o academic
promise when he told Gladstone, very good-naturedly and civilly, that he
had determined to offer him his nomination. The student designate wrote
a theme, read it out before the chapter, passed a nominal, or even
farcical, examination in Homer and Virgil, was elected as matter of
course by the chapter, and after chapel on the morning of Christmas eve,
having taken several oaths, was formally admitted in the name of the
Holy Trinity.

Mr. Biscoe, his classical tutor, was a successful lecturer on Aristotle,
especially on the Rhetoric. With Charles Wordsworth, son of the master
of Trinity at Cambridge, and afterwards Bishop of Saint Andrews, he read
for scholarship, apparently not wholly to his own satisfaction. While
still an undergraduate, he writes to his father (Nov. 2, 1830), 'I am
wretchedly deficient in the knowledge of modern languages, literature,
and history; and the classical knowledge acquired here, though sound,
accurate, and useful, yet is not such as to _complete_ an education.' It
looked, in truth, as if the caustic saying of a brilliant colleague of
his in later years were not at the time unjust, as now it would happily
be, that it was a battle between Eton and education, and Eton had won.

Mr. Gladstone never to the end of his days ceased to be grateful that
Oxford was chosen for his university. At Cambridge, as he said in
discussing Hallam's choice, the pure refinements of scholarship were
more in fashion than the study of the great masterpieces of antiquity in
their substance and spirit. The classical examination at Oxford, on the
other hand, was divided into the three elastic departments of
scholarship and poetry, history, and philosophy. In this list, history
somewhat outweighed the scholarship, and philosophy was somewhat more
regarded than history. In each case the examination turned more on
contents than on form, and the influence of Butler was at its climax.

CHARACTER OF OXFORD TEACHING

If Mr. Gladstone had gone to Oxford ten years earlier, he would have
found the Ethics and the Rhetoric treated, only much less effectively,
in the Cambridge method, like dramatists and orators, as pieces of
literature. As it was, Whately's common sense had set a new fashion, and
Aristotle was studied as the master of those who know how to teach us
the right way about the real world.[36] Aristotle, Butler, and logic
were the new acquisitions, but in none of the three as yet did the