ing questions to an outside passenger, who
had alighted with him, regarding an epidemic disorder, that had been
rife about Dalston; and which, my friend assured him, had gone through
five or six schools in that neighbourhood. The truth now flashed upon
me, that my companion was a schoolmaster; and that the youth, whom he
had parted from at our first acquaintance, must have been one of the
bigger boys, or the usher.--He was evidently a kind-hearted man, who
did not seem so much desirous of provoking discussion by the questions
which he put, as of obtaining information at any rate. It did not
appear that he took any interest, either, in such kind of inquiries,
for their own sake; but that he was in some way bound to seek for
knowledge. A greenish-coloured coat, which he had on, forbade me to
surmise that he was a clergyman. The adventure gave birth to some
reflections on the difference between persons of his profession in
past and present times.

Rest to the souls of those fine old Pedagogues; the breed, long
since extinct, of the Lilys, and the Linacres: who believing that
all learning was contained in the languages which they taught, and
despising every other acquirement as superficial and useless, came to
their task as to a sport! Passing from infancy to age, they dreamed
away all their days as in a grammar-school. Revolving in a perpetual
cycle of declensions, conjugations, syntaxes, and prosodies; renewing
constantly the occupations which had charmed their studious childhood;
rehearsing continually the part of the past; life must have slipped
from them at last like one day. They were always in their first
garden, reaping harvests of their golden time, among their _Flori_ and
their _Spici-legia_; in Arcadia still, but kings; the ferule of their
sway not much harsher, but of like dignity with that mild sceptre
attributed to king Basileus; the Greek and Latin, their stately Pamela
and their Philoclea; with the occasional duncery of some untoward
Tyro, serving for a refreshing interlude of a Mopsa, or a clown
Damaetas!

With what a savour doth the Preface to Colet's, or (as it is sometimes
called) Paul's Accidence, set forth! "To exhort every man to the
learning of grammar, that intendeth to attain the understanding of
the tongues, wherein is contained a great treasury of wisdom and
knowledge, it would seem but vain and lost labour; for so much as it
is known, that nothing can surely be ended, whose beginning is either