be a nice young man for a small tea party. It is to be hoped that, like Bottom the weaver, he can modulate his voice, and roar as gently as any sucking-dove. Most wonderful, however, of all the marvels--that met me at my old school--was a scene from the "Critic," played by the most Lilliputian boys. Puff--played by Powell (I don't forget that name)--was simply marvellous. And yet Powell, if he will forgive me for saying so, was the merest whipper-snapper. Sir Christopher Hatton could scarcely have emerged from the nursery; and yet the idea of utter stolidity never found a better exponent than that same homoeopathic boy. Last of all came the conventional scene from Moliere's "L'Avare." Maitre Jacques was good; Harpagon more than good. I came away well satisfied, only regretting I had not brought my eldest boy to see it. My eldest boy! Egad, and I was just such as he is now, when I used to creep like a snail unwillingly to those scholastic shades. The spirit of Pangloss came upon me again as I thought of all I had seen that day,--there was nothing like it in my day. King's College keeps pace with the times. "Tempora mutantur!" I mentally exclaimed; and added, not without a pleasant scepticism, as I gazed once more on the pippin-faced master, "I wonder whether--nos mutamur in illis?" CHAPTER XXIX. PSYCHOLOGICAL LADIES. There is no doubt that the "Woman's Rights" question is going ahead with gigantic strides, not only in social and political, but also in intellectual matters. Boys and girls--or rather we ought to say young ladies and young gentlemen--are grouped together on the class list of the Oxford Local Examination, irrespective of sex. A glance at the daily papers will show us that women are being lectured to on all subjects down from physical sciences, through English literature and art, to the construction of the clavecin. We had fancied, however, that what are technically termed "the Humanities," or, in University diction, "Science"--meaning thereby ethics and logic--were still our own. Now, we are undeceived. We are reminded that woman can say, without a solecism, "Homo sum," and may therefore claim to embrace even the humanities among her subjects of study. Henceforth the realm of woman is not merely what may be called "pianofortecultural," as was once the case. It has soared even above art, literature, and science itself into what might at first sight appear the uncongenial spheres of dialectics and metaphysics.