NEW REQUIREMENT IN FRENCH AND GERMAN.

A required examination in the University without a long preliminary training of lectures and recitations is novel. It is an approach in a very small way towards the discrediting of the lecture system, and we hail it as a welcome innovation. The undergraduates will now have to prepare on his own initiative for at least one important test, and the responsibility should be salutary.

A reading knowledge of French and German ought certainly to form part of a liberal education. It is invaluable in the advanced study of history, philosophy, and literature, and is indispensable in the pursuit of science. The present required training is insufficient to be of any real use, but with a little supplementary practice in reading, a working knowledge of these languages may well be obtained.