t of a disappointment. You do not
often find the youthful Demosthenes chewing his pebbles in the same room
with you; or, even if you do, you will probably think the performance
little to be admired. As a general rule, the members speak shamefully
ill. The subjects of debate are heavy; and so are the fines. The Ballot
Question--oldest of dialectic nightmares--is often found astride of a
somnolent sederunt. The Greeks and Romans, too, are reserved as sort of
_general-utility_ men, to do all the dirty work of illustration; and
they fill as many functions as the famous waterfall scene at the
"Princess's," which I found doing duty on one evening as a gorge in
Peru, a haunt of German robbers, and a peaceful vale in the Scottish
borders. There is a sad absence of striking argument or real lively
discussion. Indeed, you feel a growing contempt for your fellow-members;
and it is not until you rise yourself to hawk and hesitate and sit
shamefully down again, amid eleemosynary applause, that you begin to
find your level and value others rightly. Even then, even when failure
has damped your critical ardour, you will see many things to be laughed
at in the deportment of your rivals.

Most laughable, perhaps, are your indefatigable strivers after
eloquence. They are of those who "pursue with eagerness the phantoms of
hope," and who, since they expect that "the deficiencies of last
sentence will be supplied by the next," have been recommended by Dr.
Samuel Johnson to "attend to the History of Rasselas, Prince of
Abyssinia." They are characterised by a hectic hopefulness. Nothing
damps them. They rise from the ruins of one abortive sentence, to launch
forth into another with unabated vigour. They have all the manner of an
orator. From the tone of their voice, you would expect a splendid
period--and lo! a string of broken-backed, disjointed clauses, eked out
with stammerings and throat-clearings. They possess the art (learned
from the pulpit) of rounding an uneuphonious sentence by dwelling on a
single syllable--of striking a balance in a top-heavy period by
lengthening out a word into a melancholy quaver. Withal, they never
cease to hope. Even at last, even when they have exhausted all their
ideas, even after the would-be peroration has finally refused to
perorate, they remain upon their feet with their mouths open, waiting
for some further inspiration, like Chaucer's widow's son in the
dung-hole, after

"His throat was kit unto th