Then the Professor began his lecture, generally with the examination of one of the students, who rose in his place when his name was called. Thomson, as the quotation in Chapter VI from the Bangor Address shows, was fond of oral examination, and after the second hour had begun to decline as one of regular attendance, habitually devoted ten or fifteen minutes to asking questions and criticising the answers. The names of the students to be questioned were selected at random from the class register, or by a kind of lottery, carried out by placing a small card for each student in a box on the table, and drawing a name whenever a member of the class was to be examined. The interest in the drawing each day was intense, for there was a glorious uncertainty as to what might be the line of examination adopted. Sometimes, in the midst of a criticism of an answer, an idea would suddenly occur to the Professor, and he would enlarge upon it, until the forgotten examinee slipped quietly back into his seat, to be no more disturbed at least for that day! And how great the relief if the ordeal was well passed and the card was placed in that receptacle of the blessed, the compartment reserved for those who had been called and duly passed the assize! But there was a third compartment reserved for the cards of those unfortunates who failed to satisfy the judge! The reader may have anticipated the fact that the three divisions of this fateful box were commonly known to students by the names of the three great habitations of spirits described in the _Divina Commedia_ of Dante. As has been stated, the oral examination with which the lectures opened was the cause of a good deal of excitement, which was added to by the element of chance introduced by drawing the names from the purgatorial compartment of the box. The ordeal was dreaded by backward students, whom Thomson found, as he said, aphasic, when called on to answer in examination, but who certainly were anything but aphasic in more congenial circumstances. Occasionally they abstained from responding to their names, modestly seeking the seclusion of the crowd, and some little time would be spent in ascertaining whether the examinee-designate was present. When at last he was discovered, he generally rose with a fervent appeal to his fellows on either side to help him in his need.