed upon Classics and Mathematics, that it has formed a very small part, or no part at all, of the occupation of by far the greater portion of our students, and undoubtedly this exclusion of a class of subjects which are so important an element of a really Liberal Education, was a great defect in the system recently prevailing at Cambridge; a defect which the establishment of the Moral Sciences Tripos (along with the accompanying measures,) was needed to remedy. We trust that, in the course of a few years, these measures will bring back the "Moral Sciences" to their due place in our Cambridge Education.

338 A scheme of the Moral Sciences, or at least

of several of them, may be conceived to be implied in the Lectures and Examinations in Civil Law; for these refer not only to the Roman Law and its various applications in ancient and modern times, but also to questions of Morality, of Equity, of International Law, and of English Law; and books are recommended bearing both upon these subjects and upon Modern History. The general scheme of the subjects thus included in the study of the Civil Law at Cambridge is to be found in the Analysis of the Civil Law, published in 1779 by Dr Hallifax, the Regius Professor; and again edited with alterations and additions, so as to adapt it to his own Course of Lectures, by his successor Dr Geldart. In this Analysis, various works are named, as those in which the matter is contained by which the outline is to be filled up. On the subject of the Civil Law itself, besides the “Institutiones” of Justinian, which of course forms the groundwork, we find Wood's Institutes of the Civil Law, Taylor's Elements of the Civil Law, the Elementa Juris Civilis of Heineccius, as also his Antiquitates Romanæ and his Historia Juris Civilis, and the Commentaries of Hoppius and others. We find also works upon English Law; Blackstone's Commentaries, and Burn's Ecclesiastical Law. Along with these are introduced works upon what is called "Natural Law," as Grotius De Jure Belli et Pacis and Rutherforth's Institutes of Natural Law, already mentioned. There are also works of a more historical kind, as Montesquieu's Esprit des Loix, Sullivan's Lectures on the Feudal and English Laws; and works directly historical, as Robertson's History of Charles the Fifth, Lord Lyttelton's History of Henry the Second.

339 It will hardly be denied that an effectual study of a body of well selected works of this character would be a very valuable element in a Liberal Education. It is as implying such a class of subjects, that