She has a quick comprehension of all that is taught to her; she already tasks to the full my mother's educational arts. My father has had to rummage his library for books to feed (or extinguish) her desire for "further information," and has promised lessons in French and Italian-- at some golden time in the shadowy "By and by"--which are received so gratefully that one might think Blanche mistook "Telema que" and "Novelle Morali" for baby-houses and dolls. Heaven send her through French and Italian with better success than attended Mr. Caxton's lessons in Greek to Pisistratus! She has an ear for music which my mother, who is no bad judge, declares to be exquisite. Luckily there is an old Italian, settled in a town ten miles off, who is said to be an excellent music-master, and who comes the round of the neighboring squirearchy twice a week. I have taught her to draw,--an accomplishment in which I am not without skill,--and she has already taken a sketch from nature, which, barring the perspective, is not so amiss; indeed, she has caught the notion of "idealizing" (which promises future originality) from her own natural instincts, and given to the old witch- elm, that hangs over the stream, just the bough that it wanted to dip into the water and soften off the hard lines. My only fear is that Blanche should become too dreamy and thoughtful. Poor child, she has no one to play with! So I look out, and get her a dog, frisky and young, who abhors sedentary occupations,--a spaniel, small, and coal-black, with ears sweeping the ground. I baptize him "Juba," in honor of Addison's "Cato," and in consideration of his sable curls and Mauritanian complexion. Blanche does not seem so eerie and elf-like while gliding through the ruins when Juba barks by her side and scares the birds from the ivy. One day I had been pacing to and fro the hall, which was deserted; and the sight of the armor and portraits--dumb evidences of the active and adventurous lives of the old inhabitants, which seemed to reprove my own inactive obscurity--had set me off on one of those Pegasean hobbies on which youth mounts to the skies,--delivering maidens on rocks, and killing Gorgons and monsters,--when Juba bounded in, and Blanche came after him, her straw hat in her hand. Blanche. "I thought you were here, Sisty: may I stay?" Pisistratus.--"Why, my dear child, the day is so fine that instead of losing it indoors, you ought to be running in the fields with Juba." Juba.--"Bow-wow." Blanche.--"Will you come too? If Sisty stays in, Blanche does not care for the butterflies!" Pisistratus, seeing that the thread of his day-dreams is broken, consents with an air of resignation. Just as they gain the door, Blanche pauses, and looks as if there were something on her mind. Pisistratus--"What now, Blanche? Why are you making knots in that ribbon, and writing invisible characters on the floor with the point of that busy little foot?"