er, by a raw recruit of that well-disciplined corps) which
insisted that nothing tended to make ladies so useless and inefficient
in the _menage_ as the study of the dead languages. I jumped to the
conclusion, and was in an instant persuaded that my young hostesses must
not only be perfect mistresses of Latin, but the _tout ensemble_ was so
ill arranged as to induce me to give them full credit for Greek also.

Finding, therefore, that my appetite was balked, I took comfort in the
certainty that my understanding would be well regaled; and after
secretly regretting that learning should so effectually destroy
usefulness, I was resolved to derive intellectual comfort from this too
classical repast. Turning suddenly to the eldest lady, I asked her at
once if she did not think Virgil the finest poet in the world. She
blushed, and thus confirmed me in the opinion that her modesty was equal
to her erudition. I repeated my question with a little circumlocution.
She stared, and said she had never heard of the person I mentioned, but
that she had read Tears of Sensibility, and Rosa Matilda, and Sympathy
of Souls, and Too Civil by Half, and the Sorrows of Werter, and the
Stranger, and the Orphans of Snowdon.

"Yes, sir," joined in the younger sister, who did not rise to so high a
pitch of literature, "and we have read Perfidy Punished, and Jemmy and
Jenny Jessamy, and the Fortunate Footman, and the Illustrious
Chambermaid." I blushed and stared in my turn; and here the
conversation, through the difficulty of our being intelligible to each
other, dropped; and I am persuaded that I sunk much lower in their
esteem for not being acquainted with their favorite authors, than they
did in mine for having never heard of Virgil.

I arose from the table with a full conviction that it is very possible
for a woman to be totally ignorant of the ordinary but indispensable,
duties of common life without knowing one word of Latin; and that her
being a bad companion is no infallible proof of her being a good
economist.

I am afraid the poor father saw something of my disappointment in my
countenance, for when we were alone in the evening, he observed, that a
heavy addition to his other causes of regret for the loss of his wife,
was her excellent management of his family. I found afterward that,
though she had brought him a great fortune, she had had a very low
education. Her father, a coarse country esquire, to whom the pleasures
of the table we