secrets not known to other men. An ancient Dean of Christ Church is
said to have given three reasons for the study of Greek: the first
was that it enabled you to read the words of the Saviour in the
original tongue; the second, that it gave you a proper contempt for
those who were ignorant of it; and the third was that it led to
situations of emolument. What a rich aroma hangs about this
judgment! The first reason is probably erroneous, the second is un-
Christian, and the third is a gross motive which would equally
apply to any professional training whatsoever.

Well, the knowledge of Greek, except for the schoolmaster and the
clergyman, has not now the same obvious commercial value. Knowledge
is more diffused, more accessible. It is no longer thought to be a
secret, precious, rather terrible possession; the possessor is no
longer venerated and revered; on the contrary, a learned man is
rather considered likely to be tiresome. Old folios have, indeed,
become merely the stock-in-trade of the illustrators of sensational
novels. Who does not know the absurd old man, with white silky
hair, velvet skull-cap, and venerable appearance, who sits reading
a folio at an oak table, and who turns out to be the villain of the
piece, a mine of secret and unsuccessful wickedness? But no one in
real life reads a folio now, because anything that is worth
reprinting, as well as a good deal that is not, is reprinted in
convenient form, if not in England, at least in Germany.

And the result of it is that these College libraries are almost
wholly unvisited. It seems a pity, but it also seems inevitable. I
wish that some use could be devised for them, for these old books
make at all events a very dignified and pleasant background, and
the fragrance of well-warmed old leather is a delicate thing. But