out by the records of the examinations, which show that if there is any difference between the pupils of the establishment referred to and the candidates who come straight from the universities, it is that the former, while they bring up fewer subjects, obtain higher marks than the university candidates in the very subjects which are most studied at the universities, viz. classics and mathematics. And if anyone should be disposed to account for this by saying that these higher marks are not really a proof of superior knowledge, but only of superior skill in deluding the examiners, the Civil Service Commissioners must be content to point to the list hereto annexed of the eminent university scholars and mathematicians who have acted as examiners during the last five years, and to avow their own concurrence in the conviction, emphatically expressed by Lord Macaulay and his colleagues, that with examiners of this high standing 'it is utterly impossible that the delusive show of knowledge which is the effect of the process commonly called cramming can ever be successful against real learning and ability.'

Nor did they humbug Lord Salisbury. He saw through the whole thing, and, after a most elaborate investigation, pronounced this judgment:—

The special tutors (the crammers) have succeeded in distancing all competitors simply by the excellence of their work. They concentrate high ability upon the attainment of a single result; and this is the secret of excellence in other crafts besides that of tuition.

But it was all a foregone conclusion. If the special tutors could not be punished because guilty, they should be attacked because innocent. The public schools got their petition granted." They asked that the examination should be made to harmonise with the general course of education as pursued in the best schools (meaning their own), and especially that (1) certain subjects should be excluded; (2) that the number of subjects a candidate may take up should be limited, and (3) that special prominence should be given to such subjects as are prescribed by the schemes of public and endowed schools.

The meaning of this is plain. The subjects the head masters know they can't teach were to be excluded. The subjects they think they can were to have special prominence given to them. The public schools were not to be asked to raise the quality of the education given there to the standard of successful candidates for the India Civil Service. The standard was to be degraded to the level of the so-called education of the schools. Then the head masters turned prophets. They predicted that if they got the changes they asked for they would be able to turn out a larger number of successful candidates-i.e. the interests of the schools were to be cared for first and those of the service afterwards. Public schools were to have protection, to be favoured, at the expense of private institutions, against the advice of the Civil Service Commissioners. The head masters were happy. They had got all the higher branches knocked out, and elements' and 'lower portions' and outlines (i.e. smatterings) substituted: e.g. only translation and composition were allowed

2 Vide Twenty-first Report of Civil Service Commissioners, p. 616.

in Latin and Greek; the papers on history and literature formerly set to test the candidates' knowledge of their books were done away with.

The head masters' triumph was complete. One head master wrote to the Times that the old function of the special tutor was past. A second wrote to corroborate this gentleman's testimony; he said it was natural they should wish to justify their prediction (quoted above). Another wrote that the regulations would work to the 'extinction' of the crammers. Another wrote that the public school masters' regulations secured the best educated candidates.

The private tutors were not in the least frightened by the blowing of all these rams' horns. The duel went on from 1878 to date; the private tutors had to meet the public schools on ground of their own choosing, and with weapons of their own choosing. The public schools have been beaten all along the line. When the regulations were first published a facetious gentleman expressed his agreement with the opinion of the head masters that the new regulations would extinguish private tutors and that in future none but sixth-form public school boys need apply.'

The public schools have acknowledged their defeat and resigned. New regulations are coming in force; no public school boys are to be allowed to compete; the schools don't want to be shown up any more. The new limits of age are twenty-one to twenty-three. There is one special joke in all this. One charge against the crammers was that they undertook no 'moral responsibility' and enforced no 'rules of discipline.' This silly nonsense, embodied in the letter of charges to the Civil Service Commissioners, seems to have wakened a slumbering echo in Lord Salisbury's memory. Being a grave statesman engaged in a serious task, he thought it was a serious one. So he decreed that the successful competitors should be sent to some college at Oxford or Cambridge at which moral responsibility was undertaken and rules of discipline were enforced. But it was a comic one. It was Mr. Pecksniff 3 who advertised that he was 'not unmindful of his moral responsibilities.' No college at Oxford or Cambridge ever did.

Let us now consider the army examinations. A careful examination of the regulations in force, of the schedule of subjects, and of the examination papers set at the last examinations, will satisfy anybody that the service is to be sacrificed to the schools. Elementary Latin, elementary French, elementary mathematics are compulsory. We shall have the most ignorant officers of any army in the world. A much worse fate awaits our army than it met in the Crimea if we come into collision with a first-class Power.

I am not overstating the case; the army is to be sacrificed to

Vide Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 115.

get rid of 'private institutions' and get back a gainful monopoly to the public schools. If the public schools can get rid of their rivals, the old El Dorado of the public schools, which flourished before 1860, may come back. The ignorance and idleness and bullying, fagging and tunding, class distinctions and snobbishness, tuft-hunting and licking, loafing and public-house frequenting denounced in the Report of the Public Schools Commission will get another chance. For many a long year private institutions have been a wholesome corrective for the public schools. The new army regulations are intended to secure to the public schools a monopoly of the appointments to Woolwich and Sandhurst. Baby mathematics, baby Latin, and baby French are compulsory; every candidate will take up English composition and drawing. Two more subjects may be taken up from the following list: higher mathematics, Greek, English history, elementary organic chemistry, elementary physics, geography, and geology.

Compulsory Latin is the most monstrous. An examination of the last paper, set December 1890, will show that 'baby' is the proper epithet for the compulsory Latin and French. The examiners actually placed over the top of the pieces set for translation an inscription saying what it was about. What stupendous ignorance they must have anticipated. Fancy a public school boy of seventeen, after, say, nine years' teaching and learning of Latin, not being able to translate sixteen lines of Latin without having 'The Dreams of Animals' printed at top to guide him. This is cutting examiners' hands off. The one best means of finding out the less ignorant from the more ignorant is not allowed. Over fourteen lines of Greek set is the heading, 'Demosthenes reminds the Athenians how he had been cried down in the Assembly when he attempted to warn them against the delusive promises of Eschines and his party.' There is only one more insult possible, and that is to provide every candidate with a crib.

This is called' open competition;' there is not much competition when the best candidates are deprived of the best chance of showing their superiority. I should like to see the opinions of her Majesty's Civil Service Commissioners on these new regulations for army examinations printed in the Times. I never knew or even saw a Civil Service commissioner, but I know a good deal of the good services they have done to the cause of education in England, and how much more they would have done had they not been foiled and thwarted; and I am confident that if they were called on to draw up a code of regulations and a schedule of subjects for candidates for Woolwich and Sandhurst they would be very far different from, and very far superior to, those now in force. Would that it were possible to get Von Moltke's opinion. He knew how to be 'silent in seven languages.' Is not every one of the readers of this Review confident

that he would have preferred that an officer should speak and understand and know French thoroughly, than that he should have a baby smattering of Latin, Greek, and English? Would not Napoleon have very much preferred that an officer should speak German or Italian well than that he should have a baby smattering of Latin, Greek, and English? The papers are beneath contempt. I believe her Majesty's Civil Service Commissioners, the examiners, and all the best candidates were equally ashamed of them. If, as the public schools have preached for many years, the 'classics' are the best educational subjects, and mathematics nearly or quite as good, let us have both compulsory. Drawing certainly ought to be compulsory. If, as it seems from the regulations, boys' minds are to be held capable of working at five subjects-i.e. two more than the three named-let every candidate be allowed to choose two more-one a modern language and one a science-from a list to be drawn up by the Civil Service Commissioners. Give the best boys a chance; don't disgust and insult them in the examination room. Give the best teachers a chance, whether public or private. Give the army a chance. Do away with the offensive doctrine that no boy is fit for anything in this world, and has very little hope for the next, unless he has spent his boyhood in some one of a few places which call themselves 'public schools,' and make no secret of their belief that there, and there only, can wisdom, sense, knowledge, and athletics be found.

WALTER WREN.

MOHAMMEDAN WOMEN.

It is startling to any one who has lived in Mohammedan countries to know that here, in free, Christian, hitherto happy England, the dark shadow of the false prophet is finding a footing. Those who know the private, real, every-day life of the Mohammedan woman know also that her faults grow out of the system to which she belongs, which certainly does not hold up any high and noble aim for her to reach after.

It is a fundamental point of the Mohammedan religion that women should be secluded from and always veiled before strangers, and upon this axis their education turns. It is implanted into them with their mothers' milk.

I have seen many a bright little girl of two years old, riding astride on her mother's shoulder, her little fat rounded limbs in all their brown beauty, clothed only in a pair of anklets, a little sleeveless jacket reaching to the hips, and half a yard of muslin covering her head. One of the first things she is taught is to put up the little dimpled fingers and draw this bit of muslin across her face at the sight of a man, for whatever else a Mohammedan girl does not learn, she certainly does learn very perfectly the lesson that she must cover her face from the gaze of any strange man.

The Koran says, 'The women shall be unveiled only before their husbands, fathers, fathers-in-law, children, children of their husbands, brothers, and nephews.'

I will relate an instance of this which took place in Damascus, in a family with which I was well acquainted.

Latecfa Khanoom was the daughter of Z. Pasha. Her father was dead, and had died very soon after her birth, since which time she and her mother had lived in the house of Tewfik Bey. This latter had married Latecfa Khanoom's elder sister, and on the death of his father-in-law had taken the widow and the little Latecfa under his protection, treating them in every way as his own mother and sister. In fact, the little Latecfa was to him, as to her mother and sister, the petted and spoiled darling.

Djevdat Bey, a handsome young Turkish officer stationed at Damascus, wanting a wife, set to work to find out where he could