THE MARRIAGE MARKET

AFTER spending the day at Mrs. Fentham's, I went to sup with my friends in Cavendish Square. Lady Belfield was impatient for my history of the dinner. But Sir John said, laughing, "You shall not say a word, Charles--I can tell how it was as exactly as if I had been there. Charlotte who had the best voice, was brought out to sing, but was placed a little behind, as her person is not quite perfect; Maria, who is the most picturesque figure, was put to attitudinise at the harp, arrayed in the costume, and assuming the fascinating graces of Marmion's Lady Heron;

Then, Charles, was the moment of peril! then, according to your favourite Milton's most incongruous image,

"You took in sounds that might create a soul

Under the ribs of death."

"For fear, however, that your heart of adamant should hold out against all these perilous assaults, its vulnerability was tried in other quarters. The Titian would naturally lead to Lavinia's drawings. A beautiful sketch of the lakes would be produced, with a gentle intimation, what a sweet place Westmoreland must be to live in! When you had exhausted all proper raptures on the art and on the artist, it would be recollected, that as Westmoreland was so near Scotland, you would naturally be fond of a reel-the reel, of course, succeeded." Then, putting himself into an attitude, and speaking theatrically, he continued

'Then universal Pan

Knit with the graces and the hours in dance.

Oh no, I forget, universal Pan could not join-but he could admire. Then all the perfections of all the nymphs burst on you in full blaze. never could resist! a lost man."

Such a concentration of attractions you You are but a man, and now, doubtless, (From the Same.)

A NATURAL PHILOSOPHER

About this time he got hold of a famous little book written by the new philosopher, Thomas Paine, whose pestilent doctrines have gone about seeking whom they may destroy. These doctrines found a ready entrance into Mr. Fantom's mind; a mind at once shallow and inquisitive, speculative, and vain, ambitious and dissatisfied. As almost every book was new to him, he fell into the common error of those who begin to read late in life, that of thinking what he did not know himself, was equally new to others; and he was apt to fancy that he, and the author he was reading, were the only two people in the world who knew anything. This book led to the grand discovery. He had now found what his heart panted after, a way to distinguish himself. To start out a full-grown philosopher at once, to be wise without education, to dispute without learning, and to make proselytes without argument, was a short cut to fame, which well suited his vanity and his ignorance. He rejoiced that he had been so clever as to examine for himself, pitied his friends who took things upon trust, and was resolved to assert the freedom of his own mind. To a man fond of bold novelties and daring paradoxes, solid argument would be flat, and truth would be dull, merely because it is not new. Mr. Fantom believed, not in proportion to the strength of the evidence, but to the impudence of the assertion. The trampling on holy ground with dirty shoes, the smearing the sanctuary with filth and mire, the calling prophets and apostles by the most scurrilous names, was new, and dashing, and dazzling. Mr. Fantom, now being set free from the chains of slavery and superstition, was resolved to show his zeal in the usual way, by trying to free others. But it would have hurt his vanity had he known that he was the convert of a man who had written only for the vulgar, who had invented nothing, no, not even one idea of original wickedness; but who had stooped to rake up out of the kennel of infidelity all the loathsome dregs and offal dirt, which politer unbelievers had thrown away, as too gross and offensive for their better-bred readers.

Mr. Fantom, who considered that a philosopher and politician must set up with a little sort of stock in trade, now picked up all the commonplace notions against Christianity and govern

ment, which have been answered a hundred times over. These he kept by him ready cut and dried, and brought out in all companies with a zeal which would have done honour to a better cause, but which the friends to a better cause are not so apt to discover. He soon got all the cant of the new school. He prated about narrowness, and ignorance, and bigotry, and prejudice, and priestcraft, and tyranny, on the one hand; and on the other, of public good, the love of mankind, and liberality, and candour, and toleration, and, above all, benevolence. Benevolence, he said, made up the whole of religion, and all the other parts of it were nothing but cant, and jargon, and hypocrisy. By benevolence he understood a gloomy and indefinite anxiety about the happiness of people with whom he was utterly disconnected, and whom Providence had put it out of his reach either to serve or injure. And by the happiness this benevolence was so anxious to promote, he meant an exemption from the power of the laws, and an emancipation from the restraints of religion, conscience, and moral obligation. (From History of Mr. Fantom.)

A PLAIN MAN ON HIS DAUGHTER'S FAVOURITE

NOVELS

I COULD make neither head nor tail of it ; it was neither fish, flesh, nor good red-herring: it was all about my lord, and Sir Harry, and the Captain. But I never met with such nonsensical fellows in my life. Their talk was no more like that of my old landlord, who was a lord you know, nor the captain of our fencibles, than chalk is like cheese. I was fairly taken in at first, and began to think I had got hold of a godly book: for there was a deal about hope and despair, and death, and heaven, and angels, and torments, and everlasting happiness. But when I got a little on, I found there was no meaning in all these words, or if any, it was a bad meaning. Eternal misery, perhaps, only meant a moment's disappointment about a bit of a letter; and everlasting happiness meant two people talking nonsense together for five minutes. In short, I never met with such a pack of lies. The people talk such wild gibberish as

no folks in their sober senses ever did talk; and the things that happen to them are not like the things that ever happen to me or any of my acquaintance. They are at home one minute, and beyond the sea the next; beggars to-day, and lords to-morrow; waiting-maids in the morning, and duchesses at night. Nothing happens in a natural gradual way, as it does at home; they grow rich by the stroke of a wand, and poor by the magic of a word; the disinherited orphan of this hour is the overgrown heir of the next: now a bride and bridegroom turn out to be a brother and sister, and the brother and sister prove to be no relations at all. You and I, Master Worthy, have worked hard many years, and think it very well to have scraped a trifle of money together; you a few hundreds, I suppose, and I, a few thousands.

But one would think every man in these books had the bank of England in his escritoire. Then there is another thing which I never met with in true life. We think it pretty well, you know, if one has got one thing, and another has got another: I will tell you how I mean. You are reckoned sensible, our parson is learned, the squire is rich, I am rather generous,, one of your daughters is pretty, and both mine are genteel. But in these books (except here and there one, whom they make worse than Satan himself), every man and woman's child of them, are all wise, and witty, and generous, and rich, and handsome, and genteel, and all to the last degree. Nobody is middling, or good in one thing and bad in another, like my live acquaintance; but it is all up to the skies, or down to the dirt. I had rather read Tom Hickathrift, or Jack the Giant Killer, a thousand times. (From The Two Wealthy Farmers.)

DRESS AND LITERATURE

LONDON, 1775

To a Sister. Our first visit was to Sir Joshua's, where we were received with all the friendship imaginable. I am going to-day to a great dinner ; nothing can be conceived so absurd, extravagant, and fantastical, as the present mode of dressing the head. Simplicity and modesty are things so much exploded, that the very names are no longer remembered. I have just escaped from one of the

most fashionable disfigurers; and though I charged him to dress me with the greatest simplicity, and to have only a very distant eye upon the fashion, just enough to avoid the pride of singularity, without running into ridiculous excess; yet in spite of all these sage didactics, I absolutely blush at myself, and turn to the glass with as much caution as a vain beauty just risen from the smallpox; which cannot be a more disfiguring disease than the present mode of dressing. Of the one, the calamity may be greater in its consequences, but of the other it is more corrupt in its cause. We have been reading a treatise on the morality of Shakespeare ; it is a happy and easy way of filling a book, that the present race of authors have arrived at—that of criticising the works of some eminent poet with monstrous extracts, and short remarks. It is a species of cookery I begin to grow tired of; they cut up their authors into chops, and by adding a little crumbled bread of their own, and tossing it up a little they present it as a fresh dish; you are to dine upon the poet ;-the critic supplies the garnish; yet has the credit, as well as profit, of the whole entertainment.

(From the Memoirs.)

are

THE ART OF CONVERSATION

FOR about an hour nothing was uttered but words which almost an equivalent to nothing. The gentleman had not yet spoken. The ladies with loud vociferations, seemed to talk much without thinking at all. The gentleman, with all the male stupidity of silent recollection, without saying a single syllable, seemed to be acting over the pantomime of thought. I cannot say, indeed, that his countenance so much belied his understanding as to express anything: no, let me not do him that injustice; he might have sat for the picture of insensibility. I endured his taciturnity, thinking that the longer he was in collecting, adjusting, and arranging his ideas, the more would he charm me with the tide of oratorical eloquence, when the materials of his conversation were ready for display; but alas! it never occurred that I have seen an empty bottle corked as well as a full one. After sitting another hour, I thought I perceived in tim signs of pregnant sentiment which was just on the point of being delivered in speech. I was extremely exhilarated at this, but it