The Oxford examination system is practically contemporaneous with the century; the first regular class list having been published in 1807. The change was long in coming, and when it did come the face of the University was not revolutionised; if the alteration contained, as it undoubtedly did, the germs of a revolution which was to extend far beyond academic boundaries, it bore the aspect of a most desirable but most moderate reform. Instead of obtaining a degree by the obsolete process of perfunctory disputation, ambitious men were invited to offer certain books (classical works for the most part), and in these to undergo the ordeal of a written and oral examination; the oral part being at that time probably as important as the other. Sudden and violent changes are repugnant to all Englishmen, and more especially to the rulers of Universities, those homes of ancient tradition; and just as early railways found it difficult to escape from the form of the stage-coach and the old nomenclature of the road, so the new Final Honour School took over (so to speak) the plant of a system which it superseded. _Viva voce_ was still (and is to the present day) important, because it was the direct successor of oral disputation. The candidate for a degree had obtained that distinction by a theoretical argument with three ’opponents’ in the Schools; so now the opponents were represented by a nearly corresponding number of examiners, and the _viva voce_ part of the examination was for a long time regarded as a contest of wit between the candidate and the questioner. Nor did the race for honours affect the great majority of the University as it does at present. It was intended for the talented few: it was not a matter of course that Tom, Dick, and Harry should go in for honours because their friends wished it, or because their college tutor wished to keep his college out of the evening papers. Candidates for honours were regarded as rather exceptional persons, and a brilliant performance in the Schools was regarded as a tolerably sure augury of success in life: a belief which was, perhaps, justified by facts then, but which--like most beliefs, dying hard--has unfortunately survived into a state of society where it is impossible to provide the assurance of a successful career for all and each of the eighty or hundred ’first-class’ men whom the University annually presents to an unwelcoming world. [Illustration: _READING THE NEWDIGATE. Drawn by T, H. Crawford._]