Page:Carroll - Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.djvu/220

182 I felt obliged to admit that we generally admired most the teachers we couldn't quite understand.

"Just so," said Mein Herr. "That's the way it begins. Well, we were at that stage some eighty years agoor was it ninety? Our favourite teacher got more obscure every year; and every year we admired him morejust as your Art-fanciers call mist the fairest feature in a landscape, and admire a view with frantic delight when they can see nothing! Now I'll tell you how it ended. It was Moral Philosophy that our idol lectured on. Well, his pupils couldn't make head or tail of it, but they got it all by heart; and, when Examination-time came, they wrote it down; and the Examiners said 'Beautiful! What depth!

"But what good was it to the young men afterwards?"

"Why, don't you see?" replied Mein Herr. "They became teachers in their turn, and they said all these things over again; and their pupils wrote it all down; and the Examiners accepted it; and nobody had the ghost of an idea what it all meant!"