books, and a love for and interest in even the material form of
knowledge,--the plates, the print, the binding of the Doctor's volumes,
and even in a bookworm which he once found in an old volume, where it
had eaten a circular furrow. But the little boy had too quick a spirit
of life to be in danger of becoming a bookworm himself. He had this
side of the intellect, but his impulse would be to mix with men, and
catch something from their intercourse fresher than books could give
him; though these would give him what they might.

In the grim Doctor, rough and uncultivated as he seemed, this budding
intelligence found no inadequate instructor. Doctor Grimshawe proved
himself a far more thorough scholar, in the classics and mathematics,
than could easily have been found in our country. He himself must have
had rigid and faithful instruction at an early period of life, though
probably not in his boyhood. For, though the culture had been bestowed,
his mind had been left in so singularly rough a state that it seemed as
if the refinement of classical study could not have been begun very
early. Or possibly the mind and nature were incapable of polish; or he
may have had a coarse and sordid domestic life around him in his
infancy and youth. He was a gem of coarse texture, just hewn out. An
American with a like education would more likely have gained a certain
fineness and grace, and it would have been difficult to distinguish him
from one who had been born to culture and refinement. This sturdy
Englishman, after all that had been done for his mind, and though it
had been well done, was still but another ploughman, of a long race of
such, with a few scratchings of refinement on his hard exterior. His
son, if he left one, might be a little less of the ploughman; his
grandson, provided the female element were well chosen, might approach
to refinement; three generations--a century at least--would be required
for the slow toil of hewing, chiselling, and polishing a gentleman out