is no more, but his portrait hangs over
the mantle-piece in the little parlour. Mrs Beazeley, the housekeeper,
has become inert and querulous from rheumatism and the burden of added
years. A little girl, daughter of Robinson, the fisherman has been
called in to perform her duties, while she basks in the summer's sun or
hangs over the winter's fire. Edward Forster's whole employment and
whole delight has long been centred in his darling child, whose beauty
of person, quickness of intellect, generous disposition, and
affectionate heart, amply repay him for his kind protection.

Of all chapters which can be ventured upon, one upon education is
perhaps the most tiresome. Most willingly would I pass it over, not
only for the reader's sake, but for mine own; for his--because it cannot
well be otherwise than dry and uninteresting; for mine--because I do not
exactly know how to write it.

But this cannot be. Amber was not brought up according to the
prescribed maxims of Mesdames Appleton and Hamilton; and as effects
cannot be satisfactorily comprehended without the causes are made known,
so it becomes necessary, not only that the chapter should be written,
but, what is still more vexatious, absolutely necessary that it should
be read.

Before I enter upon this most unpleasant theme--unpleasant to all
parties, for no one likes to teach and no one likes to learn, I cannot
help remarking how excessively _au fait_ we find most elderly maiden
ladies upon every point connected with the rearing of our unprofitable
species. They are erudite upon every point _ab ovo_, and it would
appear that their peculiar knowledge of the _theory_ can but arise from
their attentions having never been diverted by the _practice_.

Let it be the teeming mother or the new-born babe--the teething infant
or the fractious child--the dirty, pin-before urchin or sampler-spoiling
girl--school-boy lout or sapling Miss--voice-broken, self-admiring
hobby-de-hoy, or expanding conscious and blushing maiden, the whole
arcana of nature and of art has been revealed to them alone.

Let it be the scarlet-fever or a fit of passion, the measles or a
shocking fib--whooping-cough or apple-stealing--learning too slow or
eating too fast--slapping a sister or clawing a brother--let the disease
be bodily or mental, they alone possess the panacea; and blooming
matrons, spreading out in their pride, like the anxious chuckling hen,
over their numerous encircling offspri