would have given the vicar any satisfaction!

“Yes, my dear,”—he replied.—“You see, he might have to compete for his appointment with a dozen others; and, as the examination for the civil service is now pretty stiff in its way, it would not do for him to fail. Frank has received a good sound public school education; but, they ask so many purely-routine questions of candidates, that he had better have a tutor who makes these subjects his speciality, to put him up in the little details of the machinery.”

“I never thought of that,”—said I.—“It is so long since I left school, that I fear I may be plucked!”

“Oh, you’ll be quite ready for the examination in a week, my boy,”—said the vicar, to encourage me.—“The examiners only require superficial knowledge; not, honest groundwork—although, they pretend to test the effects of a ‘good liberal education!’ One of these public crammers would make you fit to pass in any certified time, if you could barely read and write. He would hardly require even that preliminary basis to work upon, for that matter. But, I ought not to blame them; for, I am a coach myself, or, rather, was one, once, when I had the time to read with pupils for the university. These competitive examinations are a mistake, I think,”—he continued,—“for the men who pass them the most brilliantly seldom make the best clerks, which one would imagine to be the result mainly desired. I would prefer, myself, the present middle-class examinations at Oxford—which they lately instituted, for discovering talent and merit—to all these hot-house tests; although, of course, I may be biassed against them, through the recollection of my old don days, when I was at college.

“Not but what the idea of throwing open all appointments in the public service is better than the former custom of close patronage. The system is only abused, that’s all, in consequence of the Competition-Wallah business being carried to excess. Your poor man, whom the change was especially supposed to benefit, has no chance now, unless he has the money to pay for the services of a crammer—be his attainments never so great. The examinations have really degenerated into a technical groove, into which aspirants have to be regularly initiated by a ‘coach,’ or they will never succeed in getting out of it, to receive their certificates of proficiency.

“I will write you down the name of a good man to apply to, Frank,”—he added.—“He’ll pass you, I warrant, or I will eat my hat! And now I must be off, my boy. I have a lot of visiting to do to-night ere I can 

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