EWING, JULIANA HORATIA ORR (1841-1885), English writer of books for children, daughter of the Rev. Alfred Gatty and of Margaret Gatty (q.v.), was born at Ecclesfield, Yorkshire, in 1841. One of a large family, she was accustomed to act as nursery story-teller to her brothers and sisters, and her brother Alfred Scott Gatty provided music to accompany her plays. She was well educated in classics and modern languages, and at an early age began to publish verses, being a contributor to Aunt Judy’s Magazine, which her mother started in 1866. The Land of Lost Toys and many other of Juliana’s stories appeared in this magazine. In 1867 she married Major Alexander Ewing, himself an author, and the composer of the well-known hymn “Jerusalem the Golden.” From this time until her death (13th May 1885), previously to which she had been a constant invalid, Mrs Ewing produced a number of charming children’s stories. The best of these are: The Brownies (1870), A Flat-Iron for a Farthing (1873), Lob-lie-by the Fire (1874), The Story of a Short Life (1885) and Jackanapes (1884), the two last-named, in particular, obtaining great success; among others may be mentioned Mrs Over-the-Way’s Remembrances (1869), Six to Sixteen, Jan of the Windmill (1876), A Great Emergency (1877), We and the World (1881), Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales, Brothers of Pity (1882), The Doll’s Wash, Master Fritz, Our Garden, A Soldier’s Children, Three Little Nest-Birds, A Week Spent in a Glass-House, A Sweet Little Dear, and Blue-Red (1883). Many of these were published by the S.P.C.K. Simple and unaffected in style, and sound and wholesome in matter, with quiet touches of humour and bright sketches of scenery and character, Mrs Ewing’s best stories have never been surpassed in the style of literature to which they belong.
EWING, THOMAS (1789-1871), American lawyer and statesman, was born near the present West Liberty, West Virginia, on the 28th of December 1789. His father, George Ewing, settled at Lancaster, Fairfield county, Ohio, in 1792. Thomas graduated at Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, in 1815, and in August 1816 was admitted to the bar at Lancaster, where he won high rank as an advocate. He was a Whig member of the United States senate in 1831-1837, and as such took a prominent part in the legislative struggle over the United States Bank, whose rechartering he favoured and which he resolutely defended against President Jackson’s attack, opposing in able speeches the withdrawal of deposits and Secretary Woodbury’s “Specie Circular” of 1836. In March 1841 he became secretary of the treasury in President W.H. Harrison’s cabinet. When, however, after President Tyler’s accession, the relations between the President and the Whig Party became strained, he retired (September 1841) and was succeeded by Walter Forward (1786-1852). Subsequently from March 1849 to July 1850 he was a member of President Taylor’s cabinet as the first secretary of the newly established department of the interior. He thoroughly organized the department, and in his able annual report advocated the construction by government aid of a railroad to the Pacific Coast. In 1850-1851 he filled the unexpired term of Thomas Corwin in the U.S. Senate, strenuously opposing Clay’s compromise measures and advocating the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. He was subsequently a delegate to the Peace Congress in 1861, and was a loyal supporter of President Lincoln’s war policy. He died at Lancaster, Ohio, on the 26th of October 1871.
His daughter was the wife of General William T. Sherman. His son, Hugh Boyle Ewing (1826-1905), served throughout the Civil War in the Federal armies, rising from the rank of colonel (1861) to that of brigadier-general (1862) and brevet major-general (1865), and commanding brigades at Antietam and Vicksburg and a division at Chickamauga; and was minister of the United States to the Netherlands in 1866-1870. Another son, Thomas Ewing (1829-1896), studied at Brown University in 1852-1854 (in 1894, by a special vote, he was placed on the list of graduates in the class of 1856); he was a lawyer and a free-state politician in Kansas in 1857-1861, and was the first chief-justice of the Kansas supreme court (1861-1862). In the Civil War he attained the rank of brigadier-general (March 1863) and received the brevet of major-general (1865). He was subsequently a representative in Congress from Ohio in 1877-1881; and from 1882 to 1896 practised law in New York City, where he was long one of the recognized leaders of the bar.
EXAMINATIONS. The term “examination” (i.e. inspecting, weighing and testing; from Lat. examen, the tongue of a balance) is used in the following article to denote a systematic test of knowledge, and of either special or general capacity or fitness, carried out under the authority of some public body.
1. History.—The oldest known system of examinations in history is that used in China for the selection of officers for the public service (c. 1115 B.C.), and the periodic tests which they undergo after entry (c. 2200 B.C.). See [China]; also W.A.P. Martin, The Lore of Cathay (1901), p. 311 et seq.; T.L. Bullock, “Competitive Examinations in China” (Nineteenth Century, July 1894); and Étienne Zi, Pratique des examens littéraires en Chine (Shanghai, 1894). The abolition of this system was announced in 1906, and, as a partial substitute, it was decided to hold an annual examination in Peking of Chinese graduates educated abroad (Times, 22nd of October 1906).
The majority of examinations in western countries are derived from the university examinations of the middle ages. The first universities of Europe consisted of corporations of teachers and of students analogous to the trade gilds and merchant gilds of the time. In the trade gilds there were apprentices, companions, and masters. No one was admitted to mastership until he had served his apprenticeship (q.v.), nor, as a rule, until he had shown that he could accomplish a piece of work to the satisfaction of the gild.
The object of the universities was to teach; and to the three classes established by the gild correspond roughly the scholar, the bachelor or pupil-teacher (see Rashdall i. 209, note 2, and 221, note 5), and the master or doctor (two terms at first equivalent) who, having served his apprenticeship and passed a definite technical test, had received permission to teach. The early universities of Europe, being under the same religious authority and animated by the same philosophy, resembled each other very closely in curriculum and general organization and examinations, and by the authority of the emperor, or of the pope in most cases, the permission to teach granted by one university was valid in all (jus ubicunque docendi).