looked upon man as the most various and entertaining volume which
philosophical research can explore. He soon accustomed the boy to the
tone of a conversation generally subtle and suggestive; and Lenny's
language and ideas became insensibly less rustic and more refined. Then
Riccabocca selected from his library, small as it was, books that, though
elementary, were of a higher cast than Lenny could have found within his
reach at Hazeldean. Riccabocca knew the English language well,--better
in grammar, construction, and genius than many a not ill-educated
Englishman; for he had studied it with the minuteness with which a
scholar studies a dead language, and amidst his collection he had many of
the books which had formerly served him for that purpose. These were the
first works he lent to Lenny. Meanwhile Jackeymo imparted to the boy
many secrets in practical gardening and minute husbandry, for at that day
farming in England (some favoured counties and estates excepted) was far
below the nicety to which the art has been immemorially carried in the
north of Italy,--where, indeed, you may travel for miles and miles as
through a series of market-gardens; so that, all these things considered,
Leonard Fairfield might be said to have made a change for the better.
Yet, in truth, and looking below the surface, that might be fair matter
of doubt. For the same reason which had induced the boy to fly his
native village, he no longer repaired to the church of Hazeldean. The
old intimate intercourse between him and the parson became necessarily
suspended, or bounded to an occasional kindly visit from the latter,--
visits which grew more rare and less familiar, as he found his former
pupil in no want of his services, and wholly deaf to his mild entreaties
to forget and forgive the past, and come at least to his old seat in the
parish church. Lenny still went to church,--a church a long way off in
another parish,--but the sermons did not do him the same good as Parson
Dale's had done; and the clergyman, who had his own flock to attend to,
did not condescend, as Parson Dale would have done, to explain what