re the only pleasures for which he had any relish, had no
other ambition for his daughter but that she should be the most famous
housewife in the country. He gloried in her culinary perfections, which
he understood; of the deficiencies of her mind he had not the least
perception. Money and good eating, he owned, were the only things in
life which had a real intrinsic value; the value of all other things, he
declared, existed in the imagination only.

The poor lady, when she became a mother, and was brought out into the
world, felt keenly the deficiencies of her own education. The dread of
Scylla, as is usual, wrecked her on Charybdis. Her first resolution, as
soon as she had daughters, was, that they should _learn every thing_.
All the masters who teach things of little intrinsic use were
extravagantly paid for supernumerary attendance; and as no one in the
family was capable of judging of their improvements, their progress was
but slow. Though they were taught much, they learned but little, even of
these unnecessary things; and of things necessary they learned nothing.
Their well-intentioned mother was not aware that her daughters'
education was almost as much calculated to gratify the senses, though in
a different way, and with more apparent refinement, as her own had been;
and that _mind_ is left nearly as much out of the question in making an
ordinary artist as in making a good cook.

CHAPTER IV.

From my fondness for conversation, my imagination had been early fired
with Dr. Johnson's remark, that there is no pleasure on earth comparable
to the _fine full flow of London talk_. I, who, since I had quitted
college had seldom had my mind refreshed, but with the petty rills and
penurious streams of knowledge which country society afforded, now
expected to meet it in a strong and rapid current, fertilizing wherever
it flowed, producing in abundance the rich fruits of argument, and the
gay flowers of rhetoric. I looked for an uninterrupted course of profit
and delight. I flattered myself that every dinner would add to my stock
of images; that every debate would clear up some difficulty, every
discussion elucidate some truth; that every allusion would be purely
classical, every sentence abound with instruction, and every period be
pointed with wit.

On the tiptoe of expectation I went to dine with Sir John Belfield, in
Cavendish-square. I looked at my watch fifty times. I thought it would
never be six o'clock.