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graved maps is imitated, which occupies much more time and possesses no practical advantage.

The following may be named as comprehensive compendiums.

Somerville's Physical Geography, 2 vols.
Guyot's Earth and Man.

William Hughes' Geography, 2 vols.

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

The Examiners in English Literature noticed in the last examination, that some of the candidates sent in a large number of answers to the questions given, some of which were superficial and wanting in accuracy.

To prevent a recurrence of this, it is intended in future to limit the examination of each candidate to any two of the authors on the schedule, which he may select for himself.

The examination in these two subjects will be rigid. The scope and tendency of the work under consideration, its peculiarities of style, its relation to contemporary literature, its influence on society and the biography of its author, will form the basis of the examination. The candidate will also be expected to define the position of the writer in respect to his contemporaries, the probable sources from which he derived his materials, and the influence exerted on him by the age in which he lived. Some knowledge also of the great epochs and divisions of English literature will be required.

An acquaintance with all or the most important of the works of the two authors selected will be useful; a thorough knowledge of the two works specified will be indispensable.

The Examiners recommend the candidate to pay great attention to the exact meaning of the words of the author he is studying. They would advise him not to shrink from the trouble of registering on paper the more important words in an orderly and systematic manner, or from endeavouring to develop step by step

the various meanings in which those words are used and the chain by which their meanings are bound together.

As there may be some danger, that such an exercise, useful as it is, may superinduce a mere love of verbal subtleties, instead of an honest desire of discovering the full meaning of the author, the Examiners think it advisable to vary this exercise with another. They would recommend that by frequent reading and analysis, the student should endeavour to master the mind of his author, to understand the order in which the work develops itself, to trace the connection between its several parts, with their relation to each other and to the great end which the author had in view. This, it is true, is not to be accomplished without great labour, but the student has this encouragement; that the insight, however small, which he gains, by this method, into the mind of a great writer, will be of more value for his own selfimprovement than any amount of opinions gained from others, with which he may load his memory.

The following is the course on which the next examination will take place. Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Spenser's Fairy Queen, First Book. Shakespeare: King John, Henry IV., Hamlet, Macbeth. Bacon: First Book of the Novum Organum in English (Bohn); the Advancement of Learning. Milton's Paradise Lost, First Six Books. Dryden: Virgil's Æneid, First Six Books. Spectator. Pope: Homer's Iliad, First Eight Books. Butler's Analogy (The Religious Tract Society's Edition), with the Introduction, and the Three Sermons on Human Nature. Wordsworth: Excursion, or Lyrical Ballads. Tennyson.

Candidates may take up any two, but not more than two of the above authors.

ENGLISH HISTORY.

Although the Examiners in English History have reason to feel satisfied at the results of the last examination, yet they feel it their duty to offer the following suggestions for the guidance of future Candidates.

1. In commencing the study of English History, it will be advisable for the student to divide the whole subject into epochs. These will be the Roman, AngloSaxon, Norman, Plantagenet, Tudor, Stuart, and Hanoverian. Before he proceeds to examine each of these epochs in detail, he will find it useful to gain some information of the countries, races, and people to which they respectively point; and he is to connect these important topics of inquiry with his peculiar historical studies.

2. In studying each of these epochs (if possible, consecutively), he is advised to proportion his attention to their relative importance; and to adopt the same caution in reference to the events and the reigns embraced in each single epoch. Instead of bestowing the same degree of labour on the reign of each single sovereign, he is rather to select the most conspicuous sovereign in each dynasty and each epoch, and to take that sovereign's reign as a guide and illustration for the rest. He is to follow the same rule in every single reign; beginning with studying carefully the great and prominent facts of the reign, considering them as the indices to guide him to the true understanding of the more dubious and obscure. Thus in his historical studies he is to adopt the common rule of prudence, determining minor facts and less important characters by the greater and the more illustrious; not the greater and more illustrious by the more questionable and obscure.

3. Although the Examiners think that a special illustration of these remarks is in some measure beyond their province, and might possibly narrow the application of

them, yet that their meaning may be more clear, the following details are subjoined.

Of the various epochs already mentioned, 1st. The Roman divides itself into two.

The first period extends from the invasion of Julius Cæsar to the time of Julius Agricola, and is occupied in the subjugation of the island. The second is the civilized Roman period; when Britain became a province like other portions of the Empire. 2ndly. The AngloSaxon divides itself into Pagan and Christian. 3rdly. The Norman ending with Stephen, also is divided into two; the Conquest of England under William, and the union of the two races in the marriage of Henry I. 4thly. The Plantagenet King derived from a different part of the soil, is from his local position interested in other questions than the Norman; yet in relation to his English as well as his French dominions, he carries out the great principle of his race. Either like Henry II. he is asserting the laws of the Crown against the laws of the Clergy, as in the controversy with Thomas à Becket; or like John, the rights of the Sovereign against the Pope. And when by surrendering his crown, the king had forsaken this principle, he brings out the nation to assert its rights against himself and the Pope. Under Henry III. by a similar vacillation and bad faith, the necessity is shown of a permanent expression of the national mind, in the House of Commons. In Edward I. the King prosecutes a legal claim to Wales and Scotland; or in Edward III. a similar claim to France; the same principle is the object of all. Then follows the gradual breaking up of that dynasty and the whole mediæval epoch of English History, from the usurpation of Henry IV. to the union of the two houses in Henry VII. and the total loss of all those foreign possessions, during the tenure of which every king from the Norman Conquest, while a native to one part of his dominions, was necessarily a foreigner to the rest.

The nation is then drawn round the Tudor king more closely and compactly. His new position and his past

experience bring out a new principle, held by all the Sovereigns of this House, but asserted by all in a different way; viz. their Royal Supremacy. It is asserted by Henry VII. against the nobles; by Henry VIII. against the Pope and the ecclesiastics; by Elizabeth against both; and even by Mary her sister, against her Protestant subjects. The tendency of the whole policy of the Tudors is domestic; but the love of display in Henry VIII., in Elizabeth the assertion of nationality against Philip II., caused these sovereigns even against their will to interfere in the general politics of Europe.

A different dynasty commences with the Stuarts, ending with the union of Scotland and England; that is the great result to which all is tending throughout the reign of James I. and his successors; and its importance cannot be over-rated. Under the Stuarts the Royal Prerogative is the great point of discussion. Its formal assertion provokes a similar assertion on the part of other bodies in the nation. In the reign of James it affects the Parliament; in the reign of Charles I. every person in Parliament or out of it; Charles II. is not too careless to exercise it on special occasions; James II. makes it subservient to his religious designs. It is limited under William III., and forgotten almost under Anne.

The accession of the House of Hanover brings the nation once more after a long interval into closer relations with the Continent; not with France, as in the Norman and Plantagenet eras, but with Germany. At the close of the reign of George the Third, the nation is ruled by ministers who do not put forward the Supremacy, still less the Royal Prerogative, but "court influence." The great reign of this dynasty is that of George III., the great event "the American Independence;" opening the eyes of the nation to a sense of its responsibilities and duties, and securing it from fatal errors which plunged other countries into revolution. We have a more enlightened and philosophical statesmanship from that era, which has preserved to Eng

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