extravagance, he persuaded his mother to change her style of living, in order to imitate as closely as possible that of the relatives of his professed friends. At this critical period, he had unfortunately found Mr. Sullivan no less solicitous of joining those secondary circles of fashion, to which alone they could expect admittance, from his having long been accustomed to lead as a bachelor a life of gaiety and dissipation; and the Miss Webberlys still more zealously promoted his wishes, being equally solicitous to reach the threshold of fashion, which had long been the unattained object of their highest hope. This was perhaps the only point in the chapter of possibilities, on which the whole family could agree.

Mrs. Sullivan reversed the order of nature, and followed the path her children traced for her, supposing them to be better instructed in such things than herself; for she knew they had received a superabundance of the means, and, poor woman! she had not sense to perceive they had missed the ends of education. In encouraging her children in the pursuit of fashionable follies, Mrs. Sullivan but followed the general example of wealthy parents, whom we so frequently behold acting like the worshippers of Moloch in elder days, making their sons and their daughters pass through the fires of dissipation, in the chance of drawing them forth from the ordeal with greater external brightness; but the scorching flames too often wither to the root the shoots of honour, benevolence, and truth.

In nothing was Mrs. Sullivan's lamentable imitation of her children's follies more perceptible, than in her conversation, which was a mixture of Cheapside vulgarisms and Newmarket cant, with here and there a stray ornament from her daughters' vocabularies of sentimental and scientifical jargon; the whole misapplied and mispronounced, in a manner that would have done honour to Mrs. Malaprop herself!

Miss Webberly's person was much in the predicament Solomon laments in his song for his sister; but she had in compensation an addendum which the Jewish fair had not, in the shape of a protuberance on the left shoulder, which however she always endeavoured to balance by applying to the right the judicious stuffing of Madame Huber's stays; and her deformity was only perceptible by some slight traces in her countenance, in which there was nothing else remarkable, except a pair of little black eyes, rather pert than sparkling. Conscious that she could not shine as a beauty, she resolved on being a "bel esprit," for which she was nearly as ill qualified by nature; and, reversing the fable of Achilles habiting himself in female attire, she put on an armour she could not carry, and grasped at weapons she was unable to wield. And as she sought knowledge "with all her seeking," not to promote her own happiness, but to subtract from that of others, by mortifying their self-love, in the anticipated triumphs of her own, her preposterous vanity led her to deform her mind as much by art with misplaced and uncouth excrescences of pedantry, as her person was by the unlucky addition it had received from nature: but while she sought to conceal the one with the most anxious care, she laboured as incessantly to display the other; thus resembling the infatuated being, who first held up for the worship of his fellow mortal a disgusting reptile, or a worthless weed.

Miss Cecilia Webberly was in face and figure entitled to the appellation of a fine bouncing girl, if for that a mass of flesh and blood exquisitely coloured could suffice; but though to lilies and roses of the most perfect hues were superadded fine blue eyes and beautiful flaxen hair, her countenance was neither good-natured nor gay, but indicative of the most supercilious self-conceit. She had enjoyed what are usually termed the advantages of a London boarding school, and through their influence had acquired sufficient French to read the tales of Marmontel, by a strange misnomer called "Contes moraux," and to which, for the benefit of the rising generation, we would humbly advise prefixing a syllable in any future edition. From these tales she learned to be sentimental, and fancied herself in turn the heroine of "Le mari Sylph," "L'heureux Divorce," &c.

Moreover, the fair Cecilia had here been taught to move her ponderous fingers with considerable swiftness over the keys of a piano forte, and to exercise her powerful lungs in Vauxhall songs.

In this seminary she was unfortunately inoculated with a virus, that totally diseased a heart nature had intended for better purposes—namely, an aching desire after fashionable life, which led her to caricature those airs of ton which she had not tact to imitate. The eye that is always turned upwards must be blinded by the brightness of a sphere it is not fashioned to; and Cecilia Webberly was so dazzled by the accounts she read in the daily prints, and La Belle Assemblée, of "great lords and ladies dressed out on gay days," that she looked on the inhabitants of Bloomsbury Square with sovereign contempt, her mother and sister inclusive, who notwithstanding encouraged and emulated her flights, flattering themselves that her eccentricities would carry her, and them as her attendants, into regions of splendour, though in truth they were only thus brought forth to the "garish eye of day," to be exposed to the contempt and ridicule her folly excited.

A few days after the expedition of Mrs. Martin and her friends to Webberly House, as she was standing one fine morning at her parlour window, Mrs. Sullivan's dashing equipage drove past, and her involuntary exclamation at the sudden, and to her unpractised eyes, terrifying stop of the four horses, which were a second before at their utmost speed, was changed into an expression of pleasure, when she saw Miss Wildenheim alone alight at Mr. Slater's shop, and the showy carriage from which she descended drive away ere the door was well closed; for Mrs. Sullivan and her daughters never condescended to enter the shop, as it was in token of pre-eminence called in the village of Deane. The great Frederick has wisely remarked, that "custom guides fools in place of reason;" and they had sapiently agreed amongst themselves, that "no lady of fashion was ever seen in a shop out of Bond Street;" but as for many reasons they were always anxious to prevail on Miss Wildenheim to execute their commissions, they took care not to inform her of the solecism in etiquette they had thus discovered, lest her timid and scrupulous attention to propriety should overcome her good nature, and deprive them of the benefit of her taste and judgment. The place of sale these ladies thus contemned, was a rustic pantheon-physitechnicon, where were to be had—food for the mind, at least for those who were content to "prey on garbage," and countless articles for the ladies' use. Part of the counter was covered with stationery of all descriptions, school books, last speeches, and ballads, besides a few miscellaneous articles in the reading way, such as Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the Seven Champions of Christendom, and the Methodistical Magazine, relating how Mr. Goodman "put on by faith," not "the armour of the Lord," but a pair of "leathern conveniences," vulgarly called breeches. The remainder of the counter showed, through glass panes, plated and pinchbeck tiaras for farmers' daughters, and every species of low-priced disfigurement for the person, in the shape of necklace or ear-ring, with a variety of other articles of equal utility. The drawers, on one side of the counter, contained groceries of all kinds; those on the other, a no less various assortment of haberdashery and millinery, the latter, when unsaleable, being altered from year to year to "the newest London fashion." The shop also displayed a considerable store of hardware and crockery, from the unglazed brown pan to the gold edged tea cup and painted sailor's pig—lastly, boasting of a delectable circulating library, which presented volumes that, like