either Plato or Demosthenes was given
to this kind of exercise. A dignified and, if I may say it, a chaste,
style, is neither elaborate nor loaded with ornament; it rises supreme by
its own natural purity. This windy and high-sounding bombast, a recent
immigrant to Athens, from Asia, touched with its breath the aspiring
minds of youth, with the effect of some pestilential planet, and as soon
as the tradition of the past was broken, eloquence halted and was
stricken dumb. Since that, who has attained to the sublimity of
Thucydides, who rivalled the fame of Hyperides? Not a single poem
has glowed with a healthy color, but all of them, as though nourished
on the same diet, lacked the strength to live to old age. Painting
also suffered the same fate when the presumption of the Egyptians
"commercialized" that incomparable art. (I was holding forth along these
lines one day, when Agamemnon came up to us and scanned with a curious
eye a person to whom the audience was listening so closely.)

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

He would not permit me to declaim longer in the portico than he himself
had sweat in the school, but exclaimed, "Your sentiments do not reflect
the public taste, young man, and you are a lover of common sense, which
is still more unusual. For that reason, I will not deceive you as to the
secrets of my profession. The teachers, who must gibber with lunatics,
are by no means to blame for these exercises. Unless they spoke in
accordance with the dictates of their young pupils, they would, as Cicero
remarks, be left alone in the schools! And, as designing parasites, when
they seek invitations to the tables of the rich, have in mind nothing
except what will, in their opinion, be most acceptable to their audience
--for in no other way can they secure their ends, save by setting snares
for the ears--so it is with the teachers of rhetoric, they might be
compared with the fisherman, who, unless he baits his hook with what he
knows is most appetizing to the little fish, may wait all day upon some
rock, without the hope of a catch."

CHAPTER THE FOURTH.

What, then, is there to do? The parents who are unwilling to permit
their children to undergo a course of training under strict discipline,
are the ones who deserve the reproof. In the first place, everything
they possess, including the children, is devoted to ambition. Then, that
their wishes may the more quickly be realized, they drive these unripe