IV EXAMINATIONS 183 



the colleges. The competition is not amongst in- 

 dividuals or small impoverished schools, but amongst 

 wealthy colleges. Accordingly the teaching never 

 sinks to so low an ebb as in London ; college endow- 

 ments and the college monopoly of fees enable the 

 Oxford and Cambridge colleges to employ men of 

 ability and culture as " trainers " for the examination 

 stakes, and each college competes with its neighbours. 

 But a curious result of the combined system of college 

 monopoly and special examiners is that the univer- 

 sity professors are, in regard to most subjects taught 

 in colleges, left without occupation, having, as a 

 rule, very few pupils and no voice in the examina- 

 tions. 



The result of these arrangements, whether in 

 Oxford and Cambridge or in London, is that the 

 examinations acquire an undesirable importance. A 

 man refers throughout his life to the fact that he 

 obtained a "first-class" as a sort of perpetual testi- 

 monial, and as the complement of this attitude the 

 examination is insensibly, and without deliberate 

 intention, made more difficult every year. The men 

 who have been themselves examined in this way, and 

 who have taught in connection with this system, in 

 due course become examiners or assist in preparing 

 schedules of the examination, and each gives a turn to 

 the screw until the condition is arrived at when a 

 candidate for honours has no time to read or to think, 

 but must rush, note-book in hand, from one skilful 

 lecturer or coach to another, who undertake to put 

 him through "all that is necessary for the examina- 



