nativity was `Pizzarro in Genoa’; he was `an Italian, and made people feel drunk with the sparke and richness of his melody’; he composed Oberon, Don Giovanni; Der Frischutz, and Stabet Matar.  He was `an accomp 168plished writer of violin music and produced some of the prettiest melodies’; it is `to him we owe the extension of chords struck together in ar peggio’; he was `the founder of some institution or another’; `the great aim of his life was to make the music he wrote an interpretation of the words it was set to’; he `broke many of the laws of music’; he `considerable altered the stage’; he `was noted for using many instruments not invented before’; in his `composition he used the chromatic scale very much, and goes very deep in harmony’; he `was the first taking up the style, and therefore to make a great change in music’; he was `the cause of much censure and bickering through his writings’; he `promoted a less strict mode of writing and other beneficial things’; and, finally, `Giachono Rossini was born at Pezarro in 1792.  In the year 1774 there was war raging in Paris between the Gluckists and Piccinists.  Gluck wanted to do away with the old restraint of the Italian aria, and improve opera from a dramatic point of view.  Piccini remained true to the old p 169Italian style, and Rossini helped him to carry it on still further by his operas, Tancredi, William Tell, and Dorma del Lago.’ ‘’

The child who gave the following brilliant answer to the question, ``What was the character of Queen Mary?’’ must have suffered herself from the troubles supposed to be connected with the possession of a stepmother:  ``She was wilful as a girl and cruel as a woman, but’’ (adds the pupil) ``what can you expect from any one who had had five stepmothers?’’

The greatest confusion among the examined is usually to be found in the answers to historical and geographical questions.  All that one boy knew about Nelson was that he ``was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral amid the groans of a dying nation.’’ The student who mixed up Oliver Cromwell with Thomas Cromwell’s master Wolsey produced this strange answer:  ``Oliver Cromwell is said to have exclaimed, as he lay a-dying, If I had served my God as I served my king, He would not have left me to mine enemies.’’ Miss Graham relates in the University p 170Correspondent_ an answer which contains the same confusion with a further one added:  ``Wolsey was a famous general who fought in the Crimean War, and who, after being decapitated several times, said to Cromwell, Ah! if I had only served you as you have served me, I would not have been deserted in my old age.’’ ``The Spanish Armada,’’ wrote a young man of seventeen, ``took place in the reign of Queen Anne; she married Philip of Spain, who was a very cruel man.  The Spanish and the English fought very bravely against each other.  The English wanted to conquer Spain.  Several battles were fought, in which hundreds of the English and Spanish were defeated.  They lost some very large ships, and were at a great loss on both sides.’’