848 
PROCEEDINGS OE SECTION J. 
to conceal from an individual here and there his defective knowledge, 
“but he cannot conceal it from all. The boys may be slow in finding a 
man out, but it is certain they will ultimately find him out, and in 
such a case boys are merciless. An inspector has then an almost 
infallible test under his immediate notice. Again, he observes the 
order and discipline of a school. These matters constitute the thrift 
of the institution; wasted time, wasted work, are the costly price of 
laxity, behind which mischief certainly comes a fall in the standard of 
efficiency and of results. It is well known that the ripest and most 
profound scholars and thinkers occasionally fail in the power of dis- 
cipline. The very eminent Frederick Denison Maurice lectured amidst 
continuous uproar. That famous electrician James Clark Maxwell’s 
class-room was usually a bear-garden. Blackie, of Edinburgh, and 
Bentley, of King’s College, London, are similar instances of this 
deficiency of control. The noise and confusion of some school-rooms 
have been such that, in his young experiences at Marlborough, Farrar 
said a teacher required the voice of a Stentor, the hands of a Briareus, 
and the eyes of an Argus. Nothing in its own way is so pitiable as the 
spectacle of a man who can teach, but is unfit for rule. An inspector 
thus requires no great insight to perceive where discipline reigns or 
where it fails. But to find the complete inspector is admittedly a 
difficult question. For, as Dr. Fitch remarks : ‘‘Anyone with a full 
knowledge of the subject taught, and a little practice in the art of 
setting questions and in assigning the relative merits of answers, can 
find out what a class has learned, and can arrange it in order of merit, 
but to estimate the work of a school as a whole is a much more difficult 
task. It requires a judicial cast of mind, perfect fairness, and freedom 
from crotchets, a mind ready to recognise all forms of good work, and 
a large measure of personal tact, insight, and sympathy. 
Practically the best means of estimating a school as a going 
concern in the matters of intellectual discipline and moral character 
is by close inspection. 
I am now led to consider the influence of public examination upon 
school work. 
This class of public examination is now very fully in the hands 
of universities. By way of scholarships, leaving certificates, matricu- 
lation examination, and similar devices, universities exert an increasing 
measure of control over grammar school work. The publishing houses 
of the Empire offer on this point ample testimony, Every year adds, 
I believe, to the list of books published for the purposes of certain 
examinations. Many very adverse criticisms have been offered as to 
the quality and value of these books, but as they form now an adjunct 
of the examination system, their influence on education is matter for 
consideration. 
A great many of them have come under my notice, and I may 
thus venture an opinion that they are at least as good as the better 
class of the older books displaced. They are at any rate better than 
Antlion, Ellis, the Delphin additions, with their circumference of crib, 
and the Irish books. Set books added to the university examinations 
determine the course of study of hundreds of grammar schools. It 
* J. G. Fitch, in International Conference on Education, 1., p. 235. The matter 
quoted from Farrar above is in a lecture given at Cambridge to the Teachers’ Associa- 
tion in 1883, published by Clar. Press. 
