an we had means to do in those good old days you speak of. Yet
could those days return, could you and I once more walk our thirty miles
a day, could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again be young, and you and I be
young to see them, could the good old one shilling gallery days
return--they are dreams, my cousin, now, but could you and I at this
moment, instead of this quiet argument, by our well-carpeted fireside,
sitting on this luxurious sofa--be once more struggling up those
inconvenient staircases, pushed about and squeezed, and elbowed by the
poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers--could I once more hear those
anxious shrieks of yours, and the delicious _Thank God, we are safe_,
which always followed, when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the
first light of the whole cheerful theatre down beneath us--I know not
the fathom line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would be
willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or the great Jew R----
is supposed to have, to purchase it. And now do just look at that merry
little Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester,
over the head of that pretty insipid half-Madonna-ish chit of a lady in
that very blue summer-house."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: From "Last Essays of Elia," 1833.]

[Footnote 5: The hays: an old English dance.]

[Footnote 6: Speciosa miracula: beautiful marvels.]

[Footnote 7: Piscator: The Angler--the author's spokesman in Walton's
"The Complete Angler."]

[Footnote 8: Charles Cotton, a humorist of the seventeenth century.]

WHAT IS EDUCATION?[9]

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY

What is education? Above all things, what is our ideal of a thoroughly
liberal education?--of that education which, if we could begin life
again, we would give ourselves--of that education which, if we could
mould the fates to our own will, we would give our children? Well, I
know not what may be your conceptions upon this matter, but I will tell
you mine, and I hope I shall find that our views are not very
discrepant.

Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one
of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game
of chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary
duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have a
notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and
getting out of check? Do you not think that we should look with a
disapprobati