habit of maintaining that sort of intercourse, which would keep up a mutual regard for their eternal interests, and lead them more to consider each other as candidates for the same immortality through the same common hope."

Just as he had ceased to speak, we heard a warbling of female voices, which came softened to us by distance, and the undulation of the air. The little band under the oak had finished their cheerful repast, and arranged themselves in the same regular procession in which they had arrived. They stood still at a respectful distance from the temple, and in their artless manner sung Addison's beautiful version of the twenty-third Psalm, which the Miss Astons had taught them because it was a favourite with their mother.

Here the setting sun reminded us to retreat to the house. Before we quitted the temple however, Sir George Aston ventured modestly to intimate a wish, that if it pleased the Almighty to spare our lives, the same party should engage always to celebrate this anniversary in the Temple of Friendship, which should be finished on a larger scale, and rendered less unworthy to receive such guests. The ladies smiled assentingly. Phœbe applauded rapturously. Sir John Belfield and I warmly approved the proposal. Mr. Stanley said, it could not but meet with his cordial concurrence, as it would involve the assurance of an annual visit from his valued friends.

As we walked into the house, Lady Aston, who held by my arm, in answer to the satisfaction I expressed at the day I had passed, said, "we owe what little we are and do under Providence to Mr. Stanley. You will admire his discriminating mind, when I tell you that he recommends these little exhibitions for Vol. II.

I

my daughters far more than to his own. He says, that they, being naturally cheerful and habitually active, require not the incentive of company to encourage them. But that for my poor timid inactive girls, the support and animating presence of a few chosen friends just give them that degree of life and spirit, which serves to warm their hearts, and keep their minds in motion."

CHAP. XXXVI.

MISS SPARKES came to spend the next day ac

cording to her appointment. Mr. Flam, who called accidentally, staid to dinner.

Mr. and Mrs. Carlton had been previously invited. After dinner, the con versation chanced to turn upon domestic economy, a quality which Miss Sparkes professed to hold in the most sovereign contempt.

After some remark of Mrs. Stanley, in favour of the household virtues, Mr. Carlton said, "Mr. Addison in the Spectator, and Dr. Johnson in the Ramb ler, have each given us a lively picture of a vulgar, ungentlewoman-like, illiterate housewife. The notable woman of the one suffocated her guests at night with drying herbs in their chamber, and tormented them all day with plans of economy, and lectures on management. The economist of the other ruined her husband by her parsimonious extravagance, if I may be allowed to couple contradictions; by her

tent-stitch hangings for which she had no walls, and her embroidery for which she had no use. The poor man pathetically laments her detestable catalogue of made-wines, which hurt his fortune by their profusion, and his health by not being allowed to drink them till they were sour. Both ladies are painted as domestic tyrants, whose husbands had no peace, and whose children had no education."

"Those coarse housewives," said Sir John, " were exhibited as warnings. It was reserved for the pen of Richardson to exhibit examples. This author, with deeper and juster views of human nature, a truer taste for the proprieties of female character, and a more exact intuition into real life than any other writer in fabulous narrative, has given in his heroines, exemplifications of elegantly cultivated minds, combined with the sober virtues of domestic economy. In no other writer of fictitious adventures has the triumph of religion and reason over the passions, and the now almost exploded doctrines of filial obedience, and the household virtues, their natural concomitants, been so successfully blended. Whether the works of this most original, but by no means faultless writer, were cause or effect, I know not; whether these wellimagined examples induced the ladies of that day to study household good;' or whether the then existing ladies, by their acknowledged attention to feminine concerns, furnished Richardson with living models, I cannot determine. Certain it is, that the novel writers of the subsequent period have in general been as little disposed to represent these qualities as forming an indispensable part of the female character, as the contemporary young ladies themselves have been to supply them with patterns. I a little fear that the predominance of this sort of reading has contributed its full share to bring such qualities into contempt."

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Miss Sparkes characteristically observed, that "the meanest understanding and most vulgar education, were competent to form such a wife as the generality of men preferred. That a man of talents, dreading a rival, always took care to secure himself by marrying à fool."

"Always excepting the present company, Madam, I presume," said Mr. Stanley, laughing. "But pardon me, if I differ from you. That many men are sensual in their appetites, and low in their relish of intellectual pleasures, I confess. That many others, who are neither sensual, nor of mean attainments, prefer women whose ignorance will favour their indolent habits, and whom it requires no exertion of mind to entertain, I allow also. But permit me to say, that men of the most cultivated minds, men who admire talents in a woman, are still of opinion, that domestic talents can never be dispensed with: and I totally dissent from you in thinking that these qualities infer the absence of higher attainments, and necessarily imply a sordid or a vulgar mind.

"Any ordinary art, after it is once discovered, may be practised by a very common understanding. In this, as in every thing else, the kind arrangements of Providence are visible, because, as the common arts employ the mass of mankind, they could not be universally carried on, if they were not of easy and cheap attainment. Now cookery is one of these arts, and I agree with you, Madam, in thinking that a mean understanding, and a vulgar education, suffice to make a good cook. But a cook or housekeeper, and a lady qualified to wield a considerable establishment, are two very different cha

'racters.

To prepare a dinner, and to conduct a great family, require talents of a very different size: and one reason why I would never chuse to marry a woman ignorant of domestic affairs is, that she who wants, or she who despises this knowledge, must possess that previous bad judgment which, as it prevented her from seeing this part of her duty, would be likely to operate on other occasions." "I entirely agree with Mr. Stanley," said Mr. Carlton. "In general I look upon the contempt, or the fulfilment, of these duties as pretty certain indications of the turn of mind from which the one or the other proceeds. I allow, however, that with this knowledge a lady may unhappily have overlooked more important acquisitions; but without it I must ever consider the female character as defective in the texture, however it may be embroidered and spangled on the surface."

- Sir John Belfield declared, that though he had not that natural antipathy to a wit, which some men have; yet unless the wildness of a wit was tamed like the wildness of other animals, by domestic habits, he himself would not chuse to venture on one. He added, that he should pay a bad compliment to Lady Belfield, who had so much higher claims to his esteem, if he were to alledge that these habits were the determining cause of his choice, yet had he seen no such tendencies in her character, he should have suspected her power of making him as happy as she had done.

"I confess with shame," said Mr. Carlton, "that one of the first things which touched me with any sense of my wife's merit, was the admirable good sense she discovered in the direction of my family.