from one subject to another, good health, are necessary for success, though not tested directly, and these qualities are valuable in any kind of work (this appears to be incontrovertible); (xix.) examination records show that success in examinations is generally followed by success in after-life, and the test is therefore efficient (it does not follow that certain rejected candidates may not be extremely efficient); (xx.) as a plea for purely “external examinations,” teachers cannot be trusted to be impartial and it is better for a boy to “cram” than to curry favour with his teacher (Latham).
The brief comments in brackets, appended above to the arguments, merely indicate what has been said or can be said on the other side. It can scarcely be doubted that in spite of the powerful objections that have been advanced against examinations, they are, in the view of the majority of English people, an indispensable element in the social organization of a highly specialized democratic state, which prefers to trust nearly all decisions to committees rather than to individuals. But in view of the extreme importance of the matter, and especially of the evidence that, for some cause or other (which may or may not be the examination system), intellectual interest and initiative seem to diminish in many cases very markedly during school and college life in England, the whole subject seems to call for a searching and impartial inquiry.
Sources of Information.—The works mentioned above, and T. D. Acland, Some Account of the Origin and Objects of the New Oxford Examinations for the Title of Associate in Arts (London, 1858); Matthew Arnold, Higher Schools and Universities in Germany (1874); Graham Balfour, The Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland (2nd ed., Oxford, 1903); W. W. Rouse Ball, Origin and History of the Mathematical Tripos (Cambridge, 1880); Adolf Beier, Die höheren Schulen in Preussen und ihre Lehrer (1902–1906) (in progress); Cloudesley Brereton, “A New Method of awarding Scholarships,” School World, 1907, p. 409; G. C. Brodrick, A History of the University of Oxford (London, 1886); F. Buisson, Dictionnaire de pédagogie (1880–1887); Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Principles and Methods of University Reform (1909); J. Demogeot and H. Montucci, De l’enseignement supérieur en Angleterre et en Écosse (1870); H. Denifle, Die Universitäten des Mittelalters bis 1400 (Berlin, 1885); F. Y. Edgeworth, “The Statistics of Examinations,” and “The Element of Chance in Competitive Examinations,” Journal of the Statistical Society, 1888 and 1890 respectively; H. W. Eve, Lecture “On Marking,” in The Practice of Education (Cambridge, 1883); Charles E. Fawsitt, The Education of the Examiner (Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow) (Glasgow, 1905); J. G. Fitch, “The Proposed Admission of Girls to the University Local Examination,” Education Miscellanies (1865), vol. x.; W. Garnett, “The Representation of certain Examination Results,” Journ. Statist. Soc. (Jan. 1910); G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence (London, 1905); Sir W. Hamilton, Discussions on Philosophy (London, 1853); P. J. Hartog, “Universities, Schools and Examinations” in the University Review (July 1905); P. J. Hartog and Mrs A. H. Langdon, The Writing of English (1907); Auberon Herbert (edited by), The Sacrifice of Education to Examination, Letters from “All Sorts and Conditions of Men” (1889); Influence of Examinations, Report by a Committee, British Association Reports for 1903, p. 434. and for 1904, p. 360; John Jebb, Remarks upon the Present Mode of Education in the University of Cambridge (4th ed., 1774); Henry Latham, On the Action of Examinations (Cambridge, 1877); H. C. Maxwell Lyte, A History of the University of Oxford to the Year 1530 (London, 1886); W. A. P. Martin, The Lore of Cathay (Edinburgh and London, 1901); J. B. Mullinger, The University of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1873); How to pass Examinations successfully, by an Oxford Coach; Mark Pattison, Suggestions on Academical Organization (Edinburgh, 1868); Friedrich Paulsen, The German Universities and University Study (London, 1906) and Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts (Leipzig, 1896); George Peacock, Observations on the Statutes of the University of Cambridge (1841); Programme des examens du nouveau baccalauréat de l’enseignement secondaire, Delalain frères, Paris; Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1895); Rein’s Encyklopädisches Handbuch der Pädagogik (2nd ed., 1902, &c. ), articles “Prüfungen” (by F. Paulsen), &c. ; Third Report of the Royal Commissioners on Scientific Instructions, 1873; J. E. Thorold Rogers, Education in Oxford (1861); M. E. Sadler, “Memorandum on the Leaving Examinations ... in the Secondary Schools of Prussia,” in Report of Royal Commission on Secondary Education, vol. v. p. 27 (1895); C. A. Schmid, Geschichte der Erziehung (Stuttgart, 1884, &c. ), and Encyklopädie des gesammten Erziehungs- und Unterrichtswesens (2nd ed., 1876–87), articles “Prüfung,” “Schulprüfungen,” “Versetzungsprüfungen,” &c. ; Scholarships, various papers on, by H. B. Baker, A. A. David, H. A. Miers, M. E. Sadler and H. Bompas Smith, and others, British Association Report, 1907, pp. 707-718; Arthur Schuster, article on “Universities and Examinations” in the University Review (May 1905); W. H. Sharp, The Educational System of Japan (Office of the Director-General of Education in India) (Bombay, 1906); Special Educational Reports, issued by the Board of Education, passim; A. M. M. Stedman, Oxford: its Life and Schools (London, 1887); I. Todhunter, Conflict of Studies (1873); William Whewell, Of a Liberal Education (London, 1845); Christopher Wordsworth, Scholae academicae (Cambridge, 1877); Étienne Zi (or Siu or Seu), Pratique des examens littéraires en Chine (Shanghai, 1894). Private information from Professor M. E. Sadler and Mr A. E. Twentyman. (P. J. H.; A. Wn.)
EXARCH (ἔξαρχος, a chief person or leader), a title that has been conferred at different periods on certain chief officers or governors, both in secular and ecclesiastical matters. Of these, the most important were the exarchs of Ravenna (q.v.). In the ecclesiastical organization the exarch of a diocese (the word being here used of the political division) was in the 4th and 5th centuries the same as primate. This dignity was intermediate between the patriarchal and the metropolitan, the name patriarch being restricted after A.D. 451 to the chief bishops of the most important cities (see Patriarch). The title of Exarch was also formerly given in the Eastern Church to a general or superior over several monasteries, and to certain ecclesiastics deputed by the patriarch of Constantinople to collect the tribute payable by the Church to the Turkish government. In the modern Greek Church an exarch is a deputy, or legate a latere, of the patriarch, whose office it is to visit the clergy and churches in the provinces allotted to him. The title of exarch has been borne by the head of the Bulgarian Church (see Bulgaria), since in 1872 it repudiated the jurisdiction of the Greek patriarch of Constantinople. Hence the names of the politico-religious parties in the recent history of the Near East: “Exarchists” and “Patriarchists.”
EXCAMBION (a word connected with a large class of Low Latin
and Romance forms, such as cambium, concambium, scambium,
from Lat. cambire, Gr. κάμβειν or κάμπτειν, to bend, turn or
fold), in Scots law, the exchange (q.v.) of one heritable subject
for another. The modern Scottish excambion may consist in
the exchange of any heritable subjects whatever, e.g. a patronage
or, what often occurs, a portion of a glebe for servitude. Writing
is not, by the law of Scotland, essential to an excambion. Chiefly
in favour of the class of cottars and small feuars, and for convenience
in straightening marches, the law will consider the most
informal memoranda, and even a verbal agreement, if supported
by the subsequent possession. The power to excamb was gradually
conferred on entailed proprietors. The Montgomery Act,
which was passed in 1770, to facilitate agricultural improvements,
permitted 50 acres arable and 100 acres not fit for the plough
to be excambed. This was enlarged by the Rosebery Act in
1836, under which one-fourth of an entailed estate, not including
the mansion-house, home farm and policies, might be excambed,
provided the heirs took no higher grassum (O.E. gersum, fine)
than £200. The power was applied to the whole estate by the
Rutherford Act of 1848, and the necessary consents of substitute
heirs are now regulated by the Entail (Scotland) Act 1882.
EXCELLENCY (Lat. excellentia, excellence), a title or predicate of honour. The earliest records of its use are associated with the Frank and Lombard kings; e.g. Anastasius Bibliothecarius (d. c. 886) in his life of Pope Honorius refers to Charlemagne as “his excellency” (ejus excellentia); and during the middle ages it was freely applied to or assumed by emperors, kings and sovereign princes generally, though rather as a rhetorical flourish than as a part of their formal style. Its use is well illustrated in the various charters in the Red Book of the exchequer, where the addresses to the king vary between “your excellency,” “your dignity” (vestra dignitas), “your sublimity” (vestra sublimitas) and the like, according to the taste and inventiveness of the writers. Du Cange also gives examples of the style excellentia being applied to the pope and even to a bishop (in a charter of 1182). With the gradual stereotyping of titles of honour that of “excellency” was definitively superseded in the case of sovereigns of the highest rank, about the beginning of the 15th century, by those of “highness” and “grace,” and later by “majesty,” first assumed in England by King Henry VIII.
