The first step of this kind was taken about three years ago. Most of our readers are aware that, at Cambridge, those candidates for a degree who do not aspire to honours are said to go out in the _poll_; this being the abbreviated term to denote those who were classically designated ὁι πολλοι. Now the qualifications required for attaining this poll degree consisted of an acquaintance with a part of Homer, a part of Virgil, a part of the Greek Testament, and Paley's _Evidences of Christianity_, over and above the mathematics, of which we shall speak presently. By what curious infelicity the recondite, and, in many particulars, inexplicable language of Homer has been so commonly selected for beginners in Greek at school, and, as in this case, for those who were not expected to appear as accomplished scholars--we need not here stop to inquire. Suffice it to say that the university, in this initial reform, ousted Homer and Virgil from the course, and supplied their places with a Latin and Greek author, to be varied in each successive year. This was decidedly an improvement, at least as regards Homer, for the reason we have alluded to above. Perhaps a better innovation would have been to have followed the Oxford system, and allowed to the student a choice of his author. But it is a great misfortune that the university, in recasting this course, did not substitute a work of some one of the logical or philosophical authors current in the English language, for the shallow and plausible book of Paley's above mentioned--with regard to which it would be difficult to say whether it is worse chosen as a model of reasoning, or as a proof of Christian facts.