e had a right to a foible. He would have crushed one
of my colleagues who had battled in the same way, with a laugh and a
few ugly words.

Well, let me dismiss Mr. Welbore from my mind. The worst of it is that,
though I don't agree with him, he has cast a sort of blight on my mind.
It is as though I had seen him spit on the face of a statue that I
loved. I don't like vice in any shape; but I equally dislike a person
who has a preference for manly vices over sentimental ones; and the
root of Mr. Welbore's dislike of vice is simply that it tends to
interfere with the hard sort of training which is necessary for success.

Mr. Welbore, as a matter of fact, seems to me really to augur worse for
the introduction of the kingdom of heaven upon earth than any number of
drunkards and publicans. One feels that the world is so terribly
strong, stronger even than sin; and what is worse, there seems to be so
little in the scheme of things that could ever give Mr. Welbore the
lie.--Ever yours,

T. B

UPTON,
July 16, 1904.

DEAR HERBERT,--I declare that the greatest sin there is in the world is
stupidity. The character that does more harm in the world than any
other is the character in which stupidity and virtue are combined. I
grow every day more despondent about the education we give at our
so-called classical schools. Here, you know, we are severely classical;
and to have to administer such a system is often more than I can bear
with dignity or philosophy. One sees arrive here every year a lot of
brisk, healthy boys, with fair intelligence, and quite disposed to
work; and at the other end one sees depart a corresponding set of young
gentlemen who know nothing, and can do nothing, and are profoundly
cynical about all intellectual things. And this is the result of the
meal of chaff we serve out to them week after week; we collect it, we
chop it up, we tie it up in packets; we spend hours administering it in
teaspoons, and this is the end. I am myself the victim of this kind of
education; I began Latin at seven and Greek at nine, and, when I left
Cambridge, I did not know either of them well. I could not sit in an
arm-chair and read either a Greek or a Latin book, and I had no desire
to do it. I knew a very little French, a very little mathematics, a
very little science; I knew no history, no German, no Italian. I knew
nothing of art or music; my ideas of geography were childish. And yet I
am decidedly literary in my tas