Laudator Temporis Acti

In years to come many American writers came to accept that many of her observations on frontier society were accurate. Longfellow said he would forgive her strictures if she helped to eliminate the horror of tobacco-spitting which was her particular bête noire. For several decades it was quite common for Americans to cry 'Trollope! Trollope!' when they observed some ill-mannered behaviour in public.

(A.) Syra, Syra. (Sy.) What is it? (A.) How are you?
(Sy.) Never ask that when you see an old man
Or an old woman; know at once that it's going badly.

(Α.) Σύρα, Σύρα. (Συ.) τί ἐστι; (Α.) πῶς ἡμῖν ἔχεις;
(Συ.) μηδέποτ' ἐρώτα τοῦτ' ἐπὰν γέροντ' ἴδῃς
ἢ γραῦν τιν'· ἴσθι δ' εὐθὺς ὅτι κακῶς ἔχει.

(A.) Syra, Syra. (Sy.) quid est? (A.) quomodo habes?
(Sy.) numquam hoc quaerito, si senem videris,
aut anum; continuo scito male habere.

(A.) Syra, heus Syra. (Sy.) hem quid me vis? (A.) ut vero vales?
(Sy.) nunquam istud percunctare, senem si videris
anumve; quippe liquido non recte valent.

Labels: eheu fugaces labuntur anni

A. "Doth Charidas rest beneath thee?"
B. "If it is the son of Arimmas of Cyrene that you mean, he does."
A. "What is it like below, Charidas?"
C. "Very dark."
A. "And what about return?"
C. "All lies."
A. "And Pluto?"
C. "A myth."
A. "I am done for."
C. "This is the truth that I tell you, but if you want to hear something agreeable, a large ox in Hades costs a shilling."

α. 'Η ῥ᾽ ὑπὸ σοὶ Χαρίδας ἀναπαύεται; β. Εἰ τὸν Ἀρίμμα
  τοῦ Κυρηναίου παῖδα λέγεις, ὑπ᾽ ἐμοί.
α. Ὦ Χαρίδα, τί τὰ νέρθε; γ. Πολὺ σκότος. α. Αἱ δ᾽ ἄνοδοι τί;
  γ. Ψεῦδος. α. Ὁ δὲ Πλούτων; γ. Μῦθος. α. Ἀπωλόμεθα.
γ. Οὗτος ἐμὸς λόγος ὔμμιν ἀληθινός· εἰ δὲ τὸν ἡδύν
  βούλει, πελλαίου βοῦς μέγας εἰν ἀΐδῃ.

Women, all the world over, are entitled to everything that chivalry can give them. They should sit while men stand. They should be served while men wait. Men should be silent while they speak. They should be praised,—even without desert. They should be courted,—even when having neither wit nor beauty. They should be worshipped,—even without love. They should be kept harmless while men suffer. They should be kept warm while men are cold. They should be kept safe while men are in danger. They should be enabled to live while men die in their defence. All this chivalry should do for women, and should do as a matter of course. But there is a reason for this deference. One human being does not render all these services to another,—who cannot be more than his equal before God,—without a cause. A man will serve a woman, will suffer for her,—if it come to that will die for her,—because she is weaker than he and needs protection. Let her show herself to be as strong, let her prove by her prowess and hardihood that the old idea of her comparative weakness has been an error from the beginning, and the very idea of chivalry, though it may live for awhile by the strength of custom, must perish and die out of men's hearts.

Husband and wife must each possess a studio; on the woman's sanctuary I hesitate to dwell, and turn to the man's. The walls are shelved waist-high for books, and the top thus forms a continuous table running round the wall. Above are prints, a large map of the neighbourhood, a Corot and a Claude or two. The room is very spacious, and the five tables and two chairs are but as islands. One table is for actual work, one close by for references in use; one, very large, for MSS. or proofs that wait their turn; one kept clear for an occasion; and the fifth is the map table, groaning under a collection of large-scale maps and charts. Of all books these are the least wearisome to read and the richest in matter; the course of roads and rivers, the contour lines and the forests in the maps—the reefs, soundings, anchors, sailing marks and little pilot-pictures in the charts—and, in both, the bead-roll of names, make them of all printed matter the most fit to stimulate and satisfy the fancy. The chair in which you write is very low and easy, and backed into a corner; at one elbow the fire twinkles; close at the other, if you are a little inhumane, your cage of silver-bills are twittering into song.

I have left to the last the little room for winter evenings. This should be furnished in warm positive colours, and sofas and floor thick with rich furs. The hearth, where you burn wood of aromatic quality on silver dogs, tiled round about with Bible pictures; the seats deep and easy; a single Titian in a gold frame; a white bust or so upon a bracket; a rack for the journals of the week; a table for the books of the year; and close in a corner the three shelves full of eternal books that never weary: Shakespeare, Molière, Montaigne, Lamb, Sterne, De Musset's comedies (the one volume open at Carmosine and the other at Fantasio); the Arabian Nights, and kindred stories, in Weber's solemn volumes; Borrow's Bible in Spain, the Pilgrim's Progress, Guy Mannering and Rob Roy, Monte Cristo and the Vicomte de Bragelonne, immortal Boswell sole among biographers, Chaucer, Herrick, and the State Trials.

The bedrooms are large, airy, with almost no furniture, floors of varnished wood, and at the bed-head, in case of insomnia, one shelf of books of a particular and dippable order, such as Pepys, the Paston Letters, Burt's Letters from the Highlands, or the Newgate Calendar....

[Y]ou remember in your boyhood something akin to this spirit of adventure, this thirst for exploration, that now takes you masterfully by the hand, plunges you into many a deep grove, and drags you over many a stony crest. It is as if the whole wood were full of friendly voices calling you farther in, and you turn from one side to another, like Buridan's donkey, in a maze of pleasure.

Comely beeches send up their white, straight, clustered branches, barred with green moss, like so many fingers from a half-clenched hand. Mighty oaks stand to the ankles in a fine tracery of underwood; thence the tall shaft climbs upwards, and the great forest of stalwart boughs spreads out into the golden evening sky, where the rooks are flying and calling. On the sward of the Bois d'Hyver the firs stand well asunder with outspread arms, like fencers saluting; and the air smells of resin all around, and the sound of the axe is rarely still. But strangest of all, and in appearance oldest of all, are the dim and wizard upland districts of young wood. The ground is carpeted with fir-tassel, and strewn with fir-apples and flakes of fallen bark. Rocks lie crouching in the thicket, guttered with rain, tufted with lichen, white with years and the rigours of the changeful seasons. Brown and yellow butterflies are sown and carried away again by the light air—like thistledown. The loneliness of these coverts is so excessive, that there are moments when pleasure draws to the verge of fear. You listen and listen for some noise to break the silence, till you grow half mesmerised by the intensity of the strain; your sense of your own identity is troubled; your brain reels, like that of some gymnosophist poring on his own nose in Asiatic jungles; and should you see your own outspread feet, you see them, not as anything of yours, but as a feature of the scene around you.

Strange indeed is the attraction of the forest for the minds of men.

For the forest takes away from you all excuse to die. There is nothing here to cabin or thwart your free desires. Here all the impudencies of the brawling world reach you no more. You may count your hours, like Endymion, by the strokes of the lone woodcutter, or by the progression of the lights and shadows and the sun wheeling his wide circuit through the naked heavens. Here shall you see no enemies but winter and rough weather. And if a pang comes to you at all, it will be a pang of healthful hunger. All the puling sorrows, all the carking repentance, all this talk of duty that is no duty, in the great peace, in the pure daylight of these woods, fall away from you like a garment.

Why, ye tenants of the lake,
For me your wat'ry haunt forsake?
Tell me, fellow creatures, why
At my presence thus you fly?
Why disturb your social joys,
Parent, filial, kindred ties?—

Common friend to you and me,
Nature's gifts to all are free:
Peaceful keep your dimpling wave,
Busy feed, or wanton lave;
Or, beneath the sheltering rock,
Bide the surging billow's shock.

Conscious, blushing for our race,
Soon, too soon, your fears I trace.
Man, your proud, usurping foe,
Would be lord of all below:
Plumes himself in freedom's pride,
Tyrant stern to all beside.

The eagle, from the cliffy brow
Marking you his prey below,
In his breast no pity dwells,
Strong necessity compels:
But Man, to whom alone is giv'n
A ray direct from pitying Heav'n,
Glories in his heart humane—
And creatures for his pleasure slain!

In these savage, liquid plains,
Only known to wand'ring swains,
Where the mossy riv'let strays
Far from human haunts and ways,
All on Nature you depend,
And life's poor season peaceful spend.

Or, if Man's superior might
Dare invade your native right,
On the lofty ether borne,
Man with all his powers you scorn;
Swiftly seek, on clanging wings,
Other lakes, and other springs;
And the foe you cannot brave,
Scorn at least to be his slave.

I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much...

But the Forest was already beginning to become the haunt of the Parisian artistic and middle classes, and a literate opposition to the 'industrialisation' of the forest began. A survey in 1852 revealed that some 70 per cent of the Forest was being used for 'industry', which meant any system of organised management. The eminent artist Théodore Rousseau, who had been painting the Forest since the 1830s, rallied his friends, and petitioned Napoleon III to protect the forêt ancienne from the debilitating cankers of commercial forestry and the tourist industry.

....

The local artists' view of the Forest hardly coincided with the manicured tourist honeypot they'd unwittingly encouraged it to become, and one writer, Emile Bernard, complained that it was acquiring the 'cultivated air of an English landscape garden'. But for the French government, the simultaneous rise of Fontainebleau as a commercial gold-mine and a centre of French artistic excellence couldn't have been handier, and Napoleon III readily agreed to Rousseau's 1851 petition. In an unprecedented move, he authorised the creation in 1853 of some 400 hectares of Réserves artistiques, groups of especially beguiling old trees and rocks, which were to remain uncut and unmanaged. It was the first nature reserve ever to be established for aesthetic reasons, and the first reserve of any kind in western Europe. (Czechoslovakia had been creating forest reserves like Boubinsky Prales since the 1830s.) The reserved area was expanded to 1,000 hectares in 1861, and then into a full-scale Série Artistique covering one-tenth of the Forest (4,000 hectares) by 1904.

In 1873 the painter Edmund Kanoldt discovered, to his horror, that the ancient oakwood of La Serpentara at Olevano, east of Rome, was doomed to be felled. Ever since it had been discovered by Joseph Anton Koch, the grove had been virtually annexed by generations of German painters in Rome, as their forest home-away-from-home. Kanoldt himself had sketched and painted there, and such was his indignation at its fate that he recruited the German ambassador in Rome for its preservation. With the heavy guns of officialdom weighing in, enough money was raised to buy the wood outright and it was presented to the kaiser, who established it in perpetuity as the “Estate of German Artists.” In appreciation for the patronage, a Kaiser-Eiche was planted at La Serpentara to mark Wilhelm I’s ninetieth birthday. To this day the property remains the summer resort of the German Academy in Rome. Though barely ninety oak trees survive, they still constitute a little outcrop of the German woods, in the very heart of the Latin state.

That was when my mother wrote to me from Tryon in Carolina that the glen I loved there, with tall trees and a waterfall in it, was to be sold up for its lumber, and what had I to say to that? So I sat down, in our Riviera villa, and wrote about everything that grew there, the tulip trees and sourwood and dogwood, the maidenhair and trillium and trembling saxifrage, and the birds and mammals and insects, and about the falls itself, that leaps forever with a pulsation like living. This report my mother's friends took to the richest man in the small town, and he bought the glen for them. The women have paid him back. The trees are there still, and the dewed maidenhair; the red birds call 'What cheer!' there, and any time I like I can listen and hear the pulsation of the falling water.

• A Tree in the Villa of Manilius Vopiscus
  
• A Petition by Alexander Pope and Others
  
• The Woods of Bachycraigh
  
• Saved from the Sordid Axe
  
• Woodman, Spare That Tree

Be it set down, to my folly if you will, that in a world racked with war and worm-eaten with despair, I could somehow take an entire day and devote it to the doings of two dippers, and the dance of one slender cascade. I do not know how to justify my way of life, any more than I know how long it can continue. I can only say that this too is reality; this too is truth, this also is the business of a man, and its own wage.

What path of life should one pursue? In the market-place are broils and business difficulties, and at home are anxieties; in the country there is too much labour, and at sea there is fear. In a foreign land there is apprehension if you possess anything, and if you are ill off, life is a burden. You are married? You won’t be without cares. You are unmarried? You live a still more lonely life. Children are a trouble, and a childless life is a crippled one. Youth is foolish, and old age again is feeble. There is then, it seems, a choice between two things, either not to be born or to die at once on being born.

Ποίην τις βιότοιο τάμῃ τρίβον; εἰν ἀγορῇ μὲν
    νείκεα καὶ χαλεπαὶ πρήξιες· ἐν δὲ δόμοις
φροντίδες· ἐν δ᾿ ἀγροῖς καμάτων ἅλις· ἐν δὲ θαλάσσῃ
    τάρβος· ἐπὶ ξείνης δ᾿, ἢν μὲν ἔχεις τι, δέος·
ἢν δ᾿ ἀπορῇς, ἀνιηρόν. ἔχεις γάμον; οὐκ ἀμέριμνος
    ἔσσεαι· οὐ γαμέεις; ζῇς ἔτ᾿ ἐρημότερος·
τέκνα πόνοι, πήρωσις ἄπαις βίος· αἱ νεότητες
    ἄφρονες, αἱ πολιαὶ δ᾿ ἔμπαλιν ἀδρανέες.
ἦν ἄρα τοῖν δισσοῖν ἐνὸς αἵρεσις, ἢ τὸ γενέσθαι
    μηδέποτ᾿, ἢ τὸ θανεῖν αὐτίκα τικτόμενον.

Pursue every path of life. In the market place are honours and prudent dealings, at home rest; in the country the charm of nature, and at sea profit; in a foreign country, if you have any possessions, there is fame, and if you are in want no one knows it but yourself. Are you married? Your house will be the best of houses. Do you remain unmarried? Your life is yet lighter. Children are darlings; a childless life is free from care. Youth is strong, and old age again is pious. Therefore there is no choice between two things, either not to be born or to die; for all in life is excellent.

Παντοίην βιότοιο τάμοις τρίβον· εἰν ἀγορῇ μὲν
    κύδεα καὶ πινυταὶ πρήξιες· ἐν δὲ δόμοις
ἄμπαυμ᾿· ἐν δ᾿ ἀγροῖς Φύσιος χάρις· ἐν δὲ θαλάσσῃ
    κέρδος. ἐπὶ ξείνης δ᾿, ἢν μὲν ἔχεις τι, κλέος·
ἢν δ᾿ ἀπορῇς, μόνος οἶδας. ἔχεις γάμον; οἶκος ἄριστος
    ἔσσεται· οὐ γαμέεις; ζῇς ἔτ᾿ ἐλαφρότερος.
τέκνα πόθος, ἄφροντις ἄπαις βίος· αἱ νεότητες
    ῥωμαλέαι, πολιαὶ δ᾿ ἔμπαλιν εὐσεβέες.
οὐκ ἄρα τῶν δισσῶν ἐνὸς αἵρεσις, ἢ τὸ γενέσθαι
    μηδέποτ᾿, ἢ τὸ θανεῖν· πάντα γὰρ ἐσθλὰ βίῳ.

Through which of the paths of life is it eligible to pass? In publick assemblies are debates and troublesome affairs: domestick privacies are haunted with anxieties; in the country is labour; on the sea is terrour: in a foreign land, he that has money must live in fear, he that wants it must pine in distress; are you married? you are troubled with suspicions; are you single? you languish in solitude; children occasion toil, and a childless life is a state of destitution; the time of youth is a time of folly, and gray hairs are loaded with infirmity. This choice only, therefore, can be made, either never to receive being, or immediately to lose it.

You may pass well through any of the paths of life. In publick assemblies are honours and transactions of wisdom; in domestick privacy is stillness and quiet: in the country are the beauties of nature; on the sea is the hope of gain; in a foreign land, he that is rich is honoured, he that is poor may keep his poverty secret; are you married? you have a cheerful house; are you single? you are unincumbered; children are objects of affection, to be without children is to be without care: the time of youth is the time of vigour, and gray hairs are made venerable by piety. It will, therefore, never be a wise man's choice, either not to obtain existence, or to lose it; for every state of life has its felicity.

Poor outcast refugees of mother earth
Condemnd in vain for rest & peace to roam
Ye birds & beasts of fates despited birth
Forced from the wilds which nature left your home
By vile invasions of encroaching men
By whom wild natures nearly dispossest
—The rabbit has no waste to make his den
& the coy p[h]easant has not where to rest
& cawing rook as spring returns agen
Scarce finds a tree whereon to build its nest
Ah tyrant knaves while preaching freedoms laws
Crying down tyranny in stronger powers
You glut your vile unsatiated maws
& freedoms birthright in the weak devours

Labels: arboricide

Now for the delight of our eyes, wee haue the May-painting of the earth, with diuers flowers of dainty colours and delicate sweets: we haue the berryes, the cherries, the pease and the beanes, the plums and the codlings, in the month of June: in July the peares and the apples, the wheat, the rye, the barley and the oates, the beauty of the wide fields, and the labours with delight and mirth, and merry cheare at the comming home of the Haruest cart. We haue, againe, in our woods the birds singing: in the pastures the Cowe lowing, the Eue bleating, & the Foale neighing, which with profit and pleasure makes vs better musique then an idle note and a worse ditty, though I highly doe commend musique, when it is in a right key. Againe, we haue young Rabbets that in a sunny morning sit washing of their faces, while as I haue heard beyond the seas there are certaine old Conies that in their beds sit painting of their faces: wee haue besides Tumblers for our Conies, and Greyhounds for our courses, Hounds for our chases, Haukes of all kinde for the field, and the riuer, and the wood: so that what can reason conceiue, that nature can desire? but for the delight of both the Country doth afford us.

Youth is a horrid period of life but luckily it passes. Happy, comfortable middle-age is the best—the prime period from 40 to 70.

"There is a word in Newspeak" said Syme, "I don't know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse; applied to someone you agree with, it is praise."

The key word here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink.

No word in the B vocabulary was ideologically neutral. A great many were euphemisms. Such words, for instance, as joycamp (forced-labour camp) or Minipax (Ministry of Peace, i.e. Ministry of War) meant almost the exact opposite of what they appeared to mean.

Labels: auto-antonyms

Irrespective of the cirumstances in which children grow up, we make for ourselves (and sometimes in the least appetising, most improbable places) secret and healing retreats, where actuality and imagination meet, and time stands outside the door. And what goes on in these places is often so potent, so resonant that we revisit them for the remainder of our lives.

I sat one sprinkling day upon the lea,
Where tall-stemmed ferns spread out luxuriantly,
And nothing but those tall ferns sheltered me.

The rain gained strength, and damped each lopping frond,
Ran down their stalks beside me and beyond,
And shaped slow-creeping rivulets as I conned,

With pride, my spray-roofed house. And though anon
Some drops pierced its green rafters, I sat on,
Making pretence I was not rained upon.

The sun then burst, and brought forth a sweet breath
From the limp ferns as they dried underneath:
I said: "I could live on here thus till death";

And queried in the green rays as I sate:
"Why should I have to grow to man's estate,
And this afar-noised World perambulate?"

[T]he Loafer quits the village; and now the world is before him. Shall he sit on a gate and smoke? or lie on the grass and smoke? or smoke aimlessly and at large along the road? Such a choice of happiness is distracting; but perhaps the last course is the best—as needing the least mental effort of selection. Hardly, however, has he fairly started his first daydream when the snappish "ting" of a bellkin recalls him to realities. By comes the bicyclist: dusty, sweating, a piteous thing to look upon. But the irritation of the strepitant metal has jarred the Loafer's always exquisite nerves: he is fain to climb a gate and make his way towards solitude and the breezy downs.

Up here all vestiges of a sordid humanity disappear. The Loafer is alone with the south-west wind and the blue sky. Only a carolling of larks and a tinkling from distant flocks break the brooding noonday stillness; above, the wind-hover hangs motionless, a black dot on the blue. Prone on his back on the springy turf, gazing up into the sky, his fleshy integument seems to drop away, and the spirit ranges at will among the tranquil clouds. This way Nirvana nearest lies. Earth no longer obtrudes herself; possibly somewhere a thousand miles or so below him the thing still "spins like a fretful midge." The Loafer knows not nor cares. His is now an astral body, and through golden spaces of imagination his soul is winging her untrammelled flight. And there he really might remain for ever, but that his vagrom spirit is called back to earth by a gentle but resistless, very human summons,—a gradual, consuming, Pantagruelian, god-like, thirst: a thirst to thank Heaven on. So, with a sigh half of regret, half of anticipation, he bends his solitary steps towards the nearest inn. Tobacco for one is good; to commune with oneself and be still is truest wisdom; but beer is a thing of deity—beer is divine.

Domi manere oportet belle fortunatum
He who is well off should stay at home

Οἴκοι μένειν δεῖ τὸν καλῶς εὐδαίμονα, He for whom all goes well should stay at home. Let the man who has adequate resources, if he wishes to live a happy life, live at home. Nowhere else will he find the same comfort and the same freedom. Let the man who is in want go abroad to find a living and venture a game of luck. So Menander: 'The man who is well off should stay at home / And keep his freedom, or be no longer free'. It can also be turned to quite another sense: The man who has a good conscience should not seek credit from other men's applause, but rest content with the sense of his own merit.

Domi manere oportet belle fortunatum
Οἴκοι μένειν δεῖ τὸν καλῶς εὐδαίμονα

i.e. Domi manendum est, cuncta cui sunt prospera.

Cui suppetit copia facultatum, is si velit felicem agere vitam, domi vivat. Nusquam enim vivitur commodius, nusquam liberius. Qui eget, peregrinando rem quaerat, ac fortunae experiatur aleam. Ita Menander:

Οἴκοι μένειν χρὴ καὶ μένειν ἐλεύθερον,
Ἢ μηκέτ᾿ εἶναι τὸν καλῶς εὐδαίμονα,

i.e.

Domi manere oportet, ut liber siet,
Aut liber esse desinat, qui dives est.

Potest in hunc quoque detorqueri sensum: Qui sibi bene conscius est, ne captet ex alienis laudibus gloriam, sed sit suarum virtutum conscientia contentus.

I've often said that all of man's unhappiness comes from one thing: not knowing how to remain calmly in one room.

J'ai découvert que tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos dans une chambre.

• Oikos Philos, Oikos Aristos
  
• Small Houses
  
• Staying Put
  
• My Native Hills
  
• More on Aglaus of Psophis
  
• Staying at Home
  
• Lottites
  
• To Be Happy At Home
  
• Aglaus of Psophis
  
• Here

In only one respect do I resemble Shakespeare: I know little Latin and less Greek. Once, long ago, I knew quite a lot of both. I had to; for I was brought up in what it is now fashionable to call the Western Tradition, the educational system which equated wisdom with a knowledge of the classical authors in the original, and defined culture as an ability to write grammatically correct Greek and Latin prose. And not merely prose; for at Eton, in my day, we strictly meditated the thankless Muse. The whole of every Tuesday, from seven in the morning until ten at night, was devoted to the exhausting and preposterous task of translating thirty or forty lines of English poetry into Latin or, on great occasions, Greek verses. For those who were most successful in producing pastiches of Ovid or Horace or Euripides, there were handsome prizes. I still have a Matthew Arnold in crimson morocco, a Shelley in half-calf, to testify to my one-time prowess in these odd fields of endeavour. Today I could no more write a copy of Greek iambics, or even of Latin hexameters, than I could fly. All I can remember of these once indispensable arts is the intense boredom by which the practice of them was accompanied. Even today the sight of Dr Smith's Shorter Latin Dictionary, or of Liddell's and Scott's Greek Lexicon, has power to recall that ancient ennui. What dreary hours have I spent frantically turning those pages in search of a word for 'cow' that could be scanned as a dactyl, or to make sure that my memory of the irregular verbs and the Greek accents was not at fault! I hate to think of all that wasted time. And yet, in view of the fact that most human beings are destined to pass most of their life at jobs in which it is impossible for them to take the slightest interest, this old-fashioned training with the dictionary may have been extremely salutary. At least it taught one to know and expect the worst of life. Whereas the pupil in a progressive school, where everything is made to seem entertaining and significant, lives in a fool's paradise. As a preparation for life, not as it ought to be, but as it actually is, the horrors of Greek grammar and the systematic idiocy of Latin verses were perfectly appropriate. On the other hand, it must be admitted that they tended to leave their victims with a quite irrational distaste for poor dear Dr Smith.

If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard.