Allusions to Greek and Roman history, and to new discoveries in art and science, and even to stories of modern European wars, which were as natural to us as household words, were plainly an unknown tongue to them. Even on the lute and the harpsichord, Lattice's instructions had fallen short of those my father had procured for me, although her sweet clear voice, and her graceful way of doing everything, made all she did seem done better than any one else could have done it. The brothers, for the most part, laughed off their deficiencies, and often made them seem for the moment a kind of gentlemanlike distinction, bantering Roger as if learning were but a little better kind of servile labour, beneath the attention of any but those who had to earn their bread. All that kind of thing, they said, was going out of the mode. The late King James had tired the court out with overmuch pedantry and learning; the present king indeed was a grave and accomplished gentleman, but merrier days would come in with the French queen's court and the young princes, when the "gay science" would be the only one much worth cultivating by men of condition. Meantime the elder brothers paid me many choice and graceful compliments on my hands and my hair, my eyes and my eye-lashes, my learning and my accomplishments, jesting now and then in a courtly way on my sober attire; and, child that I was, sent me looking with much interest and wonder at myself in the long glass in Lady Lucy's drawing-chamber, to see if what they said was true. I remember, one noon, after a long survey of myself, I concluded that much of it was, and thanked God that evening for having made me pleasant to look at. A few years later, the danger would have been different. But Lettice was of a different nature from all her brothers except one. Generously alive to whatever was to be loved or admired in others, and ready to depreciate herself, she wanted Roger and me to teach her all we knew. She made him hunt out the books which would instruct her in Sir Walter's neglected library. She sat patiently three sunny mornings trying to learn from Roger the Italian grammar, which she had pleaded hard he should teach her, she made him read the poetry to her, and said it was sweeter than her mother's lute. But on the fourth morning her patience was exhausted;--she declared it was a wicked prodigality to waste the sunny hours in-doors, and danced us away to the woods; and all Roger's remonstrances could not bring her back to such unwonted work. Indeed the more he remonstrated, the more idle and indifferent she chose to be, insisting instead on showing him some new French dance or singing him some snatch of French song she had learned from the Queen's ladies, until he gave up in despair; when she declared that but for his want of patience she had been fairly on the way to become a feminine Solomon.