A success of the educational system and its favourable reception by the country that the Faculties of Medicine, &c., should be constituted." Subsequently also our readers are aware that the Professional Faculties have come even numerically almost to constitute the University. During the session 1868-69, and according to returns obtained by the O'Connor Don and Mr. Fortescue, there were in the Queen's Colleges, 465 Medical, Law, and Engineering students, to the 228 Arts or University students; and of these 228, be it observed, only 37 were Catholics. We do not, however, propose to dwell upon the transformation. It is sufficient to know that of the poor total of 600 or 700 students described to be in attendance at the Queen's University, hardly a third, and sometimes hardly a fourth, have an atom more to do with the Queen's University, except in the sense of local contiguity, than if they were articled to a civil engineer or walking the hospitals of Dublin or Edinburgh. From the time the medical student enters the Queen's University to the time he leaves, he takes no part in even the Alpha-Beta classes of the Arts Faculty. He patronizes Mixed Education merely in the sense that he conducts his anatomical and other experiments in an annex of the Queen's College buildings; and when the advocates of the Mixed System count him to the credit of the system's success, they are simply guilty of a very discreditable juggle so far as they are acquainted with the real connection of the Professional Faculties with the so-called University. Leaving out of calculation, accordingly, the four or five hundred professional students whom the extreme lowness of the fees, and the entire freedom from any educational curriculum, attract within the annexes of the Queen's Colleges, we can only concern ourselves with the so-called Arts Faculty of the Queen's University. If the University is anywhere, it is in the Arts Faculty. If the University is not there, it is nowhere, and in the Queen's University the University is nowhere. But to our documents. Our readers remember that Baccalaureate examination of the original Queen's University to which we directed attention at an early stage of our article. We were inclined to quarrel with its optional character, by which a candidate could elect to take his degree in any of three groups of subjects. At the same time, while expressing our preference for a more thorough uniformity in the recognized test of University education, we admitted that the original design of the Queen's Uni versity Baccalaureate, as of its general course of studies, was fairly consonant with a university character. We had likewise our doubts about the expediency of placing the prizes and medals for distinction in specialties so close to the general examination. We should have preferred to have seen the prizes and medals awarded for distinction in the general or degree examination. Still our first impulse must be to see how the original design can have come to fare amid the exigencies created by Alpha-Beta undergraduates and scholarshipped schoolboys, who got scholarships before they had learned their grammars. Who knows but we may find that the optionality of the degree examination has been considerably increased, has perhaps been doubled. The difficulty of making graduates out of the sort of students admitted by a sham matriculation must be rather extreme when there is a curriculum of only three sessions for the performance of the operation. There may have been temptation at work to facilitate the manufacture of graduates by breaking up the degree examination more and more into optional bits and fragments. It would be so much easier, we can understand, for a hopeful Alpha-Betist to pick up a knowledge of a bit, rather than of the whole of any examination, and, as we know, the Queen's University was dreadfully embarrassed by the want of graduates. The Queen's University was, unfortunately for its projectors, neither in BorrioboolaGha nor Fiji, and a supply of visible converts was indispensable. As the Rev. President Henry, of Queen's College, Belfast, had told the Queen's Colleges Commissioners: "What I desire to see, and what the Council desire to see, is the number of our degrees increased; because it will become very painful, if the present state of things continue, to have our assemblage in St. Patrick's Hall, and be able to present to the public no degrees." Or perhaps, let us be charitable-the Queen's University will be found to have extended its original curriculum from three sessions to six or nine, in order to provide for the education, elementary, secondary, and university, of the sort of students its numerical exigencies drive it to admit at the most elementary stage. It is true that Mr. Thompson's revelations hardly support this charitable view. But, at any rate, let us consult the existing regulations. Consulting the Regulations of the Queen's University in Ireland for the present and recent years, we certainly find no trace of an extension in the duration of the curriculum, and our readers will be led to suspect that perhaps the desired facilitation of graduate manufacture has been achieved by some moderately mischievous morcellement of the degree examination. What if the degree examination be discovered to be broken up into five or six optional fragments or groups. The expedient would not have been very creditable; but still expedients will sometimes be tried notwithstanding. Consider the "painfulness" of "having our assemblage in St. Patrick's Hall, and being able to present the public with no degrees." Let us consult the Regulations again for the exact condition of the Queen's University degree. But what on earth is this we discover? Broken up "into five or six fragments" did we say? A hundred fragments rather. Innumerable fragments rather. Alpha-Betaism has done its work. The sham matriculation has done its work. There is no longer a degree examination. The "Graduates" that must be presented to the public at "our assemblages in St. Patrick's Hall," have had to be manufactured by other means than degree examinations. Degree examinations are not for grammarless schoolboys after a course of three sessions. But let the Regulations of this monstrous institution speak for themselves. There are "Honour" graduates and "Pass" graduates, and not even the handful of "Honour" graduates pass the old degree examination. Nowadays the " Honour" graduates of the Queen's "University get their degrees for less than the specialties which used to be the subjects of medals and prizes subsequent to the degree examination. There used to be a dozen of such specialties. There are seventeen varieties of "Honour degrees" Any one of seventeen bits of education, at the termination of a curriculum of three sessions, is the sufficient qualification of even the "Honour graduate" of "of the Queen's University. The schoolboy can become an "Honour graduate " in 1. The Greek and Latin Languages; or 2. Mathematical Science; or 3. Experimental Science; or 4. Natural Science; or 5. The French and German Languages; or 6. The German and Italian Languages; or 7. The French and Italian Languages; or 8. English Language and Literature, Logic and Metaphysics; or 9. English Language and Literature, Logic and History; or 10. English Language and Literature, Logic and Political Economy; or 11. English Language and Literature, Metaphysics and History; or 12. English Language and Literature, Metaphysics and Political Economy; or 13. English Language and Literature, History and Political Economy; or 14. Logic, Metaphysics, and History; or 15. Logic, Metaphysics, and Political Economy; or 16. Logic, History, and Political Economy; or 17. Metaphysics, History, and Political Economy. The Ancient Classics of a Queen's University curriculum! "I do not think," confessed upon oath Vice-President Ryall, of Queen's College, Cork, to the Queen's Colleges Commissioners, "we have sent out more than one man who would get honours in the English universities in classics." A couple of years ago a classical Master of Arts, and gold medallist of the Queen's University was only able to obtain, a few months after his Queen's University distinctions, a fourth or fifth sizarship in Trinity College, Dublin. The History of a Queen's University curriculum! The Metaphysics of a Queen's University curriculum! So much for general education and regular academic training among even the "Honour graduates of the Queen's University in Ireland! As might be expected, the vast majority of the Queen's University graduates are not even such honour men. And if the manufacture of the Hononr graduates was astounding, the manufacture of the Pass graduates beggars description. It is no longer seventeen bits of education amongst which the Alpha-Betist can choose. Anything, literally anything, qualifies the Pass graduate of the Queen's University, the luminous Queen's University, whose radiance is too dazzling for the malevolent obscurantism of the Catholic Church. Thus there is a Pass degree to be got for 1. English Language and Literature, and Mathematics; or 2. English Language and Literature, and Experimental Physics; or 3. English Language and Literature, and Chemistry; or 4. English Language and Literature, and Zoology and Botany; or 5. English Language and Literature, and Zoology and Greek; or 6. English Language and Literature, and Botany and Greek; or 7. English Language and Literature, and Zoology and Latin; or 8. English Language and Literature, and Botany and Latin; or 9. Logic and Metaphysics, and History and Political Economy; or 10. Chemistry, Political Economy, and French; or 11. French, German, and Chemistry; or 12. Chemistry, Political Economy, and French; or 13. Chemistry, History, and Logic; or 14. Logic and Metaphysics, and English Language and Literature; or 15. Mathematical Science, Political Economy, and French; or 16. German, Experimental Physics, and Botany; or 17. Italian, Botany, and English Language and Literature; or 18. French, German, Italian, and Zoology; or 19. History, Italian, and Experimental Physics; or 20. Political Economy, Italian, and Chemistry; or 21. History, Logic, and French and German; or 22. Logic, Mathematical Science, and French; or 23. Botany, Zoology, Italian, and History; orBut it is better to transcribe the Regulation on the subject. Our readers may then construct "degrees" ad libitum for themselves. EXAMINATION FOR THE DEGREE OF B.A. WITHOUT HONOURS.' Candidates who seek the Degree without Honours may select for their Examination any group of subjects from the following list, provided the sum of the numbers attached in this list to the selected subjects be at least four : English Language and Literature, 2 | Latin, 2 Each Modern Continental Lan 1 1 There are Permutations and Combinations! Do our readers dimly comprehend how "a degree," as the Belfast Vice-President observed, "corresponding in name and appearance with the old title" can be managed in these days of enlightened secularism? It may be as well, however, to illustrate the sort of erudition which is required for these precious "degrees." Let us take the examinations in Ancient Classics, in Modern Languages, and in History, as easily understood specimens, and for the sake of uniformity we shall quote from the University Regulations of the session which saw Mr.Thompson's American confessions. For the cost of a shilling or thereabouts, our readers can supply themselves with the Regulations of any other year they may fancy. But to our quotations : The Examination in GREEK will comprise— Xenophon-Cyropædeia, Books 1, 2. with prose composition in Greek. |