My Lady Ringwood discourses.

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a little; though ere long she turns upon Miss Aston, and says, but more quietly,

"In what, Dolly, are we in advance of our fathers? I doubt but you'll find, if you inquire, that it is but conceit that gives us this notion. We are heirs of the past; but it was the past that made the fortune we've entered upon. But as an inheritor is ever more puff'd up with his possessions than he that first acquired them, so we vaunt as discoveries what are given ready-made to our hands. God forbid I should speak ill of my fellows; but sure the present race of men are no better than a tribe of atheists, having no fear because they have no belief, having no modesty because they have no sense, professing claims without having pretensions, perk'd up with Jackanape airs, and more empty of real knowledge than the suckling was in my day."

Nay, granny dear," answer'd Miss Aston, "it is not so indeed; there are wise men and true to be met in the world yet."

"Ay, Dolly," replies my lady, "and there were wise men and true to be met in Noah's ark; but there was a great number of beasts. Then catching me up as I was about to speak,

"I doubt," she cries, "but you'll find little solid parts in the world now-a-days. There's much tinsel, but tinsel isn't gold; and when you strip the glistering decoration, you'll find as much to sorrow as to sneer over. If our forefathers had less parade of learning, they had more common sense; observation, practice, and earnestness, my dear, did the work in those days which pertness, ignorance, and pretension do in these. In the healing arts 'twas possible for a man to cure a distemper, though he had never heard of Galen

or

Hippocrates; and if he had a prescription to write, plain wholesome English might serve. But now our pills, mixtures, apozems, and what not, are administered in Latin: the doctor abbreviates the words because he don't know the terminations; and the apothecary, who has less learning still, mistakes the doctor's scrawl and poisons the patients he sends his drugs to. And all this, my dear, is true of more than medicine; we are all being poisoned by wrong doses of philosophy, ethicks, criticism, religion, taste, and the fine arts, by a pack of ignorant wretches who methinks are fit only to lose their ears at the pillory for their cleverness."

My opinion of her ladyship's views.

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I was now wearying of this long invective, for I could not discern its purpose, unless it was to prove that as there are eggs that become rotten by being sat on too long by hens, so there are heads that grow addled by the too-lengthened incubation of time. I was never a lover of such human anachronisms as my lady; my sense of fitness made me quick to espy incongruities; and 'twas wearying to have to listen to my lady's declamation against the age, likened by my taste to an agreeable musick, which her chattering vexed with discord. 'Twas politick, however, that my countenance should suggest that attention I could readily believe her vanity demanded. But to simulate attention for a long period is an intolerable labour; and in particular when you perceive that your voluble orator is but a mere windy sophist, whose flimsy cobweb could be rent by a breath.

Happily 'twas now near the dinner time; and my lady's departure to her chamber broke up the tedious society.

Concerning various conversations; including the introduction of a celebrated character.

THERE dined that day with Dr. Aston a gentleman of whose celebrity I was not aware, though my attention was drawn to him at the commencement by his great ugliness. He had a huge wen just under his poll, of which the discovery seemed to give him so little uneasiness, that he wore a wig which did not cover half his head. His eyes were protruded like those of a crab's, and between one of these and his nose was room for another wen. He was dressed in embroider'd figured velvets, shirtsleeves, high cuffs and buckram skirts. Yet by his easy, unembarrass'd air, 'twas plain he was in nowise disturb'd by his ugliness, if indeed he was sensible of it. He laugh'd and joked and procured himself to be watched more than a man that was conscious of his ill features might have ventured on. It was

Mr. Soame Fenyns.

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strange I did not catch his name, which yet was four or five times severally repeated by Dr. Aston and my lady, both of whom seemed vastly entertained by his company. And indeed he exhaled the aroma of good-breeding in all his manners, putting me in mind of an ugly herb with a sweet savour; whilst his wit, though keen, was always delicate, and his humour never impertinent. He spoke particularly of Dr. Johnson, the great author of "The Rambler," for whom it was plain he bore no love; and told a story, that when thè Dictionary was in hand, the Doctor was in debt to a milkman, who sent to arrest him; but the sage being apprised of the fellow's design, brought down his bed and barricadoed the door, and from a top window harangued the bailiffs, asserting his intention to defend his little citadel to the utmost.

When we were withdrawn, Miss Aston, on my demanding who the gentleman was at table, replied that his name was Mr. Soame Jenyns, that he was the author of some excellent works on

religion and some elegant poems. I said that I was acquainted with his name, but not with his writings; on which she bid me go to the library and fetch her a volume, whose position she indi