spelling, and readable writing, a little history, and the "rule of three," some geography, a short course of chemistry and practical mathematics,--that's not too much, I think,--and yet I 'd be easy in my mind if James had gone that far, even though he were ignorant of "spondees," and had never read a line of that classic morality they call the Heathen Mythology. I'd not have touched upon this ungrateful theme, but that my thoughts have been running on the advantages we were to have derived from our foreign tour, and some misgivings stinking me as to their being realized. Perhaps we are not very docile subjects, perhaps we set about the thing in a wrong way, perhaps we had not stored our minds with the preliminary knowledge necessary, perhaps--anything you like, in short; but here we are, in all essentials, as ignorant of everything a residence abroad might be supposed to teach, as though we had never quitted Dodsborough. Stop--I'm going too fast--we _have_ learned some things not usually acquired at home; we have attained to an extravagant passion for dress, and an inordinate love of grand acquaintances. Mary Anne is an advanced student in modern French romance literature; James no mean proficient at écarté; Mrs. D. has added largely to the stock of what she calls her "knowledge of life," by familiar intimacy with a score of people who ought to be at the galleys; and I, with every endeavor to oppose the tendency, have grown as suspicious as a government spy, and as meanly inquisitive about other people's affairs as though I were prime minister to an Italian prince. We have lost that wholesome reserve with respect to mere acquaintances, and by which our manner to our friends attained to its distinctive signs of cordiality, for now we are on the same terms with all the world. The code is, to be charmed with everything and everybody,--with their looks, with their manners, with their house and their liveries, with their table and their "toilette,"--ay, even with their vices! There is the great lesson, Tom; you grow lenient to everything save the reprobation of wrong, and _that_ you set down for rank hypocrisy, and cry out against as the blackest of all the blemishes of humanity.