COMPETITIVE EXAMINATION. 169 



me to have highest value for talent of all kinds ; and of 1847. 

 all well-read persons no one was so ready with an illus- 

 tration or a quotation, either in prose or poetry, suited to 

 the occasion. 



The Introductory Lecture given by the Mathematical 1848. 

 Professor on the opening of all the classes in University tory 

 College at the session of 1848, was on a question in 

 education on which he had thought much, and 011 which 

 his opinion had strengthened as his experience in teaching 

 increased. He considered competition the striving one 

 against another for the highest place among boys or young 

 men to be among the crudities of an imperfect system, 

 and to be as ineffectual in gaining the end either of making 

 the best scholar or showing the best scholar, as its moral 

 tendency is bad. 



It is quite true, as he himself has said to me in talking 

 of this subject, that the boys are generous and sharp enough 

 to see who deserves the prize, and very little ill-will or 

 jealousy ever comes into the competition; but they do 

 not know, any more than their teachers, how much easier 

 the work is for some than for others ; and as the teacher 

 cannot take this into account, injustice in one way can 

 hardly be avoided. Hence his objection to marks in look- 

 ing over examination papers. He said he could judge of 

 the merits of the competitor from the whole work, but he 

 could not reckon it up by marks, and he always refused 

 to examine in this way. But he also felt and often ex- 

 pressed his opinion of the terrible mischief to health done 

 by urging a young man to go a little beyond what he 

 could accomplish with interest and success if no undue 

 pressure were put upon him, and by the e cramming ' to 

 answer questions set at the pleasure of the examiners, in 

 place of the natural and well-directed effort to learn the 

 subject which an enlightened teacher can always evoke 

 in an intelligent pupil. He himself, a most successful 

 teacher, to whose instructions his pupils always looked 

 back with the consciousness that to him they owed the 



