pidly. Hitherto both Emily and I have had good
health, and therefore we have been able to work well. There is one
individual of whom I have not yet spoken--M. Heger, the husband of
Madame. He is professor of rhetoric, a man of power as to mind, but very
choleric and irritable in temperament. He is very angry with me just at
present, because I have written a translation which he chose to
stigmatize as '_peu correct_.' He did not tell me so, but wrote the word
on the margin of my book, and asked, in brief stern phrase, how it
happened that my compositions were always better than my translations?
adding that the thing seemed to him inexplicable. The fact is, some
weeks ago, in a high-flown humour, he forbade me to use either dictionary
or grammar in translating the most difficult English compositions into
French. This makes the task rather arduous, and compels me every now and
then to introduce an English word, which nearly plucks the eyes out of
his head when he sees it. Emily and he don't draw well together at all.
Emily works like a horse, and she has had great difficulties to contend
with--far greater than I have had. Indeed, those who come to a French
school for instruction ought previously to have acquired a considerable
knowledge of the French language, otherwise they will lose a great deal
of time, for the course of instruction is adapted to natives and not to
foreigners; and in these large establishments they will not change their
ordinary course for one or two strangers. The few private lessons that
M. Heger has vouchsafed to give us, are, I suppose, to be considered a
great favour; and I can perceive they have already excited much spite and
jealousy in the school.

"You will abuse this letter for being short and dreary, and there are a
hundred things which I want to tell you, but I have not time. Brussels
is a beautiful city. The Belgians hate the English. Their external
morality is more rigid than ours. To lace the stays without a
handkerchief on the neck is considered a disgusting piece of indelicacy."

The passage in this letter where M. Heger is represented as prohibiting
the use of dictionary or grammar, refers, I imagine, to the time I have
mentioned, when he determined to adopt a new method of instruction in the
French language, of which they were to catch the spirit and rhythm rather
from the ear and the heart, as its noblest accents fell upon them, than
by over-careful and anxious study of