An article in the _Times_ of August 12th, 1882, condemns the whole system pretty severely; says that the subjects taught in the _Britannia_ are not properly learnt, and that navigation is taught entirely by "rule of thumb" without knowledge of the principles which govern it. The writer quotes Professor Laughton in support of his views, as having said, in a lecture at the Royal United Service Institution, that any lad of 16 with an adequate knowledge of mathematics would learn more navigation in a month than the "poor little fellows" in the _Britannia_ learn in two years. Well, there are some men who are regarded as authorities in these matters, quite in favour of "rule-of-thumb" navigation, and gunnery also; and if a boy--or a man, either, for that matter--can take and work his sights accurately, and make a straight shot from a gun, it really is not of much consequence whether or not he is well versed in spherical trigonometry or ballistics. It is a fact, however, that cadets in the _Britannia_, in the times of Captain Harris and Mr. Inskip, did learn, in considerably less than two years, to work a day's work, and the ordinary sights usually required in navigation, with facility; and also got a pretty accurate idea of the theory. They could, for instance, draw a diagram illustrative of the working of a chronometer, a meridian altitude, or an amplitude, show what sort of spherical triangle was involved, and state the rule for its solution. If this could not be done in the _Britannia_ in 1882, there would appear to have been a sad decadence. Some light is cast upon the introduction of competition in 1881 by a naval instructor who was there at the time. He says that an idea prevailed at the Admiralty that the test examination did not supply boys who were capable of successfully negotiating the exceptionally difficult papers set for boys in the third and fourth terms. There were two examiners who were noted for their hard and crochety papers, and who, moreover, were known to have stated their intention of cutting down the first classes; in which laudable endeavour they succeeded to the extent of reducing the proportion of "firsts" from 30 to 10 per cent., and were known on board the ship by the nicknames of "Fire" and "Sword." This reduction of first classes aroused alarm at the Admiralty, and was, it is said, largely instrumental in procuring the change from test examinations to competition.