only demand that people should listen in silence.  I remember not long ago meeting one of the species, in this case an antiquarian.  He discoursed continuously, with a hard eye, fixed as a rule upon the table, about the antiquities of the neighbourhood.  I was on one side of him, and was far too much crushed to attempt resistance.  I ate and drank mechanically; I said “Yes” and “Very interesting” at intervals; and the only ray of hope upon the horizon was that the hands of the clock upon the mantelpiece did undoubtedly move, though they moved with leaden slowness.  On the other side of the savant was a lively talker, Matthews by name, who grew very restive under the process.  The great man had selected Dorchester as his theme, because he had unhappily discovered that I had recently visited it.  My friend Matthews, who had been included in the audience, made desperate attempts to escape; and once, seeing that I was fairly grappled, began a conversation with his next neighbour.  But the antiquary was not to be put off.  He stopped, and looked at Matthews with a relentless eye.  “Matthews,” he said, “Matthews!” raising his voice.  Matthews looked round.  “I was saying that Dorchester was a very interesting place.”  Matthews made no further attempt to escape, and resigned himself to his fate.

Such men as the antiquary are certainly very happy people; they are absorbed in their subject, and consider it to be of immense importance.  I suppose that their lives are, in a sense, well spent, and that the world is in a way the gainer by their labours.  My friend the antiquary has certainly, according to his own account, proved that certain ancient earthworks near Dorchester are of a date at least five hundred years anterior to the received date.  It took him a year or two to find out, and I suppose that the human race has benefited in some way or other by the conclusion; but, on the other hand, the antiquary seems to miss all the best things of life.  If life is an educative process, people who have lived and loved, who have smiled and suffered, who have perceived beautiful things, who have felt the rapturous and bewildering mysteries of the world—­well, they have learnt something of the mind of God, and, when they close their eyes upon the world, take with them an alert, a hopeful, an inquisitive, an ardent spirit, into whatever may be the next act of the drama; but my friend the antiquary, when he crosses the threshold of the unseen, when he is questioned as to what has been his relation to life, will have seen and perceived, and learnt nothing, except the date of the Dorchester earthworks, and similar monuments of history.