LETTERS
OF
PAREPIDEMUS.
I.
My dear Sir, I left this country as nearly as possible (next June, I believe, will complete it) one quarter of a century back, to go to school. I was sent 'home,' as they called it—that is, away from home, to the land which my parents, and, I presume, yours also, long ago belonged to—to be educated.
Does one get educated in twenty-five years, I wonder? The, wisest of the seven wise men of Greece describes to us how that he
Each day grew older and learnt something new.
And, since the something new may possibly contradict, and will assuredly modify, the everything not so new before it, at what age may one consider oneself entitled, for example, to write letters in print to the editor of a magazine? At what figure does one attain one's real majority and right of speech? How soon may one venture to affirm anything which everybody else does not already know and believe? And, in the meantime, is there any good in talking merely to be assented to? Is it so agreeable an exercise on the part of the reader to? express mentally to himself that assent? If agreeable, is it therefore useful? 'Were it not better done as others use?' to follow the plough or the ledger, to find a Neæra in agriculture, or an Amaryllis in commerce? 'What boots it, with
