ife as broadening the mind and
enlarging the horizon. Either Oxford in this respect is inferior to
Trinity College, Dublin, or else my mind has narrowed again since I took
my degree and my horizon has shrunk. I did not feel that the episcopal
pronouncements quoted deserved the eminence to which Lalage promoted
them. They struck me as being simply commonplace. I had grown quite
accustomed to them and had come to regard them as proper and natural
things for bishops to say. For instance, the very first paragraph in
this pillory of Lalage's was devoted to a bishop, I forget his name and
territorial title, who had denounced Sir Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe." Some
evil-minded person had put forward this novel as a suitable reading
book for Irish boys and girls in secondary schools, and the bishop had
objected strongly. Lalage was cheerfully contemptuous of him. Without
myself sharing his feeling, I can quite understand that he may have
found it his duty to protest against the deliberate encouragement of
such dangerous reading; and it is seldom right to laugh at a man for
doing his duty. I read "Ivanhoe" when I was a boy and I distinctly
remember that at least one eminent ecclesiastic is presented in a most
unfavourable light. If Irish boys and girls got into the way of thinking
of twelfth-century priors as gay dogs, the step onward to actual
disrespect for contemporary bishops would be quite a short one.

There was another bishop (he appeared a few pages further on in the
_Gazette_) who objected to the education of boys and girls under seven
years of age in the same infant schools. He said that this mixing of
the sexes would destroy the beautiful modesty of demeanour which
distinguishes Irish girls from those of other nations. Lalage poked
fun at this man for a page and a half. I hesitate to say that she was
actually wrong. My own experience of infant schools is very small. I
once went into one, but I did not stay there for more than five minutes,
hardly long enough to form an opinion about the wholesomeness of the
moral atmosphere. But in this case again I can enter into the feelings
of the bishop. He probably knows, having once been six years old
himself, that all boys of that age are horrid little beasts. He also
knows--he distinctly says so in the pastoral quoted by Lalage--that the
charm of maidenhood is a delicate thing, comparable to the bloom on a
peach or the gloss on a butterfly's wings. Even Miss Battersby, who
must kno