book,’ as if all subjects were equally interesting, or rather uninteresting, and they borrow the first that comes, reading it as a duty, quite regardless of the fact that it does not belong to anything they have read before, or will read after; but if they had made up their mind on a subject, the lending friend would take far more interest, and probably hunt up something that bore on the subject, while the reader would be more likely to get good.”

“But if I begin Ruskin here, and then go home, where I may perhaps find an Italian history, and then go for another visit and find something else, it will all be so disjointed.”

“Yes, it would be nicer if you could go on with art or architecture; but your reading will not be so desultory as to be useless, if it is all strung on the one thread of Italy, and then you can group it, as you go along, in a commonplace book.  I should take a large one, and divide it among the towns I wanted to see, and then subdivide the pages given to, e.g. Florence, under the heads of art, history, famous men, architecture, poetry, novels, and, as I read anything on these subjects, I should jot down the substance of it under the right heading, or if it was a poem, just give the title and one or two of the best lines.  And you could keep up your French and German at the same time—­suppose you read Corinne and the Improvisator, they would both help to keep you in an Italian atmosphere.”

“Yes, I could keep up my reading, but how about the grammar?”

“I should recommend you to take a very conversational novel and turn a page of it into both French and German every week; this would keep up all the rules of grammar, and, though you might make mistakes, you would gain fluency in expressing yourself, which is much more needed than grammatical accuracy if you go abroad, for a course of lessons will set you right about the grammar at any time, but would not make you talk, if you had allowed yourself to get tongue-tied by not practising translation from English into French; and I should advise you to translate very freely, and use the dictionary as little as possible; if you cannot remember the exact rendering, twist the sentence and paraphrase it, till you can manage it, simply to learn to express your thoughts easily.  I should say an hour a week of this would keep up both French and German.”

“But you have said nothing of English History and Literature.”

“I should be inclined to drop English History for the first year, because you know so much more of that than of Foreign and Ancient History, but if you like it I should take some one prominent reign—­Elizabeth or Charles I., or Anne or George III., and get to know all the chief people, read their memoirs, and what they themselves wrote, so as to feel among friends whenever you hear a name of that period mentioned—­and read all essays, etc. that you can find upon it.  To keep your mind generally open, I should