.' On which his neighbour
jumped up and vanished. Another went on in the same way about currency.
His first hour's talking carried him just through the Restriction Act of
ninety-seven. As we had then more than half-a-century before us, I took
my departure. But these were two whom topography and chronology would
have brought to a close. The bore of all bores was the third. His
subject had no beginning, middle, nor end. It was education. Never
was such a journey through the desert of mind: the Great Sahara of
intellect. The very recollection makes me thirsty.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ If all the nonsense which, in the last quarter
of a century, has been talked on all other subjects were thrown into one
scale, and all that has been talked on the subject of education alone
were thrown into the other, I think the latter would preponderate.

_Lord Curryfin._ We have had through the whole period some fine
specimens of nonsense on other subjects: for instance, with a single
exception, political economy.

_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ I understand your lordship's politeness as
excepting the present company. You need not except me. I am 'free to
confess,' as they say 'in another place,' that I have talked a great
deal of nonsense on that subject myself.

_Lord Curryfin._ Then, we have had latterly a mighty mass on the
purification of the Thames.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Allowing full weight to the two last-named
ingredients, they are not more than a counterpoise to Competitive
Examination, which is also a recent exotic belonging to education.

_Lord Curryfin._ Patronage, it used to be alleged, considered only the
fitness of the place for the man, not the fitness of the man for the
place. It was desirable to reverse this.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ True: but--

'dum vitant stulli vitium, in contraria currunl.' {1}

1 When fools would from one vice take flight. They rush into
its opposite.--Hor. Sal. i. 2, 24.

Questions which can only be answered by the parrotings of a memory
crammed to disease with all sorts of heterogeneous diet can form no test
of genius, taste, judgment, or natural capacity. Competitive Examination
takes for its _norma_: 'It is better to learn many things ill than
one thing well'; or rather: 'It is better to learn to gabble about
everything than to understand anything.' This is not the way to discover
the wood of which Mercuries are made. I have been told that this
precious scheme has been borro