Some of the questions were simply frivolous, many jesuitical, others deeply profound; and whatever their character, all were answered in the same careless and irreverent tone; _à tort et à travers_, according to the fancy of the young respondent. In a word, a more complete waste of time for both teacher and taught could not have been easily devised. The instruction of this and similar classes--for we have no reason to suppose that others differ from it--seems about as intellectual and useful (and no more so) than that of an aviary of parrots in the town of Havre, where the young French _psittaci_ chiefly learn their χαιρης, and their "_petits dejeuners_." Alike in quality, it is not very dissimilar neither in the mode of its administration. The shopman proposes the first word of a sentence to the whole community, and the greater or less accuracy with which it is taken up and completed, evinces the relative aptitudes of his tyros; and though great allowance is always made, in the case of both boy and bird, for transpositions or leavings out, yet the priest, like the parrot-merchant, keeps an eye on the pupil who promises to do most credit to his training, and brings him forward on every public occasion. "In all labour," says Solomon, "there is profit, but the _talk of the lips_ tendeth only to poverty." It requires no Solomon to see how completely this is the case here; but there is one particular in which the _padre_ really deserves praise, and we cheerfully accord it. The forbearance, the patience, meekness, and _bonhomie_ which he exercises in proposing the dull routine of questions, and in listening while the pupils "ring round the same unvaried chimes" in reply, cannot be too much admired. Like the patient schoolmaster in Juvenal, he puts up with all their idleness and inattention--in the very doubtful proficiency of many of his scholars, gives them the favour of the doubt--and, above all, never loses his temper! This drilling and preparation of the district classes has for ulterior object a general field-day,[B] which occurs once a-year; when the congregated schools, in the presence of the canons and other dignitaries of the church, being now supposed fully supplied "With stores of spiritual provision, And magazines of ammunition," for the warfare, are expected "To rise and start the ready wherefore, To all that sceptic may inquire for; Then raise their scruples dark and nice, And solve them after in a trice; As if divinity had catch'd, The itch, on purpose to be scratch'd!" [B] _Italian Sketches_, No. V., August 1843.