competitive examination is, I think, based on a supposition that
there is no difference.

I got into my place without any examining. Looking back now, I think
I can see with accuracy what was then the condition of my own mind
and intelligence. Of things to be learned by lessons I knew almost
less than could be supposed possible after the amount of schooling
I had received. I could read neither French, Latin, nor Greek.
I could speak no foreign language,--and I may as well say here as
elsewhere that I never acquired the power of really talking French.
I have been able to order my dinner and take a railway ticket, but
never got much beyond that. Of the merest rudiments of the sciences
I was completely ignorant. My handwriting was in truth wretched. My
spelling was imperfect. There was no subject as to which examination
would have been possible on which I could have gone through an
examination otherwise than disgracefully. And yet I think I knew
more than the average young men of the same rank who began life at
nineteen. I could have given a fuller list of the names of the poets
of all countries, with their subjects and periods,--and probably
of historians,--than many others; and had, perhaps, a more accurate
idea of the manner in which my own country was governed. I knew the
names of all the Bishops, all the Judges, all the Heads of Colleges,
and all the Cabinet Ministers,--not a very useful knowledge indeed,
but one that had not been acquired without other matter which was
more useful. I had read Shakespeare and Byron and Scott, and could
talk about them. The music of the Miltonic line was familiar to
me. I had already made up my mind that Pride and Prejudice was the
best novel in the English language,--a palm which I only partially
withdrew after a second reading of Ivanhoe, and did not completely
bestow elsewhere till Esmond was written. And though I would