either was, before any approach to unity was possible. He tried to
interest her in one subject after another--tried her first, I am
ashamed to say, with political economy. In that instance, when he came
home to dinner he found that she had not got beyond the first page of
the book he had left with her. But she had the best of excuses,
namely, that of that page she had not understood a sentence. He saw
his mistake, and tried her with poetry. But Milton, with whom
unfortunately he commenced his approaches, was to her, if not equally
unintelligible, equally uninteresting. He tried her next with the
elements of science, but with no better success. He returned to
poetry, and read some of the Faerie Queene with her: she was, or
seemed to be, interested in all his talk about it, and inclined to go
on with it in his absence, but found the first stanza she tried more
than enough without him to give life to it. She could give it none,
and therefore it gave her none. I believe she read a chapter of the
Bible every day, but the only books she read with any real interest
were novels of a sort that Augustus despised. It never occurred to him
that he ought at once to have made friends of this Momus of
unrighteousness, for by them he might have found entrance to the
sealed chamber. He ought to have read with her the books she did like,
for by them only could he make her think, and from them alone could he
lead her to better. It is but from the very step upon which one stands
that one can move to the next. Besides these books, there was nothing
in her scheme of the universe but fashion, dress, calls, the park,
other-peopledom, concerts, plays, churchgoing--whatever could show
itself on the frosted glass of her _camera obscura_--make an interest
of motion and colour in her darkened chamber. Without these, her
bosom's mistress would have found life unendurable, for not yet had
she ascended her throne, but lay on the floor of her nursery,
surrounded with toys that imitated life.