'When did Plato live?'
'In the fifth century before Christ. He was a great teacher——' she paused. How could she explain it all to one so ignorant as me?
'Tell me,' I said earnestly, 'tell me one thing that he said?'
A wistful expression came into the sweet face on which I looked, and, turning over the leaves of her book, she seemed to seek for something suitable for me. It was not, however, until she reached the last page of her volume that she opened her dear lips to translate, in quaint sweet accents, these words of Plato's—
'"If the company will be persuaded by me, accounting the soul immortal—we shall always hold to the road that leads above, and justice with prudence we shall by all means pursue, in order that we may be friends both to ourselves and to the gods, both whilst we remain here and when we receive its rewards, so we shall, like victors, both here and there enjoy a happy life." It is like our dear Lord's teaching,' she said, 'though it was uttered more than four centuries before He came to live as a man on earth.'
'They are good words,' said I, 'and I wish that I could remember them always.'
'I will write them out for you,' said Lady Jane. 'And you must learn them by heart, and never, never forget them.'
And she was as good as her word, and wrote them out for me in her beautiful handwriting, and I learned them every one, so that sometimes when we were sitting together in the gloaming, before the candles were lighted, I could say them to her without a book; and she would talk about them, telling me, too, what her dear old tutors, Master Ascham, and Master Aylmer, afterwards Bishop of London, used to teach about prudence, justice and kindred virtues.
One day the latter gentleman came to see her, to her intense delight, and I was much struck with his fine scholarly appearance and gentle manners. Lady Jane hung upon his lips, and treasured up everything he said, to discuss it with me afterwards and think over it many and many a time.
These tutors had indeed a great claim upon my dear lady's devotion, for they had instructed her so well that she spoke and wrote with correctness Greek, Latin, Italian and French, and also understood not a little of Hebrew, Chaldee and Arabic; moreover, she was, with all that learning, so modest and humble that you might have thought her a very simple ignorant maid at first sight, though, speaking for myself, I have ever noticed that large-minded people who are cultured and educated finely are more chary in expressing their feelings and meeker in their bearing than the empty-headed braggarts who think by much speaking and loud boasting they will carry all before them. ''Tis an empty whistle that makes most sound,' my father used to say, and he knew much of life, though he had buried himself latterly in the country.