My dear, wise, and excellent guardian was always anxious that I should
receive as good an education as my opportunities would permit, so she
insisted on my learning French, and had herself taught me the elements
of that language, which she was able to read, though she did not pretend
to speak it. On going to Doncaster I found Latin and Greek so serious a
business that I wanted to lighten my burdens, and begged to be excused
from going on with French; but my guardian (who, with all her exquisite
gentleness, had a very strong will) would not hear of any such
abandonment, and wrote very determinedly on the subject both to me and
to Mr. Cape. It is extremely probable that this exercise of my
guardian's will may have had a great influence on my future life, as
without some early knowledge of French I might not have felt tempted to
pursue the study later, and if I had never spoken French my whole
existence would have been quite different.

Our French master at Doncaster was an Italian of good family named
Testa, one of the most perfect gentlemen I ever met, and an excellent
teacher. My deepest regret about him now is that I did not learn Italian
with him also, then or afterwards. [Footnote: It is astonishing how many
chances of improvement young men foolishly allow to slip by them. It
would have been quite worth while after I became a free agent to go and
spend six months or more at Doncaster, simply to read Italian with so
good a master as Testa.] I learned Italian later in life, and with a far
inferior master. Signor Testa was a tall, thin man, of rather cold and
stately manners, with a fine-looking, noble head covered with curly
brown hair. He was always exquisitely clean and orderly, both about his
person and the books and things that belonged to him in his rooms, where
there was an atmosphere of almost feminine refinement, though their
occupant was by no means effeminate in his thoughts or bearing. We
understood that he had left Italy in consequence of some political