The most wonderful part of my story is yet to be told. When Maria was sufficiently composed, I resolved to divert the conversation into more agreeable channels. I was struck with the delicacy and propriety of her speech--with the simple, correct, and even elegant language which she used. Another and a quite unexpected source of admiration was yet in reserve for me. I touched upon the topic of her education--upon the books she had learned--the seminaries she had attended--and the teachers by whom she was instructed. Even here methought I might be officious and imprudent. What could be expected from a girl of sixteen--from one who had been born to humble fortune--from one who had had no one at home except an unlettered grandmother, to stir up within her the noble spirit of emulation, and to fan the divine sparks of genius and knowledge. Might she not suppose that I intended to deride the ignorance of youth, and expose the deficiency of her acquirements! Not so! At the bare mention of her books and instructers, I saw for the first time, the clouds which had gathered around her brow begin to disperse. There was evidently something like a smile which played upon her features. It looked like the rainbow of peace, which denoted that the storm of passion was passing away. Oh, how eloquently did she discourse upon the beauties and delights of learning! Next to the star of Bethlehem, which gilded her sorrowing path, and which for two years had attracted her devotional spirit,--knowledge was the luminary which she worshipped with more than Persian idolatry. The reader shall judge of my surprise and admiration, when he is informed, that this artless girl of sixteen--this youthful prodigy--had already amassed a richer intellectual treasure, than often falls to the lot of men of superior minds, even at the age of maturity. The great masters of Roman and classical antiquity she had read in their original tongue--the Georgics and Æneid of Virgil--the Commentaries of Cæsar--Selections from Horace--and the matchless orations of Tully, were as familiar to her, as household words. She was also conversant with the French, and thoroughly grounded in her own vernacular. Besides the usual elements of mathematics, she had even encountered the forbidding subtleties of algebra; and although mistress of the pleasing study of geography, there was nothing which had so filled her mind with delight as the sublime researches of astronomy. She loved to contemplate the harmony and beauty of the planetary system,--and to soar still further on the wings of thought, into that vast and illimitable firmament where each twinkling luminary is itself the centre of a similar system. She had watched too the fiery and eccentric track of the comet, "brandishing its crystal tresses in the sky;" and from all the wonderful movements and harmonious action of the heavenly bodies, she had realized the impressive sentiment of Young, that "An undevout astronomer is mad."