v.] OXFORD TEACHING. Ill Now I am not quite sure that our way of studying the special subject is exactly the best method of beginning work on original authorities, but it may very well be the best that we can incorporate in a plan of gaining, in a year and a half's reading, a mental training, or the beginning of a mental training that may serve a lifetime. I am not sure that it would not be more true to the idea, to require the student to read a single book and explore its mechanism and materials, rather than to set before him a character or institution and bid him look for illustration for it. in a particular set of books ; but it must be remembered that the immediate object of the reading is to meet the test of examination, and that it would be almost impossible to examine, on one set of questions, a set of men all of whom had been working from different points ; for essay writing it might be invaluable training, but for collective examination it would be unreasonable. I will, then, content myself with remarking that the special subject in the class schools should be regarded only as a startingpoint in independent research ; a sort of first step in the study of original sources, which we hope may lead on to further and deeper investigation, but which, as it has to serve two. purposes, can scarcely be likely to satisfy both ; it is a specimen of minute study, and it is a specimen of original reading; but the object of the minute study is not the book, but the hero or the plot of it. It is, however, most encouraging to those who have the future of our History school at heart to know that the treatment of the special subject is always one of the best features of our examination ; that in which the best side of the mind of each examinee is as a rule most distinctly shown. Regarded then as a study of a subject, rather than as a first step into the region of original authorities, this part of our work exemplifies one of two diametrically opposed