fear of her danger, and some dislike of her coarseness, she burst into a loud laugh, and slapping her on the shoulder, asked her if it was not better to understand the properties and diseases of so noble an animal, than to waste her time in studying confectionary with old Goody Comfit, or in teaching the catechism to little ragged beggar-brats?

As soon as she was gone, the lively Phoebe, who, her father says, has narrowly escaped being a wit herself, cried out, Well papa, I must say that I think Miss Sparkes with all her faults is rather an agreeable woman.' 'I grant that she is amusing,' returned he, 'but I do not allow her to be quite agreeable. Between these Phobe, there is a wide distinction. To a correct mind, no one can be agreeable who is incorrect. Propriety is so indispensable to agree ableness, that when a lady allows herself to make any, even the smallest sacrifice of veracity, religion, modesty, candour, or the decorums of her sex, she may be shining, she may be showy, she may be amusing, but she cannot, properly speaking, be agreeable. Miss Sparkes, I very reluctantly confess, does sometimes make these sacrifices, in a degree to make her friends look about them, though not in a degree to alarm her own principles. She would not tell a direct falsehood for the world: she does not indeed invent, but she embellishes, she enlarges, she exaggerates, she discolours. In her moral grammar there is no positive or comparative degree. Pink with her is scarlet. The noise of a pop-gun is a cannon. shower is a tempest. A person of small fortune is a beggar. One in easy circumstances is a Croesus. A girl, if not perfectly well made, is deformity personified; if tolerable, a Grecian Venus. Her favourites are angels, her enemies Dæmons.

A

"She would be thought very religious, and I hope that she will one day become so; yet she sometimes treats serious things with no small levity, and though she would not originally say a very bad word, yet she makes no scruple of repeating, with great glee, profane stories told by others. Besides she possesses the dangerous art of exciting an improper idea, without using an improper word. Gross indecency would shock her, but she often verges so far towards indelicacy, as to make Mrs. Stanley uneasy. she is too much of a genius to be tied down by any considerations of prudence. If a good thing occurs, out it comes, without regard to time or circumstance. She would tell the same story to a bishop, as to er chambermaid. If she says a right thing, which she often does, it is seldom in the right place. She makes her way in society without attaching many friends. Her bon mots are ad

Then

mired and repeated; yet I never met with a man of sense who, though he may join in flattering her, did not declare, as soon as she was out of the room, that he would not for the world that she should be his wife or daughter. It is irksome to her to converse

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with her own sex, while she little suspects that ours is not properly grateful for the preference with which she honours us.

'She is,' continued Mr Stanley, 'charitable with her purse, but not with her tongue; she relieves her poor neighbours, and indemnifies herself by slandering her rich ones. She has, however, many good qualities, is generous, feeling, and humane, and I would on no account speak so freely of a lady whom I receive at my house, were it not that, if I were quite silent, after Phoebe's expressed admiration, she might conclude that I saw nothing to condemn in Miss Sparkes, and might be copying her faults, under the notion that being entertaining made amends for every thing.'

CHAP. XXXIII.

ONE morning Sir John, coming in from his ride, gaily called ou to me, as I was reading, 'Oh Charles, such a piece of news! the Miss Flams are converted. They have put on tuckers -they were at church twice on Sunday-B'air's Sermons are sent for, and you are the reformer.' This ludicrous address reminded Mr. Stanley, that Mr. Flam had told him we were al in disgrace; for not having called on the ladies, and it was proposed to repair this neglect

'Now take notice,' said Sir John, if you do not see a new character assumed. Thinking Charles to be a fine man of the town, the modish racket, which indeed is their natural state, was played off, but it did not answer As they probably, by this time, sus. pect your character to be somewhat between the Strephon and the Hermit, we shall now, in return, see something between the wood nymph and the nun: I shall not wonder if the extravagantly modish Miss Bell

Is now Pastora by a fountain's side.

Though I would not attribute the change to the cause assigned by Sir John, yet I confess we found, when we made our visit, no small revolution in Miss Bell Flam. The part of the Arcadian Nymph, the reading lady, the lover of retirement, the sentimental admirer of domestic life, the censurer of thoughtless dissipation, was each acted in succession, but so skilfully touched, that the shades of each melted in the other, without any of those violent transitions which a less experienced actress would have exhibited. Sir John slily, yet with affected gravity, assisting her to sustain this newly adopted character, which, however, he was sure would last no longer than the visit.

When we returned home, we met the Miss Stanleys in the gar den, and joined them. 'Don't you admire,' said Sir John, the versatility of Miss Bell's genius? You, Charles, are not the first

man on whom an assumed fondness for rural delights has been practised. A friend of mine was drawn in to marry, rather suddenly, a thorough-paced town-bred lady, by her repeated declarations of her passionate fondness for the country, and the rapture she expressed when rural scenery was the subject. All she knew of the country was, that she had now and then been on a party of pleasure at Richmond, in the fine summer months; a great dinner at the Star and Garter, gay company, a bright day, lovely scenery, a dance on the green, a partner to her taste, French horns on the water, altogether constituted a feeling of pleasure, from which she had really persuaded herself that she was fond of the country. But when all these concomitants were withdrawn, when she had lost the gay partner, the dance, the horns, the flattery, and the frolic, and nothing was left but her books, her own dull mansion, her domestic employments, and the sober society of her husband, the pastoral vision vanished She discovered, or rather he discovered, but too late, that the country had not only no charms for her, but that it was a scene of constant ennui and vapid dullness. She languished for the pleasures she had quitted, and he for the comforts he had lost. Opposite inclinations led to opposite pursuits; difference of taste, however, needed not to have led to a total disunion, had there been on the part of the lady such a degree of attachment as might have induced a spirit of accommodation, or such a fund of principle as might have taught her the necessity of making those sacrifices which affection, had it existed, would have rendered pleasant, or duty would have made light, had she been early taught self-government.'

Miss Stanley, smiling, said, 'she hoped Sir John had a little over-charged the picture.' He defended himself by declaring he drew from the life, and that from his long observation he could present us with a whole gallery of such portraits. He left me to continue my walk with the two Miss Stanleys.

The more I conversed with Lucilla, the more I saw that good breeding in her was only the outward expression of humility, and not an art employed for the purpose of enabling her to do without it.

We continued to converse on the subject of Miss Flam's fondness for the gay world. This introduced a natural expression of my admiration of Miss Stanley's choice of pleasures and pursuits, so different from those of most other women of her age.

With the most graceful modesty she said, nothing humbles me more than compliments; for when I compare what I hear with what I feel, I find the picture of myself, drawn by a flattering friend, so utterly unlike the original in my own heart, that I am more sunk by my own consciousness of the want of resemblance, than elated that another has not discovered it. It makes me feel like an impostor. If I contradict this favourable opinion, I am afraid of being accused of affectation; and if I silently swallow it,

I am contributing to the deceit of passing for what I am not.' This ingenuous mode of disclaiming flattery only raised her in my esteem, and the more, as I told her such humble renunciation of praise could only proceed from that inward principle of genuine piety, and devout feeling, which made so amiable a part of her character.

'How little,' said she, is the human heart known except to him who made it. While a fellow creature may admire our apparent devotion, He who appears to be its object, witnesses the wandering of the heart, which seems to be lifted up to him. He sees it roving to the ends of the earth, busied about any thing rather than himself; running after trifles which not only dishonour a Christian, but would disgrace a child. As to my very virtues, if I dare apply such a word to myself, they sometimes lose their character by not keeping their proper place. They become sins by infringing on higher duties. If I mean to perform an act of devotion, some crude plan of charity forces itself on my mind, and what with trying to drive out one, and to establish the other, I rise dissatisfied and unimproved, and resting my sole hope not on the duty which I have been performing, but on the mercy which I have been offending.'

I assured her, with all the simplicity of truth, and all the sincerity of affection, that this confession only served to raise my opinion of the piety she disclaimed, that such deep consciousness of imperfection, so quick a discernment of the slightest deviation, and such constant vigilance to prevent it, were the truest indications of an humble spirit; and that those who thus carefully guarded themselves against small errors, were in little danger of being betrayed into great ones.

She replied, smiling, that she should not be so angry with va nity, if it would be contented to keep its proper place among the vices; but her quarrel with it was, that it would mix itself with our virtues, and rob us of their reward.'

Vanity, indeed,' replied I, differs from the other vices in this; they commonly are only opposite to the one contrary virtue, while this vice has a kind of ubiquity, is on the watch to intrude every where, and weakens all the virtues which it cannot destroy. I believe vanity was the harpy of the ancient poets, which they tell us tainted whatever it touched.'

Self-deception is so easy,' replied Miss Stanley, that I am even afraid of highly extolling any good quality, lest I should sit down satisfied with having borne my testimony in its favour, and so rest contented with the praise instead of the practice. Commending a right thing is a cheap substitute for doing it, with which we are too apt to satisfy ourselves.'

'There is no mark,' I replied, which more clearly distinguish. es that humility which has the love of God for its principle, from

its counterfeit, a false and superficial politeness, than that, while this last flatters, in order to extort in return more praise than its due, humility, like the divine principle from which it springs,

seeketh not even its own.'

In answer to some further remark of mine, with an air of infinite modesty, she said, I have been betrayed, Sir, into saying too much. It will, I trust however, have the good effect of preventing you from thinking better of me than I deserve. In general, I hold it indiscreet to speak of the state of one's mind. I have been tanght this piece of prudence by my own indiscretion. I once lamented to a lady the fault of which we have been speaking, and observed how difficult it was to keep the heart right. She so little understood the nature of this inward corruption, that she told in confidence to two or three friends, that they were all much mistaken in Miss Stanley, for though her character stood so fair with the world, she had secretly confessed to her that she was a great sinner."

I could not forbear repeating, though she had chid me for it be. fore, how much I had been struck with several instances of her indifference to the world, and her superiority to its pleasures. Do you know,' continued she, smiling, that you are more my enemy than the lady of whom I have been speaking? She only defamed my principles, but you are corrupting them. The world, I be lieve, is not so much a place as a nature. It is possible to be religious in a court and worldly in a monastery. I find that the thoughts may be engaged too anxiously about so petty a concern as a little family arrangement: that the mind may be drawn off from better pursuits, and engrossed by things too trivial to name, as much as by objects more apparently wrong. The country is certainly favourable to religión, but it would be hard on the millions who are doomed to live in towns if it were exclusively favourable. Nor must we lay more stress on the accidental circumstance than it deserves. Nay I almost doubt if it is not too pleasant to be quite safe. An enjoyment which assumes a sober shape may deceive us, by making us believe we are practising a duty whenwe are only gratifying a taste.'

But do you not think,' said I, that there may be merit in the taste itself? May not a succession of acts, forming a habit, and that habit a good one, induce so sound a way of thinking, that it may become difficult to distinguish the duty from the taste, and to separate the principle from the choice? This Freally believe to be the case in minds finely wrought and vigilantly watched."

I observed that however delightful the country might be great part of the year, yet there were a few winter months, when I feared it might be dull, though not in the degree Sir John's Rich mond lady had found it.