"I expect you to be all that an exquisite young lady can be in every
possible relation of life. Certainly it might be a great advantage
if you were able to copy the Greek character, and to that end it
were well to begin with a little reading."

Dorothea seized this as a precious permission. She would not have
asked Mr. Casaubon at once to teach her the languages, dreading of all
things to be tiresome instead of helpful; but it was not entirely
out of devotion to her future husband that she wished to know Latin
and Creek. Those provinces of masculine knowledge seemed to her
a standing-ground from which all truth could be seen more truly.
As it was, she constantly doubted her own conclusions, because she
felt her own ignorance: how could she be confident that one-roomed
cottages were not for the glory of God, when men who knew the classics
appeared to conciliate indifference to the cottages with zeal
for the glory? Perhaps even Hebrew might be necessary--at least the
alphabet and a few roots--in order to arrive at the core of things,
and judge soundly on the social duties of the Christian. And she
had not reached that point of renunciation at which she would have
been satisfied with having a wise husband: she wished, poor child,
to be wise herself. Miss Brooke was certainly very naive with all
her alleged cleverness. Celia, whose mind had never been thought
too powerful, saw the emptiness of other people's pretensions much
more readily. To have in general but little feeling, seems to be
the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.

However, Mr. Casaubon consented to listen and teach for an hour together,
like a schoolmaster of little boys, or rather like a lover,
to whom a mistress's elementary ignorance and difficulties have
a touching fitness. Few scholars would have disliked teaching