Then we were gathered into a big hall.  It was pleasant to see proud parents and charming sisters, wearing their best, clustered excitedly round some sturdy and well-brushed young hero, the hope of the race; pleasant to see frock-coated masters, beaming with professional benevolence, elderly gentlemen smilingly recalling tales of youthful prowess, which had grown quite epical in the lapse of time; it was inspiriting to feel one of a big company of people, all bent on being for once as good-humoured and cheerful as possible, and all inspired by a vague desire to improve the occasion.

The prizes were given away to the accompaniment of a rolling thunder of applause; we had familiar and ingenuous recitations from youthful orators, who desired friends, Romans, and countrymen to lend them their ears, or accepted the atrocious accusation of being a young man; and then a Bishop, who had been a schoolmaster himself, delivered an address.  It was delightful to see and hear the good man expatiate.  I did not believe much in what he said, nor could I reasonably endorse many of his statements; but he did it all so genially and naturally that one felt almost ashamed to question the matter of his discourse.  Yet I could not help wondering why it is thought advisable always to say exactly the same things on these occasions.  The good man began by asserting that the boys would never be so happy or so important again in their lives as they were at school, and that all grown-up people were envying them.  I don’t know whether any one believed that; I am sure the boys did not, if I can judge by what my own feelings used to be on such occasions.  Personally I used to think my school a very decent sort of place, but I looked forward with excitement and interest to the liberty and life of the larger world; and though perhaps in a way we elders envied the boys for having the chances before them that we had so many of us neglected to seize, I don’t suppose that with the parable of Vice Versa before us we would really have changed places with them.  Would any one ever return willingly to discipline and barrack-life? [Yes—­ed.] Would any one under discipline refuse independence if it were offered him on easy terms?  I doubt it!

Then the Bishop went on to talk about educational things; and he said with much emphasis that in spite of all that was said about modern education, we most of us realised as we grew older that all culture was really based upon the Greek and Latin classics.  We all stamped on the ground and cheered at that, I as lustily as the rest, though I am quite sure it is not true.  All that the Bishop really meant was that such culture as he himself possessed had been based on the classics.  Now the Bishop is a robust, genial, and sensible man, but he is not a strictly cultured man.  He is only sketchily varnished with culture.  He thinks that German literature is nebulous, and French literature immoral.  I don’t suppose he ever reads an English book,