ear, and has about thirty
assistants.

The educational system pursued at Cambridge is open, I think, to one
very grave objection. Unless the student is tolerably wealthy, he is
deprived of the advantages which his richer companions enjoy. The brief
lectures--of one hour's duration only--delivered daily by the college
tutors to a crowd of undergraduates, are ill calculated to benefit the
striving individual student. As far as the college is concerned, the
youth is left to himself. If he cannot afford the expense of a private
tutor, his attainments are due to solitary application, and he is self
taught within the very walls of a college. The private tutors reap a
rich harvest from this careless system. They are usually members of the
university who have recently taken their first degree, and prefer the
large recompense of tuition to the miserable stipend of a curacy. To
each of their pupils--and a popular private tutor has usually eight or
ten--they devote one hour daily, and their charge is $70 for the term.
As a term sometimes expires at the end of seven weeks, they receive
about $2 an hour. This sum is beyond the poor scholar's means, and he
has to run an unequal race at the examinations with his more fortunate
competitor.

If appearances are to be trusted, the Trinity undergraduates are not
untiring students. They seem to pass their days and nights in the
pursuit of pleasure. The great evil of the English universities is the
credit system, and though Dr. Whewell endeavored to show me that it was
thoroughly discountenanced by the college authorities, he did not
succeed in convincing me that they were dealing properly with the
difficulty. A student, in defiance of all the restrictions imposed upon
his intercourse with the tradesmen of the town, may contract debts to
almost any amount. It is notorious that parents are brought to the verge
of ruin every year by their sons' misconduct at college, unless they
choose to contest the demands of the tradesmen in a court of law, by
pleading the infancy of the debtor when he has not attained his
majority. The college regulations demand that every tradesman licensed
by the university--and with none other is the student authorized to
deal--shall send to the tutor, at the expiration of each term, the bills
of the respective undergraduates who have been his customers. From the
position occupied in society by the friends of the student, the tutor is
enabled to judge whether he is ex