'Pay down,' he said, 'a thousand pounds if you
would be admitted within this bar.'
The young man, therefore, whose father worked for wages, or for a
small salary, or in a small way of trade, could not so much as dream
of entering any of the Professions. They were as much closed to him as
the gates of Paradise. But during the nineteenth century a new
Profession was created, and this was open to him. This they could not
close. It had already grown went and strong before they thought of
closing it. It was open to the poor man's son. He went into it. And
with the help of it, as with a key, he opened all the rest. You shall
understand immediately what this was.
I have spoken of certain exceptions to this exclusion of the lower
classes. There were provided at the public schools and the
Universities scholarships founded for the purpose of enabling poor
lads to carry on their studies. 'The schools had long ceased to be the
property of the poor for whom they were designed: their scholarships,
mostly of recent foundation, were granted by competitive examination
to those boys who had already spent a large sum of money on
preliminary work. The scholarships of the colleges at Oxford and
Cambridge were also given by examination, without the least
consideration of the candidates' private resources.
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