(in my case meaning freedom to forget) which would be a perilous way of preparing for examination.  This ad libitum perusal had its interest for me.  The private truth being that I had not read ‘The Channel Islands,’ I was amazed at the variety of matter which the volume must contain to have impressed these different judges with the writer’s surpassing capacity to handle almost all branches of inquiry and all forms of presentation.  In Jersey she had shown herself an historian, in Guernsey a poetess, in Alderney a political economist, and in Sark a humorist:  there were sketches of character scattered through the pages which might put our “fictionists” to the blush; the style was eloquent and racy, studded with gems of felicitous remark; and the moral spirit throughout was so superior that, said one, “the recording angel” (who is not supposed to take account of literature as such) “would assuredly set down the work as a deed of religion.”  The force of this eulogy on the part of several reviewers was much heightened by the incidental evidence of their fastidious and severe taste, which seemed to suffer considerably from the imperfections of our chief writers, even the dead and canonised:  one afflicted them with the smell of oil, another lacked erudition and attempted (though vainly) to dazzle them with trivial conceits, one wanted to be more philosophical than nature had made him, another in attempting to be comic produced the melancholy effect of a half-starved Merry-Andrew; while one and all, from the author of the ‘Areopagitica’ downwards, had faults of style which must have made an able hand in the ‘Latchgate Argus’ shake the many-glanced head belonging thereto with a smile of compassionate disapproval.  Not so the authoress of ’The Channel Islands:’  Vorticella and Shakspere were allowed to be faultless.  I gathered that no blemishes were observable in the work of this accomplished writer, and the repeated information that she was “second to none” seemed after this superfluous.  Her thick octavo—­notes, appendix and all—­was unflagging from beginning to end; and the ’Land’s End Times,’ using a rather dangerous rhetorical figure, recommended you not to take up the volume unless you had leisure to finish it at a sitting.  It had given one writer more pleasure than he had had for many a long day—­a sentence which had a melancholy resonance, suggesting a life of studious languor such as all previous achievements of the human mind failed to stimulate into enjoyment.  I think the collection of critical opinions wound up with this sentence, and I had turned back to look at the lithographed sketch of the authoress which fronted the first page of the album, when the fair original re-entered and I laid down the volume on its appropriate table.

“Well, what do you think of them?” said Vorticella, with an emphasis which had some significance unperceived by me.  “I know you are a great student.  Give me your opinion of these opinions.”