4 seem to be chiefly the fault of teachers | They are now part of the regular work of themselves. If these will confound means the university, and it is proposed to hold with ends, ignore the value of time in edu- them every year after 1876, simultaneously cation, and try by cramming to crowd the in the city of New York and in Cambridge work of years into months, stereotype their or Boston. In 1877 the examinations will teaching to the dead level of a pass, or take place in the first and second weeks of unduly press the eager and ambitious with June. They are of two grades: I. a prea view to honors, on them be the shame, liminary general examination; II. An adas theirs alone is the folly. To those who vanced examination in special departknow how rightly to use them, such ex- ments. aminations are of the highest advantage; only let it be borne in mind, that these are not to be suffered to become the one determining force in education that as the machinery becomes more highly wrought and finished, it will be ever more and more our duty to see that it is set in motion of the informing spirit. at: All teachers who are worth anything practise examination. But teachers are not always competent to test their own work, as the same causes which led to mistakes prevent their being found out. The examinations for women are not identical with the entrance examination of Harvard, or with any examination for resident students of the university. The preliminary examination, however, is similar in grade to the average college entrance examination in this country, although somewhat different in the choice [The foregoing paper was read and dis- of subjects, and is intended as a test of cussed at a meeting of the London Associa-elementary education of a liberal order. tion of Schoolmistresses on March 24, 1868, It is, therefore, distinctly a pre-collegiate and the following conclusions were arrived examination, and should not be regarded as anticipating by its requisitions the work done in colleges. It is strongly recommended to girls in course of education at home or in private schools, who desire to test their progress by a strict and publicly recognized standard, instead of by the lax and partial criteria which prevail in private education. On the other hand, the graduates of our high schools and grammar schools, who have probably enjoyed a more solid elementary training than private education usually gives, may be tempted to take the Harvard preliminary examination by the fact that it offers a test of proficiency in a wider range of subjects than the ordinary public school course It is better that the test should come early, while there is time to remedy faults, than to wait for the test of life. And this is a reason for using examinations during the school course, and not only at the end. No scheme of examination is perfect. Its value chiefly depends on the manner in which it is worked by teachers. The value of the Cambridge Local Examinations is greatly increased by their being alike in subjects and standard for both boys and girls. For these examinations cramming is totally unnecessary. Steadiness and precision in the work of the whole school are encouraged. Illnatured rivalry is not encouraged. The girls enjoy the examinations, and the effect on health is good, when reasonable precautions are taken against over-excitement. The scheme has been found incidentally useful, as drawing teachers together, and as drawing parents and teachers together.] Note. - At the Cambridge examination, held in 1865, a hundred and twenty-six girls were examined, at six centres. In 1872 the numbers had increased to eight hundred and forty-seven candidates and thirty-four centres. These figures do not include Oxford and Durham. January, 1873. HARVARD EXAMINATIONS FOR WOMEN, 1877. THE examinations for women by Harvard University, were held for the first time at Cambridge, Mass., in June, 1874. includes. The advanced examination offers a test of special culture in one or more of five departments, namely, Languages, Natural Science, Mathematics, History, and Philosophy. It is not intended to be taken as a whole, and does not, therefore, represent the studies of a college course, but is adapted to persons of limited leisure for study, such as girls who have left school and are occupied with home cares, or teachers engaged in their professional labors. Many of the latter class who have not time or inclination for a normal school course may be glad to obtain a Harvard certificate of proficiency in one depart ment. I. PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION. The preliminary examination will embrace the following subjects: English, French, Physical Geography, either Elementary Botany or Elementary Physics, Arithmetic, Algebra through quadratic 101 equations, Plane Geometry, History, and any one of the three languages, German, Latin, or Greek. This examination can only be taken as a whole by young women who are not less than seventeen years old. It may, however, be divided between two years, at the option of the candidate, and, in this case, the minimum age of admission is sixteen years. No candidate will, in any case, be admitted to examination on a part of any subject, and no account will be made of a partial examination, unless the candidate has passed satisfactorily in at least three subjects. If the candidate passes in three or more subjects, the results of a partial examination will be recorded by the university, but no certificate will be given until the whole examination has been passed. Candidates who divide the preliminary examination will be expected to attain a somewhat higher degree of excellence than those who present the nine subjects at once. II. ADVANCED EXAMINATION. The advanced examination is for young women who have passed the preliminary examination, and are not less than eighteen years old. The advanced examination is divided into five sections, in one or more of which the candidate may present herself. The sections are as follows:1. Languages. Candidates may offer any two of the following languages: English, French, German, Italian, Latin, Greek. 2. Natural Science. Candidates may offer any two of the following subjects: Chemistry, Physics, Botany, Mineralogy, Geology. 3. Mathematics. Candidates must present Solid Geometry, Algebra, Logarithms, and Plane Trigonometry, and any one of the three following subjects: Analytic Geometry, Mechanics, Spherical Trigonometry and Astron omy. 4. History. In 1877 candidates may offer either of the two following subjects: The History of Continental Europe during the Period of the Reformation, 1517-1648; English and American History, from 1688 to the end of the Eighteenth Century. From The Argosy. OF SELF-SACRIFICE. PERHAPS there never existed a time when the spirit of self-sacrifice was so little amongst us as at present. It is a virtue not understood of men: so sparely practised that it seems like many of the good old customs and fashions of our forefathers to be dying out. Each for himself. Thus men argue: thus they act. In seeking a reason, it may possibly be found-if, as some think, we have reached the beginning of the end in the fulfilment of that prophecy which says that in the last days men shall run to and fro in the earth, that knowledge shall increase, and iniquity shall abound. Or it may be the result of the progress of the age, an evil of which the food that nourishes it is daily gaining strength and growth. The world is so over-populated—at least the world of our small island—that men are jostling each other; treading upon each other's heels; wrestling for place and power; for wealth, and the grandeur wealth brings. No matter what the cost to honor and integrity; what the increasing labor of mind and body; still they wrestle. "I must climb the social ladder. I must increase in riches and importance. My neighbor just now fills the lofty goal I covet. If I cannot attain to it unless he come down, let him fall." So man soliloquizes, and proceeds to work accordingly. Presently he gains his object. A. from his lofty height, with complacency and self-confidence, has looked down upon the struggling humanity below him. Suddenly, his very self-reliance assisting the downfall, he overbalances, and B. reigns. in his stead. The latter in turn becomes self-gratulatory; he has gained his end; he cares little for the ruin he has effected. He goes forth to the high places of the world with songs triumphant. This is no mere ideal picture. It is a truth and a fact, happening every day in a greater or less degree. All may witness for themselves who do not go through life with their eyes closed. The motto of the present hour is, Every man for himself. It cannot be too often or too emphatically reiterated. "What can I do? How shall increase in importance, in 5. Philosophy. Candidates may offer any riches, in the honor and glory of the three of the following subjects: Men-world? In what manner can I further my tal Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, happiness, my comfort and welfare, gratify Logic, Rhetoric, Political Economy. my senses? The question, "What can It is to be observed that no person is ad- I do to help on others in a world laboring mitted to the second grade till she has passed in care and misery?" is passed over. the first. Self-sacrifice is not to be thought of, or mentioned. "I have no time for it," says | spare, in spite of the purple and fine linen the worldly man: might he not add "no that screen you from it; much that is in inclination"? 66 My whole days and your power to lessen. But shillings must nights are occupied in the furtherance of not be given for pounds, or pounds where my own work, schemes, pleasures." you should give tens and hundreds. Take, for example, the collections in our London churches, on behalf of some good and pressing object, as an instance of what is and what might be done. But the amount of charity in the world is quite apart from the question of self-sacrifice. People give out of their abundance, and much of it is terribly misapplied. There is no system in distributing. This is quite true. He has no time for anything but himself. He feels that we are living at a rapid rate. If he halts a moment on the way, some one else passes him swiftly, and he is lost. His place is gone. He cannot recover it. So he goes onwards in selfishness and self-absorption, till time creeps and creeps; leaving with the rich and luxurious few traces of furrows or grey hairs; until at last the eyes close in their last sleep: one more life is over, for whose soul a world would be no ransom; and the body, so restless hitherto, in the tomb has rest. Not for this were we brought into the world. Each life has a distinct and separate purpose of its own. Each soul is created, not only to accomplish some great work for even the humblest career earnestly fulfilled will, when the life is laid aside, leave behind it an impression of completeness but also to help on other souls through their pilgrimage of pain and travail. This cannot be done without an amount, more or less, of self-sacrifice. Take the great world of commerce. How many of its members will exercise, in even a small degree, the spirit of selfsacrifice? "I am able to do this thing for A. He will be a thousand pounds the richer; I shall be minus the five hundred pounds it would put into my pocket if I do it for myself. A. wants the thousand; the five hundred to me is nothing. But it does not enter into the principle of business, and I cannot do it. No, I cannot. If I did do it, and the world knew, it would mock me.". So A. does not get his thousand pounds, and B. pockets his five hundred. A. is ruined, perhaps: possibly drags down with him a wife and children; and he never recovers his footing. "Sorry for him," says B., stifling qualms of conscience. "But I couldn't help it, clearly. Business is business." It is terrible to contemplate the dearth of this spirit, arising in part from a lack of sympathy in the human heart: a want, mark you, that may be cultivated. Take, reader, a little of your own experience. And undoubtedly every man should do Imagine yourself in great trouble; in sore the very best he possibly can for himself need; be it that of pity, of disburdening in business; but only in fairness to his your soul, or the strait of poverty. How duty towards his neighbor. I would remany friends or acquaintances do you peat this and engrave it with a pen of iron possess to whom you could confidently if I could: as Job did those beautiful and apply with a sure feeling of trust; of being fully heard and fully answered? Five? Four? Three? No. Two? Probably not. One? Even one is doubtful. And yet, inasmuch as every soul is born into the world with the impress of the divine image, so no soul need have a heart without sympathy, and all those beauties of virtue which therefrom blossom into life. Success itself is one of the greatest destroyers of self-sacrifice, unless the mind be noble and the heart large; just as wealth often closes its doors to the need of the world, because the thoughtless soul has come to be unable to realize in its fulness the need that exists. "I am rich, and lack naught; the distress and misery we hear of must be an idle tale; an overdrawn picture." Thus men cheat themselves. But, ye rich, believe it not. There is misery and wretchedness enough and to awful words which tell us that though 66 The reader had need to steel his heart against sophistry so worldly, argument so ungenerous. It may cost a little self-sacrifice, but if the heart becomes warped, the mind narrowed and disennobled, the conscience seared, the body had better, ere that take place, be resting quietly in its last home. We all do fade as a leaf; so much for the body and the body only; but the good that men do lives after them, and the evil is never undone. Pause and turn back ere launching out upon that wide road | privileges we possess. Who can number Not to the persistently selfish will the grave be without its victory, death without its terrors and its sting. As self-sacrifice is more or less in the reach of all, so all must seek to acquire it. Look to the heart; make it green and keep it so; remember that your opportunities and your life will not last forever; you cannot live your life twice over; it will not return and enable you to redeem the days that have been misspent. Now or never must be said of the opportunities of to-day; for after to-day its opportunities, taken or neglected, have passed into the womb of time and the records of eternity. And then, to go to the reverse side of the picture, self-sacrifice brings its own reward. It gives happiness far greater than any wealth or power can bestow. In the latter case, every man in the zenith of success may lay his head upon his pillow at night, and confess that it is not without much vanity and vexation of spirit at the best; a weariness of the flesh; a thing which must pass away as a shadow. Not that wealth and power are by any means to be despised, or not diligently sought after and received, when made subservient to the great ends of life. It is only when, as too often, they become the sole aim of heart and mind, that they bring with them ruin and destruction. But self-sacrifice, it has been said, brings happiness. A happiness they wist not who cultivate it not. It transforms the mind; it enlarges the heart; it elevates the soul; it makes man loved; it assists him on in the right path; it helps him to that peace which passeth all understanding. Perhaps at the close his funded wealth may be somewhat less than it would have been, though this is doubtful, for (with all reverence be uttered; and let no man allow this thought to influence him in his good works) God is no man's debtor; but how much happier and nobler will he be, how much loftier and closer to heaven his soul! And what about the great day of reckoning, when the books are opened and each man's deeds are brought home to him? Surely one of the great incentives to good, to glorifying God in ourselves, and in our works, is the thought of the gratitude we owe him for the untold mercies and earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." He it is who gives and has power to take away. Render, O reader! unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, but remember, what is far more important, to render unto God the things that are God's. What we owe to man in this world, the law makes us pay; if we do not, it is summarily enforced. God speaks to us only in the still small voice of conscience: we can pay him or not as we please; but there will come a day of reckoning. But the most beautiful of all self-denial, and perhaps the most difficult to practice, is that which is, or ought to be, carried on in the sacred precincts of home. At home it is very probable that, if called upon, each would be found willing to lay down his life for the other. But we are not required to perform heroic deeds: if we were, and they became common, probably that very fact would cause them to lose their influence, and we should give them up also. Life is made up of small things, and it is precisely in these that it is most difficult to be self-sacrificing every-day matters which seem too trivial to mention; arising with the hour and dying with it, to give place to something equally unremarkable. The constant giving way in trifles and trifling inclinations; sacrificing personal wants and whims to each other. One wishes to go here, another there; one wishes to do this, another that; two wish for some new bauble, or object of necessity the purse will admit of the gratification of one only; two are invited to some delightful country place, or the attractions of a London season - the duties of home permit only one to be absent. The key to solve these difficulties, the only spirit able to meet them, is that of self-sacrifice. This will go far to form beauty of character; to render home that abode of harmony which all homes should be; giving up one to the other. To those who have never tried it, cultivated or practised it, it will be a difficult matter at the outset. Nothing is so hard as for a selfish man to put down self. Self, self, self, has been so constantly the watchword and key-note of his life, that it comes uppermost in all cases; an object which pervades more or less every a weed choking the good seed that, let us hope, is lurking in every heart, ready to take root and spring up. It is an evil to which men are far more prone than women. Taken in the aggregate, men are essentially action; I would that each man reading these words should examine his own heart. If he sees lurking there the demon of selfishness, and so spoilt and petted are many of us from youth upwards that it often lurks there unknown and unsuspected until accident or something else points it out to us: if he finds lurking within him the hideous demon- one of the most hateful sins of our fallen nature - let him strive his utmost to cast it out. A great struggle will ensue; it may be a long one: but as no man ever fought in vain who fights earnestly in the right way, so will he in the end gain the crown of victory. No selfish man or woman was ever yet completely happy. They may cheat themselves into a belief that they are, for thought and conscience are lost in the mad whirl and rush of life. But it is a mere delusive happiness, which disappears at the moment we think to clutch it; and, like the wily ignis-fatuus, leads us an endless dance over bog and moor, to escape us at last. Then, weary and spent, we lie down; and perchance that most terrible experience, the remorse of a wasted and misapplied life, comes in and takes possession of us forever. The spirit of self-sacrifice is one of the great beauties of holiness. Husband yielding to wife, wife to husband; brother to brother, sister to sister; friend to friend in great things; but in small especially. First and foremost, see that the spirit is with you at home; then carry it abroad into the world. It is a spirit that will sweeten happiness and lighten trouble; and when the soul is ready to wing its flight to its eternal home, it will have the unspeakable consolation of knowing that it has not lived to itself; that it has left the world happier and better in some degree than it found it; that it has been faithful to its earthly mission. So will it listen with unutterable bliss to the sentence: "Well done, thou good and faithful servant: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!" From The Saturday Review. CRAZY CORRESPONDENCE. IT is said that prime ministers, and others who stand out specially before the eyes of mankind have a special box or pigeon-hole in which they lay aside their crazy correspondence." And it is further said that the correspondence so laid aside fills, in bulk at least, a very respectable part of the great man's letter-bag. It is certain that any man who gets the least reputation in any way, especially if he brings himself into public notice about any great public question, is sure to be at once overwhelmed with a mass of correspondence as crazy as any that can be sent to any prime minister. The writings of crazy correspondents fall under several heads. There is first the style of letter, or circular, or communication of any kind, which is simply and purely crazy, which has no point whatever, no special reference to the person to whom it is sent. Such correspondents are those who send little diagrams to prove that the sun is only a very little way from the earth, which diagrams they say have altogether puzzledas it is only natural that they shouldthe chief philosophers of Oxford and Cambridge. But the greater and the more important part of the crazy correspondence of any man who attracts crazy corre spondence is more special to himself. First come the class of people whose craziness is not fully developed, who still have some kind of intelligible object in what they write. This class shades off by very gentle degrees from the positively crazy to the simply impertinent. A man is supposed to be a master of a certain subject, and people whom he never heard of write to him to tell them something which they have nothing to do but to look in his books and find for themselves. These last are simply impertinent, and may be ranked along with those who write for autographs. The two classes, in fact, are very nearly the same, as we may suspect that letters of this kind are often written simply in the hope of getting an answer to keep as an autograph. But these, who at least have some method in their madness, gradually shade off into a class whose craze is one of the strangest. They do not write to an author simply to get his autograph, or simply because they grudge the cost of buying his book or the trouble of reading it not at all. They write in perfect good faith; they have bought and read and admired; only they want to have some little private revelation to themselves beyond what the book makes known to mankind |