“And one example, whether love or feare doth worke more in a childe for vertue and learning, I will gladly report: which may bee heard with some pleasure, t̄ followed with more profite. Before I went into Germanie I came to Brodegate in Leicestershire, to take my leave of that noble Lady Jane Grey, to whom I was exceeding much beholding. Her parentes, the Duke and the Dutchesse, with all the householde, Gentlemen and Gentleweemen, were hunting in the Parke: I found her in her chamber, reading Phædon Platonis in Greeke, t̄ that with as much delite, as some gentleman would read a mery tale in Bocase. After salutation, and duetie done, with some other talk, I asked her, why shee would leese such pastime in the Parke? Smiling shee answered mee: I wisse, all their sport in the Parke, is but a shadow to that pleasure yͪ I finde in Plato: Alas, good folke, they never felt what true pleasure ment.” Thus far, except in the trouble of reading black letters, I have given you nothing new, or even freshly old. All this we have heard of the young lady a hundred times over. But next to this, comes something which I fancy will be unexpected by most of my readers. For the fashion of all literary students, catering for the public, has hitherto been to pick out of their author whatever bits they thought likely to be acceptable to Demos, and to keep everything of suspicious taste out of his dish of hashed hare. Nay, ‘he pares his apple that will cleanly eat,’ says honest George Herbert. I am not wholly sure, however, even of that; if the apple itself be clean off the bough, and the teeth of little Eve and Adam, what teeth should be, it is quite questionable whether the good old fashion of alternate bite be not the method of finest enjoyment of flavour. But the modern frugivorous public will soon have a steam-machine in Covent Garden, to pick the straw out of their strawberries. In accordance with which popular principle of natural selection, the historians of Lady Jane’s life, finding this first opening of the scene at Brodegate so entirely charming and graceful, and virtuous, and moral, and ducal, and large-landed-estate-ish—without there being the slightest suggestion in it of any principle, to which any body could possibly object,—pounce upon it as a flawless gem; and clearing from it all the objectionable matrix, with delicate skill, set it forth—changed about from one to another of the finest cases of velvet eloquence to be got up for money—in the corner shop—London and Ryder’s, of the Bond Street of Vanity Fair. But I, as an old mineralogist, like to see my gems in the rock; and always bring away the biggest piece I can break with the heaviest hammer I can carry. Accordingly, I venture to beg of you also, good reader, to decipher farther this piece of kindly Ascham’s following narration: