their qualities and modes of thought; but there are whole ranges of
qualities apparent, of which I cannot even guess the origin. One
thinks of a child as deriving its nature from its parents, and its
experience from its surroundings; but there is much beside that,
original views, unexpected curiosities, and, strangest of all,
things that seem almost like dim reminiscences floated out of other
far-off lives. They seem to infer so much that they have never
heard, to perceive so much that they have never seen, to know so
much that they have never been told. Bewildering as this is in the
intellectual region, it is still more marvellous in the moral
region. They scorn, they shudder at, they approve, they love, as by
some generous instinct, qualities of which they have had no
experience. "I don't know what it is, but there is something wrong
about Cromwell," said Maggie gravely, when we had been reading the
history of the Commonwealth. Now Cromwell is just one of those
characters which, as a rule, a child accepts as a model of rigid
virtue and public spirit. Alec, whose taste is all for soldiers and
sailors just now, and who might, one would have thought, have been
dazzled by military glory, pronounced Napoleon "rather a common
man." This arose purely in the boy's own mind, because I am very
careful not to anticipate any judgments; I think it of the highest
importance that they should learn to form their own opinions, so
that we never attempt to criticise a character until we have
mastered the facts of his life.

Another thing I am doing with them, which seems to me to develop
intelligence pleasurably and rapidly, is to read them a passage or
an episode, and then to require them to relate it or write it in
their own words. I don't remember that this was ever done for me in
the whole course of my elaborate education; and the speed with