nation. He was the second; but the first is
killed and cured, so that he is now without
known rival as the great Lord Bacon of the
day.

We paid a visit to this college a few weeks
after the opening of its present session, went
through it, dined with the students, and took a
lesson with them in the laboratory upon a
subject not, we believe, generally popular with the
townspeople of Cirencester, water. Our visit
was paid on the monthly live-stock market day,
perhaps the best of its kind, as to quantity and
value of stock, in the West of England. There
we found, on one of the hottest baking days of
this memorable baking year, in a newly
constructed market, some three thousand sheep and
oxen unprovided with a drop of water. Provision
for water supply not only had formed no part
of the architect's arrangement of the market,
but seemed to have been disdained as low art.
Cirencester itself is content with water from the
same bed into which its drainage flows, though
an ample supply of good water from the fuller's
earth below, is pumped close by, for a canal,
and at the service of the town if it will have it.
But it won't. When men themselves are
content with a little bad water, no wonder that
beasts are believed not to require any. While
the unfortunate animals in the Cirencester live-
stock market were panting in the sun, a stream
of clear water, the overflow of a lake in the
adjacent park, was running along a pipe but a
few feet under the surface of the market ground.
Somebody had suggested that it would cost
little to tap that pipe and put a pump over it.
A stone tank had actually been given to receive
the water so obtained. But no pump has been
placed over the waste water pipe, and we saw
close to a flock of thirsty sheep the stone tank
contemptuously turned bottom upwards, dry in
the dust under a sultry sun. After their day of
thirst in the live-stock market, there is no road
out of Cirencester that would bring those
parched animals to a drinking place within a
distance of some miles. A benevolent quaker
in the town, merciful to other men's beasts, has
done what he could to mitigate this evil by
setting up a tank at his own door.

But the Agricultural College has wells of its
own, and we heard nothing about the town
water from its chemical professor. Remote
from great cities, the professors of this college
must be resident within its walls, and the
ample building accordingly supplies rooms to a
professor of chemistry and to his assistant; to
professors of agriculture, of natural history,
and of anatomy, physiology and hygiene, as
well as a teacher of drawing, who is a
certificated master from South Kensington. The
professorship of mathematics and surveying
is held by the principal, whose house, once
alone on the farm, with walls built as if to
stand a cannonade, is the only old part of the
building. We found the students very much at
home during the quarter of an hour—which
did not seem a bad one—before dinner. Each
has his own cell, and was hived in it, or buzzing
in upon a friend, or joining a small swarm in
the library, a comfortable room freely supplied
with books of reference and journals. The
dinner in hall was plentiful and pleasant, as an
English college dinner ought to be, and has a
common English feature that will not be copied
in the Cornell University, in its brew of college
beer. In the United States beer is not given
in any place of education, and it is said that no
college authority would venture to introduce it.
But might not the man be less ready to " liquor
up" if the boy had formed wholesome acquaintance
with John Barleycorn?

After dinner there were the museums to look
at. Each professor lectures once a week in the
museum itself on the specimens illustrating his
subject. A museum, all alive and growing, is
to be seen out of doors in the well-stocked
botanical garden, with beds set apart for
experimenting. The museums are remarkably well
furnished with what is necessary for the
illustration of the lectures. There is a herbarium
containing three thousand specimens of British
plants; there is a good series to illustrate
geology and mineralogy, with many striking
illustrations of the effect of soil or selection
of seed upon produce. There is a fine set of
wax models of every form of cultivated roots;
there are samples of the seed of every plant
used in English agriculture, and specimen
plants of many varieties of important cereals.
The excellent chemical collection also tells its
facts to the eye in a striking manner. Thus, one
case contains a series of articles of food
produced by the farmer, separated into their
constituents. Side by side the student sees in
substantial bulk the relative proportions of
water and of flesh and fat or heat-producing
elements, in wheat, barley, oats, peas, beans, and
so forth. The percentage of water thus put
for substantial comparison before the eye, looks
very striking. A veteran, long past the pulpy
time of youth, who gave up in his manhood wine
for water, impressed by the fact here shown,
has, in his age, left off drinking altogether, on
the plea that his bread, meat, and vegetables
contain quite as much water as he wants.
Another fact that catches the eye immediately
concerns another veteran, whom it will not be
improper to name, Jack Sprat. Of this person
it, is said constantly that he could eat no fat.
That is a popular delusion. For here is a
mass showing how much fat there is in the lean
of meat. Jack Sprat may have been himself
under a delusion, but the truth is that neither
he nor anybody else can eat the lean and not
eat fat.

But, like the Cirencester market builders,
we are forgetting the water. It so happened
that on the day of our visit to the college the
chemistry of water had been the subject of the
chemistry professor's morning lecture, and the
custom of the college is for the students to work
out for themselves after dinner practically in
the laboratory, what they had been taught
theoretically in the lecture-room. This is the soundest
way of teaching, but not always possible. At