In a short time Harry’s health was so much improved, and consequently the strength and activity of his mind so much increased, that Hugh began to give him more exact mental operations to perform.  But as if he had been a reader of Lord Bacon, which as yet he was not, and had learned from him that “wonder is the seed of knowledge,” he came, by a kind of sympathetic instinct, to the same conclusion practically, in the case of Harry.  He tried to wake a question in him, by showing him something that would rouse his interest.  The reply to this question might be the whole rudiments of a science.

Things themselves should lead to the science of them.  If things are not interesting in themselves, how can any amount of knowledge about them be?  To be sure, there is such a thing as a purely or abstractly intellectual interest—­the pleasure of the mere operation of the intellect upon the signs of things; but this must spring from a highly exercised intellectual condition, and is not to be expected before the pleasures of intellectual motion have been experienced through the employment of its means for other ends.  Whether this is a higher condition or not, is open to much disquisition.

One day Hugh was purposely engaged in taking the altitude of the highest turret of the house, with an old quadrant he had found in the library, when Harry came up.

“What are you doing, big brother?” said he; for now that he was quite at home with Hugh, there was a wonderful mixture of familiarity and respect in him, that was quite bewitching.

“Finding out how high your house is, little brother,” answered Hugh.

“How can you do it with that thing?  Will it measure the height of other things besides the house?”

“Yes, the height of a mountain, or anything you like.”

“Do show me how.”

Hugh showed him as much of it as he could.

“But I don’t understand it.”

“Oh! that is quite another thing.  To do that, you must learn a great many things —­ Euclid to begin with.”

That very afternoon Harry began Euclid, and soon found quite enough of interest on the road to the quadrant, to prevent him from feeling any tediousness in its length.

Of an afternoon Hugh had taken to reading Shakspere to Harry.  Euphra was always a listener.  On one occasion Harry said: 

“I am so sorry, Mr. Sutherland, but I don’t understand the half of it.  Sometimes when Euphra and you are laughing, —­ and sometimes when Euphra is crying,” added he, looking at her slyly, “I can’t understand what it is all about.  Am I so very stupid, Mr. Sutherland?” And he almost cried himself.

“Not a bit of it, Harry, my boy; only you must learn a great many other things first.”

“How can I learn them?  I am willing to learn anything.  I don’t find it tire me now as it used.”

“There are many things necessary to understand Shakspere that I cannot teach you, and that some people never learn.  Most of them will come of themselves.  But of one thing you may be sure, Harry, that if you learn anything, whatever it be, you are so far nearer to understanding Shakspere.”