e see this
clearly, and we persuade ourselves that there is some mystery in these
men's possession, some piece of knowledge, some method of thinking which
will lead us to certainty and to peace. Alas, their secret is
incommunicable, and there is no more a philosophic than there is a royal
road to the City.

This may seem a digression from Adventures among Books into the Book of
Human Life. But while much of education is still orally communicated by
lectures and conversations, many thoughts which are to be found in books,
Greek or German, reach us through the hearing. There are many pupils who
can best be taught in this way; but, for one, if there be aught that is
desirable in a book, I then, as now, preferred, if I could, to go to the
book for it.

Yet it is odd that one remembers so little of one's undergraduate
readings, apart from the constant study of the ancient classics, which
might not be escaped. Of these the calm wisdom of Aristotle, in moral
thought and in politics, made perhaps the deepest impression. Probably
politicians are the last people who read Aristotle's "Politics." The
work is, indeed, apt to disenchant one with political life. It is
melancholy to see the little Greek states running the regular
round--monarchy, oligarchy, tyranny, democracy in all its degrees, the
"ultimate democracy" of plunder, lawlessness, license of women, children,
and slaves, and then tyranny again, or subjection to some foreign power.
In politics, too, there is no secret of success, of the happy life for
all. There is no such road to the City, either democratic or royal. This
is the lesson which Aristotle's "Polities" impresses on us, this and the
impossibility of imposing ideal constitutions on mankind.

"Whate'er is best administered is best." These are some of the
impressions made at Oxford by the studies of the schools, the more or
less inevitable "curricoolum," as the Scotch gentleman pronounced the
word. But at Oxford, for most men, the regular work of the schools is
only a small part of the literary education. People read, in different
degrees, according to their private tastes. There are always a few men,
at least, who love literary studies for their own sake, regardless of
lectures and of "classes." In my own time I really believe you could
know nothing which might not "pay" in the schools and prove serviceable
in examinations. But a good deal depended on being able to use your
knowledge by way of li