text:  To understand the "curves" of water being beyond the reach of most who are not graduates of Oxford; and painters and admirers of old masters being people without sense at least in comparison with the graduate he thus disposes of his learned difficulty:--"This is a point however on which it is impossible to argue without going into high mathematics and even then the nature of particular curves as given by the brush would be scarcely demonstrable; and I am the less disposed to take much trouble about it because I think that the persons who are really fond of these works are almost beyond the reach of argument