English Language and Literature (Composition, History, and General Literature,—­to each of which 500 marks were assigned, making a total of 1,500); Greek and Latin (each with 750 marks); French, German, and Italian (valued at 375 marks, respectively); Mathematics, pure and mixed (marks 1,000); Natural and Moral Sciences (each 500); Sanscrit and Arabic (375 each).

[PRINCIPLE OF SELECTION OF SUBJECTS.]

The principle of selection here is clear and obvious.  It did not rest upon any doctrine regarding the utility or value of subjects for mental training, but simply upon this, that those subjects already in the field must be accepted, and that (as Mr. Jowett, in his letter to Sir Charles Trevelyan, of January, 1854, put it) “it will not do to frame our examination on any mere theory of education.  We must test a young man’s ability by what he knows, not by what we wish him to know.”  Indeed, this is explicitly avowed in the Report by the author of the Scheme himself.  The Natural Sciences are included, because (it is confessed) “of late years they have been introduced as a part of general education into several of our universities and colleges”:  and, as for the Moral Sciences, “those Sciences are, it is well known, much studied both at Oxford and at the Scottish Universities”.

Into the details of Macaulay’s interesting Report, I need not here enter.  Room, however, must be found for one quotation.  It deals with the distribution of marks, and is both characteristic and puts the matter in small compass.  “It will be necessary,” says the writer, “that a certain number of marks should be assigned to each subject, and that the place of a candidate should be determined by the sum total of the marks which he has gained.  The marks ought, we conceive, to be distributed among the subjects of examination in such a manner that no part of the kingdom, and no class of schools, shall exclusively furnish servants to the East India Company.  It would be grossly unjust, for example, to the great academical institutions of England, not to allow skill in Greek and Latin versification to have a considerable share in determining the issue of the competition.  Skill in Greek and Latin versification has, indeed, no direct tendency to form a judge, a financier, or a diplomatist.  But the youth who does best what all the ablest and most ambitious youths about him are trying to do well will generally prove a superior man; nor can we doubt that an accomplishment by which Fox and Canning, Grenville and Wellesley, Mansfield and Tenterden first distinguished themselves above their fellows, indicates powers of mind, which, properly trained and directed, may do great service to the State.  On the other hand, we must remember that in the north of this island the art of metrical composition in the ancient languages is very little cultivated, and that men so eminent as Dugald Stewart, Horner, Jeffrey, and Mackintosh, would probably have been quite unable to write a good copy of Latin alcaics, or to translate ten lines of Shakspeare into Greek iambics.  We wish to see such a system of examination established as shall not exclude from the service of the East India Company either a Mackintosh or a Tenterden, either a Canning or a Horner.”