electric cylinder till it yields you, for your toy to play with,
that subtle fire in which our earth was forged; you know of the
nations that have towered high in the world, and the lives of the
men who have saved whole empires from oblivion. What more will you
ever learn? Yet the dismal change is ordained, and then, thin
meagre Latin (the same for everybody), with small shreds and
patches of Greek, is thrown like a pauper's pall over all your
early lore. Instead of sweet knowledge, vile, monkish, doggerel
grammars and graduses, dictionaries and lexicons, and horrible odds
and ends of dead languages, are given you for your portion, and
down you fall, from Roman story to a three-inch scrap of
"Scriptores Romani,"--from Greek poetry down, down to the cold
rations of "Poetae Graeci," cut up by commentators, and served out
by schoolmasters!

It was not the recollection of school nor college learning, but the
rapturous and earnest reading of my childhood, which made me bend
forward so longingly to the plains of Troy.

Away from our people and our horses, Methley and I went loitering
along by the willow banks of a stream that crept in quietness
through the low, even plain. There was no stir of weather
overhead, no sound of rural labour, no sign of life in the land;
but all the earth was dead and still, as though it had lain for
thrice a thousand years under the leaden gloom of one unbroken
Sabbath.

Softly and sadly the poor, dumb, patient stream went winding and
winding along through its shifting pathway; in some places its
waters were parted, and then again, lower down, they would meet