In 1854 Mr. Plumptre required help with the Latin tuition, and asked Miss Beale to take a junior class. In the same year she was offered the post of head teacher in the school under Miss Parry, from whom she says she received ‘much kindness, and learned from her many valuable lessons; we travelled abroad together during one long vacation.’ Queen’s College, both by the tuition it afforded, and the experience it gave in teaching and managing classes, was an important factor in Dorothea Beale’s training for her life’s work. There was a yet further advantage in its certificates. Miss Beale and her sisters, like Miss Buss and others engaged in the work of education, desired and obtained from the College diplomas certifying their ability to teach. These were obtained by examinations, which in the earliest days were conducted in the manner described in Miss Buss’s letter already quoted. Miss Dorothea Beale herself spoke with unmitigated pleasure of her first examination conducted by Professor Maurice. ‘The _vivâ voce_ was a delightful conversation; he led us on by his sympathetic manner and kindly appreciation, so that we hardly remembered he was an examiner’; and she says later, ‘I remember to this day what a pleasant hour we had of _vivâ voce_; his wonderful power of intellectual sympathy came out, and made us forget that we were being examined; he seemed to take pleasure in following up our thoughts on the bearings of the history we had read, so that it appeared we were holding a delightful conversation on the subject. Again, in speaking of language, he wanted not merely formal and conventional grammar, and showed such pleasure when a grammatical definition was enlarged beyond the scope of ordinary school-books.’ It should be remembered that the examination which proved to be so ‘delightful’ was on the result of her own private reading encouraged by home sympathy, and a few public lectures. The questions asked were of wide scope; some were quite simple, almost superficial; others were framed so as to draw upon intelligence or a reserve of knowledge.