d! I believe it has a great effect on the future labours of
a writer,--the place where he first dreams that it is his destiny to
write!

From these pursuits Ernest was aroused by another letter from Cleveland.
His kind friend had been disappointed and vexed that Maltravers did not
follow his advice, and return to England. He had shown his displeasure
by not answering Ernest's letter of excuses; but lately he had been
seized with a dangerous illness which reduced him to the brink of the
grave; and with a heart softened by the exhaustion of the frame, he now
wrote in the first moments of convalescence to Maltravers, informing
him of his attack and danger, and once more urging him to return. The
thought that Cleveland--the dear, kind gentle guardian of his youth--had
been near unto death, that he might never more have hung upon that
fostering hand, nor replied to that paternal voice, smote Ernest with
terror and remorse. He resolved instantly to return to England, and made
his preparations accordingly.

He went to take leave of the De Montaignes. Teresa was trying to teach
her first-born to read; and seated by the open window of the villa, in
her neat, not precise, _dishabille_--with the little boy's delicate, yet
bold and healthy countenance looking up fearlessly at hers, while she
was endeavouring to initiate him--half gravely, half laughingly--into
the mysteries of monosyllables, the pretty boy and the fair young mother
made a delightful picture. De Montaigne was reading the Essays of his
celebrated namesake, in whom he boasted, I know not with what justice,
to claim an ancestor. From time to time he looked from the page to take
a glance at the progress of his heir, and keep up with the march of
intellect. But he did not interfere with the maternal lecture; he was
wise enough to know that there is a kind of sympathy between a child and
a mother, which is worth all the grave superiority of a father in making
learning palatable to young years. He was far too clever a man not to
despise all the systems of forcing infants under knowledge-frames, which
are the present fashion. He knew that philosophers never made a greater
mistake than in insisting so much upon beginning abstract education
from the cradle. It is quite enough to attend to an infant's temper, and
correct that cursed predilection for telling fibs which falsifies all
Dr. Reid's absurd theory about innate propensities to truth, and makes
the prevailing epidemic