"Then," writes he, "we used to hear her declaiming in Latin, improvising in Greek, explaining the paradoxes of the greatest orators, and answering to all the questions addressed to her."[56] [Sidenote: MORATO'S PRECEPTS.] It is evident that these public performances were considered among the most important and valuable parts of a complete education, from the instructions still extant, which Morato gave in writing to his daughter about the time when she left his roof to reside under that of Duchess Renée. Here are some of the admonitions which a fond and anxious father deemed most important to be impressed on a daughter about to leave her paternal roof for the first time. "A matron, before leaving her bower, consults her mirror and her favourite maid to know with what look and air she is about to appear in society. The human voice ought to act in like manner. A speaker should use his lips as bridles to his words, raising or lowering his tones, and giving them delicacy or sonority as he opens his lips more or less. "Virgil, Cæsar, Brutus, Cicero, excelled in the art of elocution. Minerva, Mercury, the Muses, the harmony of the spheres, the chords of the lyre, Apollo, the king of song, echo, which repeats our voices,—are not all these images of the multiplicity of tone of which the human voice is capable? What man does not listen with pleasure to accents pure and harmonious? The guardian of the infernal gate, Cerberus himself, is appeased by them. The wheel of Ixion at the sound of a sweet voice stands still!" Humph! It does not quite please one!—rings mighty hollow, at least on the Teutonic ear, all this about Minerva, Mercury, Apollo, king of song, and the wheel of Ixion! Was that worthy old sixteenth–century schoolmaster really and truly scooped and hollowed out by perpetual droppings from Helicon into an empty shell resounding classicalities, and mere togaed simulacrum of a Roman of the Augustan age? To the Teutonic imagination, the picture thus far realised of our Olympia, seems to present an altogether scenic personage, prepared for purposes of representation, slender, graceful figure, draped in long white muslin robes, with beautifully eloquent upraised arm, "Andres athenaioi" on her lovely lips, and background of gleaming marble porticoes, and grey–green olive groves behind,—the cloudless blue above, and bluer Egean in the distance! A truly charming picture! And yet this nineteenth century of ours would be sorely puzzled to what good use to put the original, if we had her among us, for any other than mere academic drawing–school purposes. Not a principal "in any establishment," of howsoever slight "finishing" pretensions, but would at once, on most cursory examination, pronounce our poor Olympia an entire failure as a specimen of female education, a mistake from beginning to end, good only as an example of what should be avoided.