’It was not of this creature, however, that I meant to speak to you, only that, being a good scholar in the modern as well as the ancient languages, he has contrived to make Lucy Bertram mistress of the former, and she has only, I believe, to thank her own good sense, or obstinacy, that the Greek, Latin (and Hebrew, for aught I know), were not added to her acquisitions.  And thus she really has a great fund of information, and I assure you I am daily surprised at the power which she seems to possess of amusing herself by recalling and arranging the subjects of her former reading.  We read together every morning, and I begin to like Italian much better than when we were teased by that conceited animal Cicipici.  This is the way to spell his name, and not Chichipichi; you see I grow a connoisseur.

’But perhaps I like Miss Bertram more for the accomplishments she wants than for the knowledge she possesses.  She knows nothing of music whatever, and no more of dancing than is here common to the meanest peasants, who, by the way, dance with great zeal and spirit.  So that I am instructor in my turn, and she takes with great gratitude lessons from me upon the harpsichord; and I have even taught her some of La Pique’s steps, and you know he thought me a promising scholar.

’In the evening papa often reads, and I assure you he is the best reader of poetry you ever heard; not like that actor who made a kind of jumble between reading and acting,—­staring, and bending his brow, and twisting his face, and gesticulating as if he were on the stage and dressed out in all his costume.  My father’s manner is quite different; it is the reading of a gentleman, who produces effect by feeling, taste, and inflection of voice, not by action or mummery.  Lucy Bertram rides remarkably well, and I can now accompany her on horseback, having become emboldened by example.  We walk also a good deal in spite of the cold.  So, upon the whole, I have not quite so much time for writing as I used to have.

’Besides, my love, I must really use the apology of all stupid correspondents, that I have nothing to say.  My hopes, my fears, my anxieties about Brown are of a less interesting cast since I know that he is at liberty and in health.  Besides, I must own I think that by this time the gentleman might have given me some intimation what he was doing.  Our intercourse may be an imprudent one, but it is not very complimentary to me that Mr. Vanbeest Brown should be the first to discover that such is the case, and to break off in consequence.  I can promise him that we might not differ much in opinion should that happen to be his, for I have sometimes thought I have behaved extremely foolishly in that matter.  Yet I have so good an opinion of poor Brown, that I cannot but think there is something extraordinary in his silence.