should I give equal, or, perhaps, greater uneasiness, to one who, I know, has the utmost inclination to oblige

me?

[There was no immediate answer made to this. After a short pause, my aunt said]

Mrs. D. My dear, I cannot answer what you have said-I believe I have done wrong in pressing HoratiaI ought not to reason with you—I am a weak reasoner— I wonder you could think of marrying a woman who can argue so ill.

Mr. D. It was not on account of your arguing talents that I married you, my dear, but for a thousand more amiable qualities, by which you have rendered me a very happy husband. One of them is, that you acknowledge a mistake as soon as you are made sensible of it, even though it be in the heat of the dispute, which is a degree of candour that very few great disputers are capable of.

[Here a footman entered, and having pronounced the name of General Randal, they both left the library with that eagerness which they always have to see that gentleman, and I slipped to my own apartment, extremely pleased not to be known to have overheard so singular a conversation.]

My aunt entered my room some time after Your uncle has convinced me, my dear,' said she, holding forth her hand, that I was wrong to trouble you in the manner I did about Lord Deanport. I know you are angry— Pray let us be friends.'

I need not inform you, Juliet, what return I made to so an affectionate an address-it quite overpowered me. I do not know that I could have refused her any thing. -I am glad she did not at that moment renew her request respecting Lord Deanport.-I will not describe the scene which passed between us, farther than just to mention one expression of my aunt. You have been peculiarly fortunate, my dear Horatia,' said she, in your nearest relations. Your father was a man of acknowledged honour and admirable good sense; your mother was a saint; and to your poor aunt you are obliged for being

niece to the most just and most benevolent man in England.'

I could not love my aunt more than I did; but I certainly have a higher esteem for her than ever.

I knew, my dear Juliet, that this detail would give you pleasure; I stayed, therefore, from the opera, that I might have the pleasure of writing it. Yours, ever,

H. CLIFFORD.

LETTER LXXIV.

LADY DIANA FRANKLIN to Miss H. CLIFFORD.

MY DEAR HORATIA,

Plimton.

I HAVE had hints, in various letters from London, respecting the attentions which have been of late paid to you by the earl of Deanport; but, as you never mentioned that nobleman in your own letters, I took it for granted that my correspondents had mistaken the usual politeness of a man of high birth for extraordinary courtesies; therefore, in my letters to you, I took no more notice of the hints than, in yours to me, you did of the attentions. I should, probably, have continued the same conduct, had I not received a letter from your uncle by the last post, in which he tells me, that, though at one time you seemed rather pleased with the preference which the earl gave you, which was also countenanced by the countess his mother, you have since declared to your aunt, that you were determined to discourage his addresses, and even to avoid giving him any opportunity of making them.'-Do not imagine, my dear, that I mean to impute blame to you for not consulting your relations or friends respecting your acceptance of a man whom you felt yourself determined to reject, in case he should make you a proposal of marriage. I think it rather conformable to your general conduct, that you waved informing them you had an admirer of that rank, since you felt no inclination to favour his addresses. Many young ladies, even if they had come to the same resolution, would still

have thought they derived importance from having it known they refused such an offer.

As this young nobleman has been represented to me, however, as remarkably polite, handsome, accomplished, and free from some of the excesses of which the young men of the age are accused; and as, at one period, you received his attentions in a favourable manner; I confess I should like to know (provided you feel no reluctance against giving me the information) what determined you to change your behaviour, and take such a decided resolution against him.

I have tried to account for this by various conjectures; and particularly by one, which nothing but the strongest proofs of attachment and affection to me, which you have on different occasions evinced, joined to the indignation you feel against all whom you have reason to believe are ill-disposed towards me, could have raised in my mind. It is, that the coldness which has long existed between Lady Deanport and me may have had weight in determining you on this occasion. If there is any foundation for this conjecture, I beg that every thing of that nature may be thrown out of the scale; for, whatever prejudices against me may have arisen on her ladyship's part, they would, in all probability, be effaced in case the connection in question should take place; and, even although no great intimacy should ever exist between her and me, I should still feel a very sensible satisfaction in your being advantageously married.

Notwithstanding what you tell me of the agreeable situation of the marchioness at Richmond, I fear she will think it strange that I have been so long without waiting on her. On other accounts my absence from town at present is vexatious; but I plainly perceive that my leaving Mrs. Denham at present would afflict her more than her weak state of mind and body could bear.—I must not propose it till she gains a little more strength: she has no other friend.-Adieu! my dear Horatia.

Pray give me a little light respecting Lord D.

LETTER LXXV.

MISS HORATIA CLIFFORD to LADY DIANA FRANKLIN.

MY DEAR LADY DIANA,

London.

HAV AVING sometimes heard people turned into ridicule for asking their friends advice, whether they should accept or reject those to whom they were already married, or at least fully determined to marry, I thought it would be equally ridiculous to consult mine respecting the addresses of a man whom, in case of his ever making the proposal to 'me, I was fully resolved to refuse.

I am happy to find that you do not disapprove of this. But you wish to know my objections to a man of high rank, who has been represented to you as handsome, polite, and accomplished.-With regard to the first, it would be affectation to pretend to look on it as an article of no weight; but I may say, with truth, that when I perceive it has a great deal with the man himself, it has very little with me

As for the second, I do consider it as essential to the character of a gentleman; and I know that Lord Deanport is spoken of, by some people, as remarkably polite. Without troubling you with my precise idea of that term, I shall only say, that I dislike his lordship's kind of politeness. He performs the common civilities of society as if they were, in him, acts of condescension. His air, his gesture, his stately, yet obsequious bows, all betray a notion of his own superiority.

The great use of politeness, as my dear and ever-lamented father explained it to me, is to correct the partiality, and check the rapacity, of self-love. He compared politeness to a mask with the features of benevolence, by which men try to cover the deformity of selfishness. Some wear this mask so awkwardly, that they continually show part of the ugly features behind it; others let it fall from their face entirely, by too profound and too frequent bendings. This accident has frequently happened in my presence to the noble lord in question He who, in the

midst of the homage he pays to the company, plainly discovers that he thinks himself superior to them all, certainly defeats the purpose of politeness. Such a man is like one who, in the very act of obsequiously bowing to another, is all the while admiring his own attitudes, in a mirror placed behind the person he pretends to be treating so courteously.

I have often beheld Lord Deanport acting this ridiculous part, and, all the time, he seemed convinced that he was admired by the spectators as much as he admired himself.

I tried to discover on what his own admiration could be founded; for, after all, a man must, in spite of the delusions of vanity, know something of himself. I could find out nothing on which he could possibly rest it, unless it were his figure and rank: in every attainment that depends on genius and exertion he must be sensible of deficiency. This consciousness would have been advantageous if it had prompted him to acquire what he felt the want of. It has had no such effect on this noble lord: he seems only solicitous to conceal the deficiences; and can hear with complacency, instead of blushes, praise for imputed accomplishments; than which I know no stronger proof of a mean mind. Pride on account of qualities we do not possess, or actions we never performed, is pride which, according to Pope's expression, licks the dust.' I acknowledge, at the same time, that pride, on account of high birth, is natural to man: and, when accompanied, as it often is, with a desire of imitating the example of illustrious ancestors, it is, in a great measure, justifiable. But, to be inflated with pride on account of being descended from those to whose characters our own has no resemblance, and whose example we never attempt to follow, is, in my opinion, equally absurd and ridiculous.

From what I have had opportunities of observing in life, I am led to think, that persons born of high rank are in general more unassuming, and possessed of greater ease of manner, than those who are raised to the same rank by marriage, or otherwise. If what I have heard of the late