above those of
the others. The present system looks something like an itinerant
university; but no one can predict just what it will become. All this
work is simply experimental. Plans are adopted to meet the present
exigency, and new ones are at any time engrafted. But a few strongly-set
tendencies are unmistakable, old forms are giving way, education is
working its way down below the rich, men and women are coming together
in their intellectual work, and the notion of "finishing" an education
sometime between twelve and twenty-three, promises to be forgotten.

The elasticity of this more German system, into which English education
is drifting, will obviate the difficulty so much complained of in the
English university system, that of forcing all students, irrespective
of the varying mental and physical powers, through a definite course of
study in a definite period of time.

Opportunities for instruction are offered. Students choose the subjects,
devote as much time to them as they like, present themselves at the
annual examinations if they choose, and when they choose.

The university promises to provide good instruction, to test the
thoroughness of the work of all who desire the test, and to award
certificates of success to all who come up to its standards; and these
certificates will doubtless eventually be able to sum up into degrees,
or else degrees will lose their especial value, and be abandoned.
Limiting the ages of the candidates for the several examinations, though
seemingly a little arbitrary, aims to avoid encouraging too precocious
advancement, while there is a willingness to make exceptions in favor of
pupils who are shown to be exceptionably able.

I do not find, in the English schools, and certainly there is not in the
universities, a rigid practice of giving daily marks for the work. The
teachers lecture, and the pupils take notes.

In the schools these notes are carefully examined, and the pupils who
give evidence of deficient knowledge of the subject, are sent to a
leisure governess, for especial instruction. At the universities, the
only tests are the examinations, and at the schools, the examinations
are chiefly relied upon for promotions. This plan allows pupils of
irregular power, and varying health, to admit these same irregularities
into their work, without great prejudice to the total credit of their
results. With these two systems of allowing choice in the number and
kind of subjects pu