But this course of independent study could not of course be allowed to go on indefinitely, and with the professor on whom, after much deliberation, my parents’ choice ultimately fell, they, like myself, had every reason to be satisfied. This was a very young _savant_, named Sauerwein, a protégé of the Prince Consort’s friend, Baron Stockmar, by whom he was recommended to my parents, as being capable of undertaking the entire direction of my studies, from the stage at which I had now arrived. He was a man of quite remarkable attainments, his linguistic talent in particular having gained for him the reputation of a second Mezzofanti, with such apparent ease did he apply himself to acquiring each new language to add to his already goodly store--about thirty, it seems to me, he spoke quite fluently at the time when I knew him. To myself the charm of Sauerwein’s teaching lay in his having no cut and dried pedagogic method; not considering it the chief object of education to alter the direction towards which his pupil’s tastes and abilities naturally turned, he had no wish to force my mind into a groove into which it could never fit itself, but rather made it his aim to adapt himself to the exigencies of the situation. In after years my tutor owned to me how great his amazement had been, when in the place of the child of thirteen he believed his future pupil to be, he found a young girl, tall for her years and very self-composed, who in a few well-chosen words thanked him for the trouble he was about to give himself. And his surprise reached its height when the following morning he heard the “Prisoner of Chillon” very dramatically recited by the pupil who was to learn English from him!