III. L’ESTERELLE 527

was the perfectest pet of all;-he used to pass half his day in the air, above her head, or behind her shoulders, holding a little tress of her long hair as far out as he could, on the wing.

54. That first day, when they came to Denmark Hill, there was much for them to see;-my mother, to begin with, and she also had to see them; on both sides the sight was thought good. Then there were thirty Turners, including the great Rialto;¹ half-a-dozen Hunts; a beautiful Tintoret; my minerals in the study; the loaded apple trees in the orchard; the glowing peaches on the old red garden wall. The lesson lost itself that day in pomiferous talk, with rustic interludes in the stables and pigsty. The pigs especially, it was observed, were highly educated, and spoke excellent Irish.

When next they came, lessons began duly, with perspective, and the analysis of the essential qualities of triangles! I must state here, generally, that ever since the year I lost in efforts to trisect an angle myself,² education, both in drawing and ethics, has been founded by me on the pleasant and pretty mysteries of trigonometry! the more resolutely, because I always found ignorance of magnitudes at the root of modern bad taste and frivolity; and farther, because all the grace, and much of the sentiment, both of plant and mountain form, depends on the angle of the cone they fill with their branches, or rise into with their cliffs.

These geometrical lessons are always accompanied, when I have girls to teach, by the most careful pencil study of the forms of leaves as they grow, whether on ground or branch.

55. In botanical knowledge, and perception of plant-character, my eldest Irish pupil, mamma, was miles and miles my superior;³ and in powers of design, both the

¹ [See above, p. 380; the Tintoret may have been the “Diana” (see Vol. XI. p. 376) or the portrait of a Doge (Vol. XI. p. 375, Vol. XXI. p. 170).]

² [See above, i. § 95 (p. 86).]

³ [See, for instance, a communication from Mrs. La Touche in Proserpina, Vol. XXV. p. 523.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]