So it is that partly conquering and partly defeated, sometimes gaining the mastery over others and again falling prostrate themselves, some are altogether annihilated and others gain a Cadmean victory, as it is called, and at a time when the knowledge can avail them nothing they perceive that their plans were ill drawn.

In these unhappy moments we are apt to call to mind the shrewd men we have known, who have been our blithe companions on breezy fells, heathery moor, and by the stream side, who could neither read nor write, or who, at all events, but rarely practised those Cadmean arts.