Lord Salisbury distributed the prizes to the Arts and Science
Faculty of King's College, London, on Tuesday, and in his remarks echoed (though mildly) the general complaint of the number of examinations. Lord Salisbury should lead the late Professor Stanley Jevons's admirable paper on "Cram," in the volume just published. He would there learn that frequent examination is one of the most indispensable of all instruments of education, and that no good teacher ever allows his class to learn much without testing the character of that learning by examination. But Lord Salisbury did not confine his remarks to those with which Conservatives could sympathise. He made a sharp attack on the deference paid to Greek and Latin verse in the public schools and the Universities, and com- plimented King's College on giving no prize for Latin verse. "I never look back without a feeling of some bitterness to the many hours during which I was compelled to produce the most execrable Latin verse in the world. I believe that if a commis- sion of distinguished men were appointed to discover what is the most perfectly useless accomplishment to which the human mind can be turned, a large majority would agree that versifi- cation in the dead languages is that accomplishment." Lord Salisbury, it will be seen, can be a Radical when he likes.
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