references to Mistress this and Dame the other, who read and wrote both Greek and Latin, and could quote you a passage from Virgil, or explain you the form of elegiac verse, and above all found real enjoyment in such pursuits; yet, judging from their correspondence, there was little or no pedantry mixed up with their classical knowledge. Such Gorgons of learning as Margaret Duchess of Newcastle do not come into this or any category; they are simply warnings and terrible examples of the “weaker sex.” There is small question that many of these gentlewomen were indebted for their attainments in classical literature to the chaplains, who continued to be regarded as indispensable part and parcel of the households of the nobility and wealthier gentlemen of the kingdom. Generally speaking, the post was almost a sinecure. The lay members of the Anglican Establishment were not unduly eager to take advantage of the privileges permitted by their spiritual mother, of making confession, or of seeking direction from their clergy; and when my lord’s chaplain had put in an appearance to read morning, and possibly also evening, prayers, and to give thanks at meal-times, he had done pretty well all that was required of him; and indeed was not unfrequently given to understand that his withdrawal from table when the sweets and cakes were placed upon it would not be hindered. His salary might not be princely, but his duties were certainly light; and to a studious-minded man, who did not set undue value on worldly considerations, the house chaplain might enjoy a comfortable learned leisure in the seldom-invaded library of his patron’s mansion. If sons and daughters were included in the domestic circle, he probably was called upon to complete his round of service by giving them instruction; but in those times of hawk and hound and bowling-greens and tennis, average youths were apt to throw learning to the dogs as soon as they dared, and it was the maidens who mostly profited by his instructions. Hence such women as “Sidney’s sister,” Lady Russel, the Countess of Pembroke—who erected a monument to her sometime tutor, Samuel Daniel, the poetic historian—and many more who could at once ply the needle exquisitely, understood brewing and baking and the mysteries of the still-room, and were well-informed “_gentlewomen_” in the most pronounced acceptance of the term. The style of the correspondence even of those who followed up their classical acquirements less closely, reveals unconsciously as it were, an intimacy with the ground-work, so that through quaintnesses and archaic expressions the educated mind shines distinctly; and beside those old letters and pieces of composition the scrawl of many a latter-day college and school miss who owns a smattering of half a dozen ologies, would make a sorry figure, with its misbegotten face.