perience, I have never read, even in the "local news" of
a country paper, such slipshod, such deplorable English.

I shall be told that I am ungenerous in thus picking out a
few unfavourable cases, and that some of the greatest minds
of the day are to be found in the ranks of science. I freely
admit that such may be found, but my contention is that
_they_ made the science, not the science them; and that
in any line of thought they would have been equally
distinguished. As a general principle, I do not think that
the exclusive study of any _one_ subject is really
education; and my experience as a teacher has shown me that
even a considerable proficiency in Natural Science, taken
alone, is so far from proving a high degree of cultivation
and great natural ability that it is fully compatible with
general ignorance and an intellect quite below par.
Therefore it is that I seek to rouse an interest, beyond the
limits of Oxford, in preserving classics as an essential
feature of a University education. Nor is it as a classical
tutor (who might be suspected of a bias in favour of his own
subject) that I write this. On the contrary, it is as one
who has taught science here for more than twenty years (for
mathematics, though good-humouredly scorned by the
biologists on account of the abnormal certainty of its
conclusions, is still reckoned among the sciences) that I
beg to sign myself,--Your obedient servant,

Charles L. Dodgson,

_Mathematical Lecturer of Christ Church, Oxford.

May 17th._

I give the above letter because I think it amusing; it must not be
supposed that the writer's views on the subject remained the same all
through his life. He was a thorough Conservative, and it took a long
time to reconcile him to any new departure. In a political discussion
with a friend he once said that he was "first an Englishman, and then
a Conservative," but however much a man may try to put patriotism
before party, the result will be but partially successful, if
patriotism would lead him into opposition to the mental bias which has
originally made him either a Conservative or a Radical.

He took, of course, great pleasure in the success of his books, as
every author must; but the greatest pleasure of all to him was to know
that they had pleased others. Notes like the following are frequent in
his Diary: "_June_ 25_th_.--S