of that age.'

* * * * * *

'July 21st.--You, who taught us to love our Walter Scott next to our
"Christian Year," and who gave us half-crowns for rehearsing him when
other children were learning the Robin's Petition, what think you of
this poor boy Leonard knowing few of the novels and none of the
poems? No wonder the taste of the day is grovelling lower and lower,
when people do not begin with the pure high air of his world! To
take up one of his works after any of our present school of fiction
is like getting up a mountain side after a feverish drawing-room or
an offensive street. If it were possible to know the right moment
for a book to be really tasted--not thrust aside because crammed
down--no, it would not be desirable, as I was going to say, we should
only do double mischief. We are not sent into the world to mould
people, but to let them mould themselves; and the internal elasticity
will soon unmake all the shapes that just now seem to form under my
fingers like clay.

'At any rate, the introduction of such a congenial spirit to Sir
Walter was a real treat; Leonard has the very nature to be fired by
him, and Aubrey being excessively scandalized at his ignorance,
routed a cheap "Marmion" out of the little bookshop, and we beguiled
a wet afternoon with it; Aubrey snatching it from me at all the
critical passages, for fear I should not do them justice, and
thundering out the battle, which stirred the other boy like a trumpet
sound. Indeed, Leonard got Mab into a corner, and had a very bad
cold in the head when De Wilton was re-knighted; and when "the hand
of Douglas was his own," he jumped up and shouted out, "Well done,