XVI LETTERS TO HIS CHILDREN 419 



In the meanwhile, my good daughter, meditate these 

 things : 



1. Parents not too rich wish to send exceptionally 

 clever, energetic lad to university — before taking up 

 father's profession of architect. 



2. E.c.e.l. %vill be well taught classics at school — not well 

 taught in other things — -will easily get a scholarship 

 either at school or university. So much in parents' 

 pockets. 



3. E.c.e.l. will get as much mathematics, mechanics, and 

 other needful preliminaries to architecture, as he wants 

 (and a good deal more if he likes) at Oxford. Excellent 

 physical school there. 



4. Splendid Art museums at Oxford. 



5. Prigs not peculiar to Oxford. 



6. Don Cambridge would choke science (except mathe- 

 matics) if it could as willingly as Don Oxford and more so. 



7. Oxford always represents English opinion, in all its 

 extremes, better than Cambridge. 



8. Cambridge better for doctors, Oxford for architects, 



poets, painters, and all tliat sort of cattle . 



9. Lawrence will go to Oxford and become a real scholar, 

 which is a great thing and a noble. He will combine the 

 new and the old, and show how much better the world 

 would have been if it had stuck to Hellenism. You are 

 dreaming of the schoolboy who does not follow up his 

 work, or becomes a mere poll man. Good enough for 

 parsons, not for men. Lawrence loill go to Oxford. — Ever 

 your aggrawatin' Pa- 



Like the old Greek sage and statesman, my father 

 might have declared that old age found him ever 

 learning. Not indeed with the fiery earnestness of 

 his young days of stress and storm ; but with the 

 steady advance of a practised worker who cannot 

 be unoccupied. History and philosophy, especially 



