Southern Christian Advocate

EXAMINATION AT TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND.

Dr. Tyng, of Philadelphia, gives the following description of an examination, a part of which he witnessed:

Monday was the first day of the examination of Trinity College. I attended it for sometime with Mr. C. The large hall was filled with the students, all seated at the dinner tables in perfect silence. There were about 400 present. The examination is entirely in writing. They are allowed no books. But examination papers of various kinds are printed and prepared for them, and given to them upon the spot. They are required with pen and paper, to furnish, in a given time the adequate translation or solution, without any assistance whatsoever. It is a severe but fair trial of knowledge and mental strength. They seemed intently engaged in their work—not a sound was to be heard in the hall. At the upper table sat the examiners in their square caps, and as each appointed hour arrived, the papers were delivered up to them. The examination of the papers is a work for subsequent private hours. The rank and character of scholarship is then assigned; and if the returns are wholly unsatisfactory, the familiar college epithet is, the man is plucked. The trial was a very severe one: long passages of the Greek Tragedies were to be translated into English prose—others into English verse; equally long extracts of English poetry were to be translated into Latin Lyrics; others into Greek Iambics; passages from Plato to be translated into English, and English prose to be translated into Greek. English prose to be translated into the Greek of Herodotus of Xenophon, or Longinus. Then in Geometry and Mathematics, the trials were equally severe. All these were to be done by young men without the aid of books of any kind wholly from their actual knowledge and memory, in the course of the few hours they were seated together in the hall.