new things, new employment and a new sphere of action are the least likely to fit comfortably at first; but the power of adaptation is in ourselves. Each bears within him a principle of self-adjustment. The rough points which grate and fret us wear smooth by time; nor is there any independence so delightful to a noble mind as that which is felt in struggling with misfortune, mastering difficulties, and defeating, by the pliancy and versatility of our nature, the capricious demands of an imperious fortune.”

READING FOR A FIRST CLASS.

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CHAP. XII.

READING FOR A FIRST CLASS.

It is now time to indulge in a more pleasing view of academical studies as we visit our friend Whitbread, who, as I have already mentioned, had been up the greater part of the long vacation reading for a first class.

"Have the pass-men done their paper work yet?" asked Whitbread confusedly, hardly raising his eyes from his book. "However, the schools I dare say, will not be open to the class-men till Monday. I should like to have about one week more to secure two or three weak points; but Churton tells me that no man was ever known to feel quite ready. I suppose no man ever went into the schools but was conscious of some deficiency in which an examiner might floor him-if he were told whereabouts it was."

"Come, Whitbread, let me see your list of books." "If you had asked a fortnight ago I could not have shown it you; for when a man must make up a list of fifteen or sixteen, he will be a long time hesitating between another science or another poet, though he has made up his mind about his histories—for they

are far too heavy to leave to the last. Churton tells me, that in his day most men used to put down on their list two Decades of Livy when they had only read one, or the Annals of Tacitus, when they had not read fifty pages. At that time it was deemed necessary to make a great show, and the examiners were not so severe as they now are if they detect anything hollow or inaccurate in a man's reading." Whitbread's books were,

WHITBREAD AT HIS STUDIES.

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To explain the meaning of a class-man's list of books, I must observe, that every candidate is required to name the authors of which he considers he has a competent knowledge. For a first class, men seldom used to name less than fifteen; for a second, not less than twelve. This list is not supposed to contain all that the respective candidates have read, but all in which they can challenge an examination. Logic and Divinity are also indispensable. Pass-men might substitute four books of Euclid for logic.

"I am well prepared in science," said Whitbread. "In addition to the treatises on my list, I have read the Politics of Aristotle and the Republic of Plato." Why not give these up too?"

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He has let me a

"Churton recommends me not. little into the secrets of the schools. Examiners,' he says, know that it is difficult enough to prepare even the fifteen books which are usually expected for a First. Out of a dozen men who give up as many, nine or ten fail; so, a long list creates no favourable impression.""

Whitbread was well advised. A first class-man, lately in the schools, told me that he should have to read hard to qualify himself as an examiner. Most examiners have to "get up" for the purpose; and not a few have confessed, that when they look back on all the hard and dry technicalities, divisions, subdivisions, dates, and definitions which they had once been obliged to have at their fingers' ends, and without which no man can depend on giving an

examiner a favourable opinion of his reading, they wonder that they ever had perseverance and selfdenial enough to go through it.

It was once observed to me by one of the most experienced masters in the schools, that if a man pretended to have read more than usual of one subject, it was always suspected he had read less of another. No man of twenty-one years of age can be supposed to stand a searching examination in the meaning and the matter of more than sixteen Greek and Latin books of science, history, and poetry at the same time.

I have already observed that even candidates for classes must resort to a kind of cramming. Certainly it is a very legitimate kind. What I mean is this: every candidate must qualify himself not only with knowledge but the means of displaying it. A senior wrangler at Cambridge, and first-rate tutor, said that if he were to be examined again without preparation, probably he should not come out higher than a senior opt. He had forgotten many of the requisite formulæ, which candidates in the senate-house must have in their heads; so, also, a candidate for the Oxford classes must commit to memory many definitions and other minutiæ, which those who read only for their own satisfaction do not so much regard.

Still, believe me, Collegians, this labour, seemingly unimportant, involves severe mental discipline, exactness of mind, and exhaustive research; habits more valuable by far, you will one day find, than the

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