of such and such pieces of such and such authors?" And so on, with all the best English poets, until he came to Rogers. "I see you have included Roger's Italy among the pieces you have read. What do you think of Roger as a poet?" "What is there that you admire in his style of writing?"
"Of all the fairest cities of the earth
None is so fair as?"
My examiner enquired? "Florence" I said to his entire satisfaction! I felt that I had done fairly well in English,—and even when I differed with my examiner in opinions about authors, he was fair enough to allow me to uphold my opinions and give my reasons, and was pleased with the same. I also did well in the paper examination, and when the result was out, I was delighted to find that among about 325 candidates I stood second in order of merit in English and had scored 420 marks out of 500.
In Sanscrit Mr. Cowell, formerly of the Sanscrit College Calcutta, was our examiner. I did remarkably well in paper,—by mere luck;—I guessed the meaning of a passage from Sankaracharya's Philosophy and translated it, which my two Hindu fellow-candidates—better Sanscrit scholars than myself,—had not been able to do. I scored higher marks than they did, but I felt that I did not deserve it, for they really knew the language better than I did. I scored 430 out of 500 in Sanscrit. But here we are at a disadvantage as compared with English students. For they take up Latin and Greek, the full marks in those subjects are 1500,—and English
