the class. For my own part, I have attended a good many lectures in my
time. I still remember that the spinning of a top is a case of Kinetic
Stability. I still remember that Emphyteusis is not a disease, nor
Stillicide[12] a crime. But though I would not willingly part with
such scraps of science, I do not set the same store by them as by
certain other odds and ends that I came by in the open street while I
was playing truant. This is not the moment to dilate on that mighty
place of education, which was the favourite school of Dickens and of
Balzac,[13] and turns out yearly many inglorious masters in the
Science of the Aspects of Life. Suffice it to say this: if a lad does
not learn in the streets, it is because he has no faculty of learning.
Nor is the truant always in the streets, for if he prefers, he may go
out by the gardened suburbs into the country. He may pitch on some
tuft of lilacs over a burn, and smoke innumerable pipes to the tune of
the water on the stones. A bird will sing in the thicket. And there he
may fall into a vein of kindly thought, and see things in a new
perspective. Why, if this be not education, what is? We may conceive
Mr. Worldly Wiseman[14] accosting such an one, and the conversation
that should thereupon ensue:--

"How, now, young fellow, what dost thou here?"

"Truly, sir, I take mine ease."

"Is not this the hour of the class? and should'st thou not be plying
thy Book with diligence, to the end thou mayest obtain knowledge?"

"Nay, but thus also I follow after Learning, by your leave."

"Learning, quotha! After what fashion, I pray thee? Is it