The proposal, since realized, to introduce Agriculture as a subject for study at Oxford is jocularly treated early in 1887 in the form of a diary of a candidate who is ploughed for his unorthodox views on potato culture. As for modern languages, the advantages of a foreign education--social and artistic as well as commercial--are excellently summed up in the same year in Du Maurier's picture of the industrious and accomplished young man from Hamburg, who is not only a skilled pianist but can speak six languages, live on a pound a week, work eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, and do without a holiday! * * * * * [Illustration: ADVANTAGES OF A FOREIGN EDUCATION YOUNG MÜLLER (from Hamburg) accompanies the Miss Goldmores in some of Rubinstein's lovely duets--to the envy and disgust of Brown, Jones, and Robinson. (N.B.--Young Müller can also speak six languages, live on a pound a week, work eighteen hours out of twenty-four, and do without a holiday.)] In 1875 _Punch_ dwelt sympathetically on the still surviving prevalence of classical learning amongst statesmen. The occasion was furnished by Disraeli's florid eulogy of the imagination of the English School of Art at the Royal Academy banquet:-- "HE TOO WAS BORN IN ARCADIA" (Matthew Arnold on Disraeli at the R.A. Dinner). Born in Arcadia! Ay, he knew Pan's cloven foot-print on the dew, And heard, the mystic woods across, Aigipod[=e]s, Philokrotos, "The bright-haired god of pastoral,"[4] With pipings to his wood-nymphs call. Yes, but a nobler sound there came-- The clarion of imperial Fame, By which our greatest are withdrawn From the serene Arcadian lawn. Derby and Gladstone felt the breeze That urged their sails to Homer's seas; Yet in the Senate found their fate, And drank the hot wine of debate. Perish the thought that England's realm Should e'er have dullards at the helm! Far from us be the stolid serf Who ne'er has trod Arcadian turf, Nor heard, amid the glimmering trees, Pan's happy Orestiades. [Footnote 4: Chapman: Homeric Hymns.] Probably the exigencies of the metre are responsible for the strange lapse which made _Punch_ substitute "Orestiades" for "Oreades." Greek was not then in the "last ditch," though the following advertisement, which _Punch_ reproduces in the same year, seems to show that its study did not conduce to opulence:-- A Bachelor, elderly and somewhat infirm, having a moderate acquaintance with the Latin and Greek languages and who is likewise expert with a weeding hoe, seeks a HOME and EMPLOYMENT. A bracing air and easy access to the services of the Church indispensable.--Address, &c.