both help to keep you in an
Italian atmosphere."

"Yes, I could keep up my reading, but how about the grammar?"

"I should recommend you to take a very conversational novel and turn a
page of it into both French and German every week; this would keep up all
the rules of grammar, and, though you might make mistakes, you would gain
fluency in expressing yourself, which is much more needed than grammatical
accuracy if you go abroad, for a course of lessons will set you right
about the grammar at any time, but would not make you talk, if you had
allowed yourself to get tongue-tied by not practising translation from
English into French; and I should advise you to translate very freely, and
use the dictionary as little as possible; if you cannot remember the exact
rendering, twist the sentence and paraphrase it, till you can manage it,
simply to learn to express your thoughts easily. I should say an hour a
week of this would keep up both French and German."

"But you have said nothing of English History and Literature."

"I should be inclined to drop English History for the first year, because
you know so much more of that than of Foreign and Ancient History, but if
you like it I should take some one prominent reign--Elizabeth or Charles
I., or Anne or George III., and get to know all the chief people, read
their memoirs, and what they themselves wrote, so as to feel among friends
whenever you hear a name of that period mentioned--and read all essays,
etc. that you can find upon it. To keep your mind generally open, I should
make a chart of contemporary history and another of literature, taking one
century a month, and leaving plenty of space for adding things afterwards.
In Literature, I should take one of the Men of Letters every month, or one
of the Foreign Classics, and at the same time read any of the man's own
works that I could. Modern poets and novelists and essayists I should read
at odd times, _specially making it a matter of conscience never to open a
novel before luncheon_! I should read my poets not only promiscuously, as
the fancy took me, but compare their treatment of different subjects;
_e.g._, you might make yourself a private New Year's Eve service, of all
the poems on it you can find--Coleridge, Tennyson, and Elia's prose poem
on the same subject. Or you could make a Shepherd's Calendar for yourself,
and copy out under each month what poets have said about it, and its
flowers and features generally: or