“By all means accept the King of Oude’s present; though, to be sure, more detestable maps were never seen.  One would think that the revenues of Oude, and the treasures of Saadut Ali, might have borne the expense of producing something better than a map in which Sicily is joined on to the toe of Italy, and in which so important an eastern island as Java does not appear at all.”

“As to the corrupting influence of the zenana, of which Mr. Trevelyan speaks, I may regret it; but I own that I cannot help thinking that the dissolution of the tie between parent and child is as great a moral evil as can be found in any zenana.  In whatever degree infant schools relax that tie they do mischief.  For my own part, I would rather hear a boy of three years old lisp all the bad words in the language than that he should have no feelings of family affection—­that his character should be that which must be expected in one who has had the misfortune of having a schoolmaster in place of a mother.”

“I do not see the reason for establishing any limit as to the age of scholars.  The phenomena are exactly the same which have always been found to exist when a new mode of education has been rising into fashion.  No man of fifty now learns Greek with boys; but in the sixteenth century it was not at all unusual to see old Doctors of Divinity attending lectures side by side with young students.”

“With respect to making our College libraries circulating libraries, there is much to be said on both sides.  If a proper subscription is demanded from those who have access to them, and if all that is raised by this subscription is laid out in adding to the libraries, the students will be no losers by the plan.  Our libraries, the best of them at least, would be better than any which would be readily accessible at an up-country station; and I do not know why we should grudge a young officer the pleasure of reading our copy of Boswell’s Life of Johnson or Marmontel’s Memoirs, if he is willing to pay a few rupees for the privilege.”

These utterances of cultured wisdom or homely mother-wit are sometimes expressed in phrases almost as amusing, though not so characteristic, as those which Frederic the Great used to scrawl on the margin of reports and despatches for the information of his secretaries.

“We are a little too indulgent to the whims of the people in our employ.  We pay a large sum to send a master to a distant station.  He dislikes the place.  The collector is uncivil; the surgeon quarrels with him; and he must be moved.  The expenses of the journey have to be defrayed.  Another man is to be transferred from a place where he is comfortable and useful.  Our masters run from station to station at our cost, as vapourised ladies at home run about from spa to spa.  All situations have their discomforts; and there are times when we all wish that our lot had been cast in some other line of life, or in some other place.”