imbibe knowledge intuitively. Her "headwork" was always well done. Her father, who taught his children himself, spoke of her as the accurate little Greek grammarian, who brought up her exercises without a blunder." But in after life she did not carry on this pursuit except occasionally, when it was a help to her literary work. Even at modern languages, which she was fond of, she would not work regularly, but her knowledge, as far as it went, was very exact. French, Italian, and Portuguese were familiar to her. She knew something also of Spanish; and in the first three languages she read much and easily, and could converse more or less in them.
In her tenth year the family quitted Brookhouse, the home at Potton, in Bedfordshire, where Louisa was born, and removed to Woodbury—properly Woodbury Hall—some three miles distant, the beautiful home so fondly dwelt on in Emily's Diary. Here her observant faculties visibly developed. Following, as was natural, her eldest sister's lead, she became a student of natural objects, which indeed formed her constant pleasure through life, and her kindly disposition
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