And yet perhaps, after all, it is better for a country that its seats of learning should do more to suppress mental growth than to encourage it.  Were it not for a certain priggishness which these places infuse into so great a number of their alumni, genuine work would become dangerously common.  It is essential that by far the greater part of what is said or done in the world should be so ephemeral as to take itself away quickly; it should keep good for twenty-four hours, or even twice as long, but it should not be good enough a week hence to prevent people from going on to something else.  No doubt the marvellous development of journalism in England, as also the fact that our seats of learning aim rather at fostering mediocrity than anything higher, is due to our subconscious recognition of the fact that it is even more necessary to check exuberance of mental development than to encourage it.  There can be no doubt that this is what our academic bodies do, and they do it the more effectually because they do it only subconsciously.  They think they are advancing healthy mental assimilation and digestion, whereas in reality they are little better than cancer in the stomach.

Let me return, however, to the Erewhonians.  Nothing surprised me more than to see the occasional flashes of common sense with which one branch of study or another was lit up, while not a single ray fell upon so many others.  I was particularly struck with this on strolling into the Art School of the University.  Here I found that the course of study was divided into two branches—­the practical and the commercial—­no student being permitted to continue his studies in the actual practice of the art he had taken up, unless he made equal progress in its commercial history.

Thus those who were studying painting were examined at frequent intervals in the prices which all the leading pictures of the last fifty or a hundred years had realised, and in the fluctuations in their values when (as often happened) they had been sold and resold three or four times.  The artist, they contend, is a dealer in pictures, and it is as important for him to learn how to adapt his wares to the market, and to know approximately what kind of a picture will fetch how much, as it is for him to be able to paint the picture.  This, I suppose, is what the French mean by laying so much stress upon “values.”

As regards the city itself, the more I saw the more enchanted I became.  I dare not trust myself with any description of the exquisite beauty of the different colleges, and their walks and gardens.  Truly in these things alone there must be a hallowing and refining influence which is in itself half an education, and which no amount of error can wholly spoil.  I was introduced to many of the Professors, who showed me every hospitality and kindness; nevertheless I could hardly avoid a sort of suspicion that some of those whom I was taken to see had been so long engrossed