ee droll.

_Mr. Gryll._ Doctor Johnson was astonished at the mania for lectures,
even in his day, when there were no lecturing lords. He thought little
was to be learned from lectures, unless where, as in chemistry, the
subject required illustration by experiment. Now, if your lord is going
to exhibit experiments in the art of cooking fish, with specimens in
sufficient number for all his audience to taste, I have no doubt his
lecture will be well attended, and a repetition earnestly desired.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I am afraid the lecture will not have the aid
of such pleasant adventitious attractions. It will be a pure scientific
exposition, carefully classified, under the several divisions and
subdivisions of Ichthyology, Entomology, Herpetology, and Conchology.
But I agree with Doctor Johnson, that little is to be learned from
lectures. For the most part those who do not already understand the
subject will not understand the lecture, and those who do will learn
nothing from it. The latter will hear many things they would like to
contradict, which the _bienseance_ of the lecture-room does not allow.
I do not comprehend how people can find amusement in lectures. I should
much prefer a _tenson_ of the twelfth century, when two or three masters
of the _Gai Saber_ discussed questions of love and chivalry.

_Miss Gryll._ I am afraid, doctor, our age is too prosy for that sort
of thing. We have neither wit enough, nor poetry enough, to furnish the
disputants. I can conceive a state of society in which such _tensons_
would form a pleasant winter evening amusement: but that state of
society is not ours.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Well, Miss Gryll, I should like, some winter
evening, to challenge you to a _tenson_, and your uncle should be
umpire. I think you have wit enough by nature, and I have poetry enough
by memory, to supply a fair portion of the requisite materials, without
assuming an absolute mastery of the _Gai Saber_.

_Miss Gryll._ I shall accept the challenge, doctor. The wit on one side
will, I am afraid, be very shortcoming; but the poetry on the other will
no doubt be abundant.

_Mr. Gryll._ Suppose, doctor, you were to get up a _tenson_ a little
more relative to our own wise days. Spirit-rapping, for example, is a
fine field. _Nec pueri credunt... Sed tu vera puta_.{1} You might
go beyond the limits of a _tenson_. There is ample scope for an
Aristophanic comedy. In the contest between the Just and the Unj