My excellent father, Milord Smeet, had me put in a frigate when I was only twelve, an age at which one knows very little of Ciceros or Dantes or Corneilles, even as you will confess.

Thus, when I found myself in the presence of a gentleman whose reputation for learning has reached far beyond the island he so admirably governs, a silly ambition has led me into a folly that he finds it hard to forgive.

If I have talked of names of which I know nothing, it may be a weakness such as young men will fall into; but surely it is no heinous crime." "You allow, Signore, that there has been no English Sir Cicero ?" "The truth compels me to say, I know nothing about it.

But it is hard for a very young man, and one, too, that feels his deficiencies of education, to admit all this to a philosopher on a first acquaintance.
It becomes a different thing when natural modesty is encouraged by a familiar goodness of heart; and a day's acquaintance with the Signor Barrofaldi is as much as a year with an ordinary man." "If this be the case, Sir Smees, I can readily understand, and as willingly overlook what has passed," returned the vice-governatore, with a self-complacency that in nothing fell short of that which Vito Viti had so recently exhibited.

"It must be painful to a sensitive mind to feel the deficiencies which unavoidably accompany the want of opportunities for study; and I at least can now say how delightful it is to witness the ingenuousness which admits it.