nd her.

After this account it is scarcely necessary to add, that their minds had
received very little cultivation. They were taught French, Italian, and
Spanish; English was their vulgar tongue. And what did they learn?
Hamlet will tell you--words--words. But let me not forget that they
squalled Italian songs in the true _gusto_. Without having any seeds
sown in their understanding, or the affections of the heart set to work,
they were brought out of their nursery, or the place they were secluded
in, to prevent their faces being common; like blazing stars, to
captivate Lords.

They were pretty, and hurrying from one party of pleasure to another,
occasioned the disorder which required change of air. The mother, if we
except her being near twenty years older, was just the same creature;
and these additional years only served to make her more tenaciously
adhere to her habits of folly, and decide with stupid gravity, some
trivial points of ceremony, as a matter of the last importance; of
which she was a competent judge, from having lived in the fashionable
world so long: that world to which the ignorant look up as we do to the
sun.

It appears to me that every creature has some notion--or rather relish,
of the sublime. Riches, and the consequent state, are the sublime of
weak minds:--These images fill, nay, are too big for their narrow souls.

One afternoon, which they had engaged to spend together, Ann was so ill,
that Mary was obliged to send an apology for not attending the
tea-table. The apology brought them on the carpet; and the mother, with
a look of solemn importance, turned to the sick man, whose name was
Henry, and said;

"Though people of the first fashion are frequently at places of this
kind, intimate with they know not who; yet I do not choose that my
daughter, whose family is so respectable, should be intimate with any
one she would blush to know elsewhere. It is only on that account, for I
never suffer her to be with any one but in my company," added she,
sitting more erect; and a smile of self-complacency dressed her
countenance.

"I have enquired concerning these strangers, and find that the one who
has the most dignity in her manners, is really a woman of fortune."
"Lord, mamma, how ill she dresses:" mamma went on; "She is a romantic
creature, you must not copy her, miss; yet she is an heiress of the
large fortune in ----shire, of which you may remember to have heard the
Countess speak the night