58 THE TRINITY FOOT BEAGLES 



never sent his pupils to Currey's lectures because he had been told of 

 a saying of his, " I know nothing of Cicero's letters, but I suppose 

 tliat, with a good stout crib, and a fortnight's start, I can teach the 

 men something." The pupils were the losers: Currey was an 

 excellent lecturer, he made a careful preparation of his lectures, and 

 he had a " start " which was not to be measured by weeks or months 

 or years. And I can imagine that some who did not know him may 

 have misunderstood his subtle dictum that "the gentleman is one 

 who behaves as such when he is drunk." 



It is said that " no one is a hero to his valet de chamhre " : but 

 Currey was idolised by his servants and the servants of his friends. 

 They would do anything for him. His bedmaker said of him, " Mr. 

 Currey must not marry : he will never find any one sufficiently easy- 

 going ! " 



Early in 1870 it became plain to me that, though he continued to 

 do his College duties as well as ever, he was becoming restless ; and 

 I was not surprised when, in the autumn of that year, he applied for 

 and obtained an Inspectorship of Schools. I know very little directly 

 about his work during the next thirty years, but it was easy to see 

 that he was deeply interested in it, and in the people with whom 

 it V)rought him into contact; and I can have no doubt that they 

 in their turn, like every one else, were attracted by his gracious 

 personality. When his services in the Education Department ended, 

 the presentations made to him and to Mrs. Currey at a meeting 

 presided over by his old friend and pupil Mr. Walter Durnford, then 

 Mayor of Cambridge, testified to the regard which his subordinates 

 felt for him. 



During the years of his Inspectorship of Schools he still found 

 time for music, sketching in water-colours, and books. In one of his 

 districts the railway porters knew him as "the gentleman who 

 fiddles," because he was in the habit of having himself locked up in 

 a compartment, that he might practise on his 'cello. His studies 

 during this period were various. He took up again Arabic, which he 

 had begun during an expedition on the Nile, in the middle of the 

 sixties. Erom Arabic he proceeded to Hebrew. Once, when he had 

 temporary work at Cambridge, I found liim in one of the liln-aries 



