devoted to the _Français_, and to some of the people connected with
it, for ten years, for nothing! One gets a kind of insight from long
habit which, I think, one may trust. Oh, you blind Eustace, how could you
forget that for a creature so full of primitive energy, so rich in the
_stuff_ of life, nothing is irreparable! Education has passed her by.
Well, she will go to find her education. She will make a teacher out of
every friend, out of every sensation. Incident and feeling, praise and
dispraise, will all alike tend to mould the sensitive plastic material
into shape. So far she may have remained outside her art; the art, no
doubt, has been a conventional appendage, and little more. Training would
have given her good conventions, whereas she has only picked up bad and
imperfect ones. But no training could have given her what she will
evidently soon develop for herself, that force and flame of imagination
which fuses together instrument and idea in one great artistic whole. She
has that imagination. You can see it in her responsive ways, her quick
sensitive emotion. Only let it be roused and guided to a certain height,
and it will overleap the barriers which have hemmed it in, and pour
itself into the channels made ready for it by her art.

'There, at least, you have my strong impression. It is, in many ways, at
variance with some of my most cherished principles; for both you and I
are perhaps inclined to overrate the value of education, whether
technical or general, in its effect on the individuality. And, of course,
a better technical preparation would have saved Isabel Bretherton an
immense amount of time; would have prevented her from contracting a host
of bad habits--all of which she will have to unlearn. But the root of the
matter is in her; of that I am sure; and whatever weight of hostile
circumstance may be against her, she will, if she keeps her health--as to
which I am sometimes, like you, a little anxious--break through it all
and triumph.