of the nineteenth century.

"I have educated you thus, Angela, partly by accident and partly by
design. You will remember when you began to come here some ten years
since--you were a little thing then--and I had offered to give you
some teaching, because you interested me, and I saw that you were
running wild in mind and body. But, when I had undertaken the task I
was somewhat puzzled how to carry it out. It is one thing to offer to
educate a little girl, and another to do it. Not knowing where to
begin, I fell back upon the Latin grammar, where I had begun myself,
and so by degrees you slid into the curriculum of a classical and
mathematical education. Then, after a year or two, I perceived your
power of work and your great natural ability, and I formed a design. I
said to myself, 'I will see how far a woman cultivated under
favourable conditions can go. I will patiently teach this girl till
the literature of Greece and Rome become as familiar to her as her
mother-tongue, till figures and symbols hide no mysteries from her,
till she can read the heavens like a book. I will teach her mind to
follow the secret ways of knowledge, I will train it till it can soar
above its fellows like a falcon above sparrows.' Angela, my proud
design, pursued steadily through many years, has been at length
accomplished; your bright intellect has risen to the strain I have put
upon it, and you are at this moment one of the best all-round scholars
of my acquaintance."

She flushed to the eyes at this high praise, and was about to speak,
but he stopped her with a motion of the hand, and went on:

"I have recognized in teaching you a fact but too little known, that a
classical education, properly understood, is the foundation of all