nowledge of French and Italian, which she
acquired from the most grotesque monster you ever beheld, whom my father
has engaged as a kind of librarian, and whom he patronises, I believe, to
show his defiance of the world's opinion. Colonel Mannering seems to have
formed a determination that nothing shall be considered as ridiculous so
long as it appertains to or is connected with him. I remember in India he
had picked up somewhere a little mongrel cur, with bandy legs, a long
back, and huge flapping ears. Of this uncouth creature he chose to make a
favourite, in despite of all taste and opinion; and I remember one
instance which he alleged, of what he called Brown's petulance, was, that
he had criticised severely the crooked legs and drooping ears of Bingo.
On my word, Matilda, I believe he nurses his high opinion of this most
awkward of all pedants upon a similar principle. He seats the creature at
table, where he pronounces a grace that sounds like the scream of the man
in the square that used to cry mackerel, flings his meat down his throat
by shovelfuls, like a dustman loading his cart, and apparently without
the most distant perception of what he is swallowing, then bleats forth
another unnatural set of tones by way of returning thanks, stalks out of
the room, and immerses himself among a parcel of huge worm-eaten folios
that are as uncouth as himself! I could endure the creature well enough
had I anybody to laugh at him along with me; but Lucy Bertram, if I but
verge on the border of a jest affecting this same Mr. Sampson (such is
the horrid man's horrid name), looks so piteous that it deprives me of
all spirit to proceed, and my father knits his brow, flashes fire from
his eye, bites his lip, and says something that is extremely rude and
uncomfortable to my feelings.

'It was not of this creature, however, that I meant to speak to you, only
that, being a good scholar in the modern as well as the ancient
languages, he has contrived to make Lucy Bertram mistress of the former,
and she has only, I believe, to thank her own good sense, or obstinacy,
that the Greek, Latin (and Hebrew, for aught I know), were not added to
her acquisitions. And thus she really has a great fund of information,
and I assure you I am daily surprised at the power which she seems to
possess of amusing herself by recalling and arranging the subjects of her
former reading. We read together every morning, and I begin to like
Italian much better t