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EXAMINATION OF FEMALE TRAINING SCHOOLS.

SECTION III.

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1. Name the possessions of England in Africa, and give a full description of the physical features and condition of one of these possessions.

2. Name the rivers of Hindoostan, and describe the course of the Ganges.

3. Give a clear account of New Zealand, its physical features, and the past and present condition of the inhabitants.

4. Which of the British Colonies are most important for population, natural and artificial productions? Support your statement by facts.

SECTION IV.

1. Name the chief cities of Asia, and state on what account they are severally remarkable.

2. Name the United States of America, distinguishing the free States by a cross; and give some account of the climate and population of the North-Western States.

3. Name the countries between the Indus and the Red Sea, and give a brief account of the physical features, the chief cities, and the customs of the inhabitants. SUPPLEMENTARY.

1. Describe the currents of the Atlantic Ocean, and their effects upon navigation, and upon the climate of the adjoining countries.

2. Describe the scenery of the Alps, and give an account of the glaciers.

3. Describe the causes and effects of the monsoon."

4. Give a general account of the geological structure of the British Isles, and explain its bearing upon the condition and occupations of the inhabitants.

5. Enumerate the most remarkable animals found in Australia, Egypt, and South America. Give an account of the structure and habits of one in each locality, showing its adaptation to the climate and other circumstances.

6. Describe the principal phenomena of the Arctic Zone.

7. Enumerate the chief divisions of the human race, and describe the characteristic features and habits of the most remarkable.

8. Describe the chief vegetable productions of Ceylon, Australia, and Canada.

9. Compare the temperature and climate of the following places,-Madeira, New York, Rio Janeiro, Lisbon, Canton, and account for the difference.

10. Describe the movements of the earth, and the effects of those movements upon the seasons, the ocean, and the atmosphere.

ARITHMETIC.
SECTION I.

1. What is meant by a system of Numeration? What by a system of Notation? When is a system said to be decimal?

2. Show how you can divide by 10, 100, 1,000, &c., more easily than by any other number. If in multiplying by 7,000, we multiply by 7 and add three figures, what principles are illustrated by the process?

3. What do you mean by reducing fractions into lowest terms? Show the correctness of the process employed. Prove by means of a diagram that } = £.

SECTION II.

1. If a piece of ribbon measures 21 yards 2 nails, how many bonnets can be trimmed with 17 such pieces, suppose each bonnet requires 2 yards? How many crowns, half-crowns, shillings, and groats, amount to £99. 16s. 4d., taking of each an equal number?

2. A man spends £155. 5s. 7d. per year, how much will he lay by in 37 years out of £200 per annum?

If 6 million visitors entered the Crystal Palace in 26 weeks, what was the average attendance per day?

3. Find by Practice the value of 8,632 articles, at £1. 14s. 3 d.

£1,280 is divided among three persons, so that their portions are as 5, 3, 2, respectively, how much does each receive?

SECTION III.

1. Find the sum, difference, product, and quotient of 27 and 5.

The sum realized by a bankrupt's estate is £7,848, being of his debts, find the amount of the debts, and the dividend paid.

2. How long will it take 17 men to earn £50, if 12 men in 6 days can earn 13 guineas?

3. Divide 71 by 635. Find the value of 178 of a mile. Express 75 of a shilling as decimals of each of the coins of the realm.

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EXAMINATION OF FEMALE TRAINING SCHOOLS.

SECTION IV.

1. Find the interest on £895 at 24 per cent. for 7 years 2 months. How long will it be before £374, put out at interest at 4 per cent., will realize a profit

of £100?

2. There are 2 schools, one containing 650 children, and the other 340 children: 5 per cent. of the former are generally absent, 7.5 of the latter what is the average attendance in each ?

The present worth of a debt, due 6 months hence, is £25. 10s., and the rate of discount is 6 per cent. per annum, what is the amount of the debt?

3. Sold 16 cwt. 2 qrs. of soap, which cost £2. 6s. 8d. per cwt., at 64d. per lb., what was the gain upon the whole, and also per cwt.

SECTION V.

1. Compare the advantages of a decimal system having £1 for the unit, with those of one which has a farthing for the unit.

2. What is the readiest way of converting our present money into decimals of £1 ? Give examples.

3. Add together the 18th part of £45, the 19th part of £23, and the 20th of £86; 7 flo. 5 cents. 7 mils.

SECTION VI.

1. What books are required in book-keeping by single entry, and what is the use of each ?

2. What are the respective advantages of single and double entry?

SCHOOL MANAGEMENT.

1. From the subjoined extract from a class register calculate the average age of the children, the average attendance for the week, the number present at all, and the average number of days attended by each child present at all.

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2. Prepare the heads for a series of six lessons on physical geography for your first class; and state clearly what illustrations you propose to use for each lesson.

3. Describe fully the apparatus and illustrations you intend to use for collective lessons in natural history. To what extent do you propose to teach natural history? Give your reasons for this.

4. What faculties of children are called in active exercise by a good lesson on each of the following subjects: Colour, the Structure of an Insect, Climate, the Character of Jacob? Give clear reasons for your statement.

5. Upon what principles does the cultivation of memory depend? By what exercises is it best prepared to acquire, retain, and reproduce useful information?

6. What do you mean by method? Explain the relation between principles and methods; and illustrate this by examples.

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7. What exercises are best calculated to train children to acquire knowledge for themselves?

8. What are the chief practical objections to the elliptic and simultaneous methods? How can these objections be obviated?

9. What do you mean by the organization of schools? Upon what principles does its efficiency and success chiefly depend?

10. To what extent, in what subjects, and under what circumstances do you consider the assistance of ladies as visitors desirable?

[We will insert a few more next month.—ED. E. J. E.]

FACTS v. FICTIONS.

Précis of correspondence between an Experimentalist and a Theorist; relative to the movements attributed to the Moon, to account for the fact that she presents always the same hemisphere towards the Earth, so that one-half of her surface has never been visible from our planet.

EXPERIMENTALIST TO THEORIST.

(WITH A PAMPHLET.)

I've plann'd, adapted, and combined
Experiments of every kind;

With Facts and Reasons, old and new;
To prove your Doctrine can't be true.
Examining, by rigid Tests,
The Data upon which it rests,
I find your Causes won't produce
The Consequences you deduce !—
And, as the like investigations
Have more important applications,
I earnestly invite, and claim,
All due attention to the same.

HERETIC.

THEORIST TO EXPERIMENTALIST.

I thank you kindly for your Book;
At which I've had a hasty look.-
Your Notions don't with Ours agree;
And, therefore, you are wrong-not We :
What you deem false, We say is true;
And, therefore, We are right-not you.
I have not time, nor inclination,
To give your Facts consideration;
But your Deductions are Perversions,
When contrary to Our Assertions.

Whereby it's evident, you see,
That you're confuted.-Q. E. D.

"Authorities can not be wrong"
Is still the burden of their song!

"Quoth Hudibras--It is in vain
(I see) to argue 'gainst the grain :
For obstinacy's ne'er more stiff
Than when it's in a wrong belief."

DOGMATIST.

HERETIC.

S. BUTLER.

Notes of New Books.

The Office and Work of Universities. By the Very Reverend John H. Newman, D.D., of the Oratory. Pp. 384. London: Longmans. HESE Essays, for such they are, written by Dr. Newman, set forth sity, of which the writer is the Rector. Let no Protestant lay this book down as a missile of Papacy unfit for his contemplation. If he do so, he will unworthily and groundlessly deprive himself of much profitable and remarkably eloquent wisdom on the general topic of education, in its high and comprehensive spheres; and especially of much experience and fruitful suggestions therefrom drawn out and well set forth, on the management and due moulding of Universities. We approve of much, very much, of the aims of this book, as they stand forth in its plainly written pages. We adopt in some measure its lucid description of what a University ought to be, together with its work character and methods. We admire still more highly the bold and earnest spirit of the writer, affording a wholesome contrast to the narrow self-seeking motives and furtive caution of the great bulk of the thinkers and actors in these morbid times. Right well and fearlessly says Dr. Newman :—

"If I am charged with being shallow on the one part, or off-hand on the other; if I myself feel that fastidiousness at my own attempts that grows upon an author as he multiplies his compositions, I shall console myself with the reflection that life is not long enough to do more than our best, whatever that may be; and they who are ever taking aim make no hits; that they who never venture never gain; that to be ever safe is to be ever feeble; and that to do some substantial good is the compensation for much incidental imperfection."

It is

We believe that this is the true path to all human usefulness. just the one main distinction between the useless conformist to whatever reigns, and the useful adventurer into the realms of new truth : whence the progress of civilization derives its strength and sustenance, and where earnest endeavours grapple with the barriers and barnacles by which prejudice and error fortify their strongholds and hoodwink mankind.

Dr. Newman's ideal of a University seems to be summed up in these words, though he expatiates on it through many pages, and presents it in various aspects, we regret to say, of unattainable excellence::

"It is a place of concourse whither students come from every quarter for every kind of knowledge. You cannot have the best of every kind everywhere; you must go to some great city or emporium for it. There you have all the choicest productions of nature and art all together, which you find each in its own separate place elsewhere. All the riches of the land, and of the world are carried up thither; there are the best markets, and there the best workmen. It is the centre of trade, the supreme court of fashion, the umpire of rival skill, and the standard of things rare and precious. It is the place for seeing galleries of first-rate pictures, and for hearing wonderful voices and miraculous [sic] performers. It is the place for great preachers,

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great orators, great nobles, great statesmen. In the nature of things, greatness and unity go together; excellence implies a centre. Such then, for the third or fourth time, is a University."

Now really it is not a University at all, but rather the Metropolis of an Utopia. But the picture is not yet complete, and the Reverend writer invests his idol with other perfections. It is also to be—

"A place to which a thousand schools make contributions; in which the intellect may safely range and speculate, sure to find its equal in some antagonist activity, and its judge in the tribunal of truth. It is [also to be] a place where inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries verified and perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, and error exposed, by the collision of mind and mind, and knowledge with knowledge. It is a place where the professor becomes eloquent, and a missionary and preacher of science, displaying in its most complete and most winning form, pouring it forth with the zeal of enthusiasm, and lighting up his own love of it in the breasts of his hearers. It is the place where the catechist makes good his ground as he goes, treading in the truth day by day into the ready memory, and wedging and tightening it into the expanding reason. It is a place which attracts the affections of the young by its fame, wins the judgment of the middle-aged by its beauty, and rivets the memory of the old by its associations. It is a seat of wisdom, a light of the world, a minister of the faith, an Alma Mater of the rising generation. It is this and a great deal more[!]. Such is it in its idea and in its purpose; such in good measure has it before now been in fact."

Now this-with great respect to Dr. Newman-it never has been; nor has anything one tithe as perfect ever existed on earth, nor in all human likelihood ever will; and of this prophecy he seems himself to entertain the possible truth, for he concludes his glowing rhapsody with this extraordinary climax: "Shall it ever be again? We are going forward in the strength of the Cross, under the patronage of Mary, in the name of Patrick, to attempt it."

The office of the Cross is to redeem the sinner, and not to forestall a millennium, and institute a state of corporate perfection, which our holy religion teaches us to be incompatible with human imperfectibility. And if the Cross itself affords no earnest of such success on earth, we fear that neither Mary or Patrick will supplement its power, or greatly help the "Very Reverend the Rector" to establish an academic heaven in Ireland. Nothing can exceed the utterly visionary beauty of the aspirations (for he cannot possibly suppose them to be practicabilities) of the idea of a model University, which the benevolent writer paints with a spirit of enthusiastic optimism especially refreshing to read in this day of neological dogmas and materialistic objects, so rife in carnalities and so intent on self-interests.

The wisdom of the highly-gifted writer shines forth more fully in his negative than in his positive portrait of University attributes:

"With influence there is life, without it there is none; if influence is deprived of its due position, it will not by those means be got rid of, it will only break out irregularly, dangerously. An academical system without the personal influence of teachers upon pupils, is an arctic winter; it will create an ice-bound, petrified, cast-iron university, and nothing else. You will not call this any new notion of mine; and you will not suspect, after what happened to me a long twenty-five years ago, that I can ever be induced to think otherwise. No! I have known a time in a great school of letters when things went on for the most part by mere routine, and form took the place of earnestness. I have experienced a state of things in which teachers were cut off from the taught as by an insurmountable barrier; when neither party entered into the thoughts of the other; when each lived by and in itself; when the tutor was supposed to fulfil his duty, if he trotted on like a squirrel in his cage-if at a certain hour he was in a certain room, or in hall, or in chapel, as it might be; and the pupil

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