THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF COALCHESTER I have said that Coalchester was a very ignorant old town.

I did not mean to imply that there were no M.A.'s there.

In fact, there were quite a number.

You may be sure that if spiritual and intellectual life had its representatives, as we have seen, spiritual and intellectual death had its representatives, too--by which I don't mean either to imply that the M.A.'s were dead M.A.'s, dead and buried with Latin over them in the old brassed and effigied church, which was so old and large that it was hardly less conceited than a cathedral.

Spiritual and intellectual death in Coalchester, as elsewhere, was officially represented by the Literary and Philosophical Society, which still unblushingly went on retaining its adjectives, even in the face of its "Transactions," which seemed mainly composed of treasurer's reports, with an occasional paper on fossils.
Indeed the one spark of life in the pathetic old society was its real interest in the antediluvian and prehistoric.