gloaming--while Therese was laying the tea-things, and telling us the
news, and cutting bread and butter; and my mother played the harp in the
drawing-room above; till the last red streak died out of the wet west
behind the swaying tree-tops, and the curtains were drawn, and there was
light, and the appetites were let loose.

I love to sit here, in my solitude and captivity, and recall every
incident of that sweet epoch--to ache with the pangs of happy
remembrance; than which, for the likes of me, great poets tell us there
is no greater grief. This sorrow's crown of sorrow is my joy and my
consolation, and ever has been; and I would not exchange it for youth,
health, wealth, honor, and freedom; only for thrice happy childhood
itself once more, over and over again, would I give up its thrice happy
recollections.

That it should not be all beer and skittles with us, and therefore apt
to pall, my cousins and I had to work pretty hard. In the first place,
my dear mother did all she could to make me an infant prodigy of
learning. She tried to teach me Italian, which she spoke as fluently as
English or French (for she had lived much in Italy), and I had to
translate the "Gierusalemme Liberata" into both those latter
languages--a task which has remained unfinished--and to render the
"Allegro" and the "Penseroso" into Miltonian French prose, and "Le Cid"
into Corneillian English. Then there were Pinnock's histories of Greece
and Rome to master, and, of course, the Bible; and, every Sunday, the
Collect, the Gospel, and the Epistle to get by heart. No, it was not all
beer and skittles.

It was her pleasure to teach, but, alas! not mine to learn; and we cost
each other many a sigh, but loved each other all the more, perhaps.