s you could spare.

"Your mind, on the other hand, has been daily saturated with the
noblest thoughts of the intellectual giants of two thousand years ago,
and would in that respect be as much in place in a well-educated
Grecian maiden living before the time of Christ as in an English girl
of the nineteenth century.

"I have educated you thus, Angela, partly by accident and partly by
design. You will remember when you began to come here some ten years
since--you were a little thing then--and I had offered to give you
some teaching, because you interested me, and I saw that you were
running wild in mind and body. But, when I had undertaken the task I
was somewhat puzzled how to carry it out. It is one thing to offer to
educate a little girl, and another to do it. Not knowing where to
begin, I fell back upon the Latin grammar, where I had begun myself,
and so by degrees you slid into the curriculum of a classical and
mathematical education. Then, after a year or two, I perceived your
power of work and your great natural ability, and I formed a design. I
said to myself, 'I will see how far a woman cultivated under
favourable conditions can go. I will patiently teach this girl till
the literature of Greece and Rome become as familiar to her as her
mother-tongue, till figures and symbols hide no mysteries from her,
till she can read the heavens like a book. I will teach her mind to
follow the secret ways of knowledge, I will train it till it can soar
above its fellows like a falcon above sparrows.' Angela, my proud
design, pursued steadily through many years, has been at length
accomplished; your bright intellect has risen to the strain I have put
upon it, and you are at this moment one of the best all-round scholars
of my acquaintance."

She flushed to the eyes at this high praise, and was about to speak,
but he stopped her with a motion of the hand, and went on:

"I have recognized in teaching you a fact but too little known, that a
classical education, properly understood, is the foundation of all
learning. There is little that is worth saying which has not already
been beautifully said by the ancients, little that is worthy of
meditation on which they have not already profoundly reflected, save,
indeed, the one great subject of Christian meditation. This
foundation, my dear Angela, you possess to an eminent degree.
Henceforth you will need no assistance from me or any other man, for,
to your trained mind, all ordina