Curtain falls on the confusion of Butler and the horror-stricken dismay of the two deans.
iv—On the Italian Priesthood
(Con arte e con inganno, si vive mezzo l’anno;
Con inganno e con arte, si vive l’altra parte.)
In knavish art and gathering gear
They spend the one half of the year;
In gathering gear and knavish art
They somehow spend the other part.
v—A Psalm of Montreal
The City of Montreal is one of the most rising and, in many respects, most agreeable on the American continent, but its inhabitants are as yet too busy with commerce to care greatly about the masterpieces of old Greek Art. In the Montreal Museum of Natural History I came upon two plaster casts, one of the Antinous and the other of the Discobolus—not the good one, but in my poem, of course, I intend the good one—banished from public view to a room where were all manner of skins, plants, snakes, insects, etc., and, in the middle of these, an old man stuffing an owl.
“Ah,” said I, “so you have some antiques here; why don’t you put them where people can see them?”
“Well, sir,” answered the custodian, “you see they are rather vulgar.”
He then talked a great deal and said his brother did all Mr. Spurgeon’s printing.
The dialogue—perhaps true, perhaps imaginary, perhaps a little of the one and a little of the other—between the writer and this old man gave rise to the lines that follow: