The Life of the Fly 



Chalicojoma of the Sheds. I will consult 

 both. 



Once more, here am I, somewhat late in life, 

 at Carpentras, whose rude Gallic name sets 

 the fool smiling and the scholar thinking. 

 Dear little town where I spent my twentieth 

 year and left the first bits of my fleece upon 

 life's bushes, my visit of to-day is a pilgrim- 

 age ; I have come to lay my eyes once more 

 upon the place which saw the birth of the 

 liveliest impressions of my early days. I bow, 

 in passing, to the old college where I tried my 

 prentice hand as a teacher. Its appearance is 

 unchanged; it still looks like a penitentiary. 

 Those were the views of our mediaeval educa- 

 tional system. To the gaiety and activity of 

 boyhood, which were considered unwhole- 

 some, it applied the remedy of narrowness, 

 melancholy and gloom. Its houses of in- 

 struction were, above all, houses of correction. 

 The freshness of Virgil was interpreted in the 

 Stirling atmosphere of a prison. I catch a 

 glimpse of a yard between four high walls, a 

 sort of bear-pit, where the scholars fought for 

 room for their games under the spreading 

 branches of a plane-tree. All around were 

 cells that looked like horse-boxes, without 

 light or air; those were the class-rooms. I 



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