teeth and cut out
our tongues; you've allowed us still to breathe and swallow."

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the bishop; "it's not quite so easy to cut
out the tongue of an Oxford magnate--and as for teeth--ha, ha, ha!
Why, in the way we've left the matter, it's very odd if the heads
of colleges don't have their own way quite as fully as when the
hebdomadal board was in all its glory; what do you say, Mr. Dean?"

"An old man, my lord, never likes changes," said the dean.

"You must have been sad bunglers if it is so," said the archdeacon;
"and indeed, to tell the truth, I think you have bungled it. At any
rate, you must own this; you have not done the half what you boasted
you would do."

"Now, as regards your system of professors--" began the chancellor
slowly. He was never destined to get beyond such beginning.

"Talking of professors," said a soft clear voice, close behind
the chancellor's elbow; "how much you Englishmen might learn from
Germany; only you are all too proud."

The bishop, looking round, perceived that that abominable young
Stanhope had pursued him. The dean stared at him as though he were
some unearthly apparition; so also did two or three prebendaries and
minor canons. The archdeacon laughed.

"The German professors are men of learning," said Mr. Harding, "but--"

"German professors!" groaned out the chancellor, as though his nervous
system had received a shock which nothing but a week of Oxford air
could cure.

"Yes," continued Ethelbert, not at all understanding why a German
professor should be contemptible in the eyes of an Oxford don.
"Not but what the name is best earned at Oxford. In Germany the
professors do teach; at Oxford, I believe, they only profess to do
so, and sometimes not even that. You'll have those universities of
yours about your ears soon, if you don't consent to take a lesson
from Germany."

There was no answering this. Dignified clergymen of sixty years of
age could not condescend to discuss such a matter with a young man
with such clothes and such a beard.

"Have you got good water out at Plumstead, Mr. Archdeacon?" said the
bishop by way of changing the conversation.

"Pretty good," said Dr. Grantly.

"But by no means so good as his wine, my lord," said a witty minor
canon.

"Nor so generally used," said another; "that is, for inward
application."

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the bishop, "a good cellar of wine is a very
comfortable thing in a house."

"Your German