oy, and her cheeks suffused with the blush of health, when
tripping over the sea-girt hills; meek and attentive when listening to
the precepts of her fond and adopted parent.

"Faithful," the Newfoundland dog, is no more, but his portrait hangs
over the mantel-piece in the little parlour. Mrs Beazely, the
housekeeper, has become inert and querulous from rheumatism and the
burden of added years. A little girl, daughter of Robertson, 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, pinafored 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 claw