Charles Dickens.] ALL THE YEAR ROUND.  [January 28, 1860.] 317

eighty pounds a year, must be a learned man.
Why did he not aspire to the Foreign-office,
or the Colonial Land and Emigration-office,
where writing, précis, and French are the only
necessary qualifications—where even a know-
ledge of geography is not required? In the
former office, even arithmetic is put aside.

Our Government Schoolmasters, by the help
of heads of departments who select the subjects
on which their clerks are to be examined, have,
then, done their work completely for the War-
office. But, what is the examination of a mere
clerk for the War-office when compared with
the final tests applied to Colonial-office clerks?
Their way is blocked with awful barriers. Do
they beg to be admitted, our Government School-
masters demand a sketch of the history of the
Greek drama: a statement of the respective
merits and defects of Plato and Aristotle; the
distinctive opinions of the Old, Middle, and New
Academies; and, say, a "short review, or criti-
cism, of any one Latin poet." The wretched
candidate is then set to tasks, to test his
knowledge of French literature. Let him trace
the influence of "The English School" on
modern French literature, and inform our
Schoolmasters " what are the distinguishing cha-
racteristics of the classical and romantic schools."
Unhappy the wretch who goes to Dean's-yard
with only the education which will enable him
to do his duties in the Colonial-office. He
must be a chemist and geologist, as well as a
Roman historian and a French literary critic.
Let him define the terms anticlinal, synclinal,
unconformable, strike and dip. Would he serve
his Queen as a Colonial clerk, let him tell
his Sovereign Lady through our School-
masters, where are the points of division
placed by geologists to separate the hypozoic,
the palaeozoic, the mesozoic, and the cainozoic
strata; and let him exemplify the principles on
which these divisions have been founded! Other
geological puzzles are in store for him when he
has solved the above trifles. But, will solution of
these give him access to the high grades of the
Colonial-office? By no means. Our Govern-
ment Schoolmasters have not done with him yet.
He must have something of a Faraday in him.
Let him declare how much per cent. of oxygen,
of sulphur, and of aluminium is contained in
the anhydrous normal (or neutral) sulphate of
alumina! He may yet be tripped up. The above
per-centages set forth accurately, will he have
the goodness to tell the awful Solons of Dean's-
yard, what is meant by the " empiric," as distin-
guished from the " rational," formula of a sub-
stance, and will he please to illustrate each by
means of acetic acid!

It may strike the reader that we are taking
an unwarrantable liberty with his credulity;
but we have the honour to assure him that
the above preparatory school questions are
taken from Mr. Parkinson's Government Exami-
nation Revelations; that the questions which
puzzled little Tweezle of Peckham are no fanciful
questions of our own; and that there are ques-
tions in Mr. Parkinson's book even more puzzling

and preposterous than any we have set forth.
And yet the Foreign-office clerk is not required
to know whether Lisbon belongs to Portugal or
to the Chinese! And yet the clerks in the
Judge Advocate-General's-office, are not required
by the Government Schoolmasters to have so
good an education as that exacted from the
messengers and office-keepers of other offices!
The public's consolation is, that if geo-
graphy be not necessary to the Foreign-office
clerk, whose business lies among papers relating
to every part of the civilised globe, it is, ac-
cording to our Government Schoolmasters, in-
dispensable to the proper discharge of the Inland
Revenue clerk's duties—those duties being the
computation of legacy duty. And at the very
same time, book-keeping is not necessary, we
learn, either in the Board of Trade or the Public
Works Loan-office!

Poor little Tweezle of Peckham was plucked
when he tried to scale the giddy height of the
War-office, because he could not remember
who was secretary to Henry the Second; the
Hon. Leonidas Gules passed into the Board of
Trade triumphantly, after an examination in
Latin and Greek.

"What's the Latin for the cocked-hats which
the Roman gentlemen wore with their togas?"
asked Captain Marryat's flogging schoolmaster,
long ago, in the true Civil Service Examination
spirit. And our Government Schoolmasters
have imitated the flogging pedant with remark-
able success.

VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI.
A TRUE ITALIAN HISTORY. IN NINE CHAPTERS.

CHAPTER III. THE BROTHERS-IN-LAW.

THUS Vittoria's three suitors had each their
partisans in the family councils. The father was
strong in favour of Francesco Peretti, the
nephew of his uncle; the mother was despe-
rately bent on having " the sweet prince;" and
the brother of saintly morals was of opinion that
most might be made out of the noble and re-
verend Farnese.

And what about the lovely maid herself?
Did she remain aloof and fancy-free while
her elders were debating her destiny? Did
she take either side in the momentous
question? Did she tell one lover to " ask
mamma," and the other to " speak to papa?"
Or, are we to suppose that she was looked upon
by her parents as an article to be disposed of,
and as having no voice in the matter? If we
could discover any hint that could indicate a
preference on the young lady's part at this stage
of the matter, it would held to throw a light
upon some subsequent parts of the story. But
no word of the sort is to be found.

In this position of matters Count Claudio,
finding it hopeless to bring his wife over to his
opinion, and thinking that delay might prove
the most dangerous of all courses, determined
to exert his authority as head of the family, and
Vittoria was duly married to Francesco Peretti,
to the great disgust of the exemplary old Car-
dinal Farnese, and to the rage and fury of the