Before entering upon the details of the university exercises and examinations, we ought to try to divest ourselves of a modern opinion, that study exists for examinations rather than examinations for study. Indeed, to apply the measure of their prevalence and efficiency to the education of past generations, would be to commit an anachronism.

We might look in vain for any public examination to justify the learning and research which in the seventeenth century made English students famous:—whose efforts were fostered, rather by the encouragement of tutors and friends, than by the disputations in the schools. Examinations in our modern acceptation there were none. As books became cheaper, the quicker and the more diligent students discovered that they could acquire knowledge for themselves where previous generations had been dependent on the oral teaching. Then arose the necessity of examination, and as this has come to be more scientifically conducted, and its results to be more public, and at last in a sense marketable, there has been a fresh demand for oral instruction.

Again, the increased use of paper and of printing, which has done much to improve and facilitate the art of examining, has in a great measure changed the character of the tripos itself.

The Cambridge tripos is a development of the eighteenth century, and its growth may be fairly taken as a sign of the vitality of Cambridge.