After this account it is scarcely necessary to add, that their minds had
received very little cultivation. They were taught French, Italian, and
Spanish; English was their vulgar tongue. And what did they learn?
Hamlet will tell you--words--words. But let me not forget that they
squalled Italian songs in the true _gusto_. Without having any seeds
sown in their understanding, or the affections of the heart set to work,
they were brought out of their nursery, or the place they were secluded
in, to prevent their faces being common; like blazing stars, to
captivate Lords.
They were pretty, and hurrying from one party of pleasure to another,
occasioned the disorder which required change of air. The mother, if we
except her being near twenty years older, was just the same creature;
and these additional years only served to make her more tenaciously
adhere to her habits of folly, and decide with stupid gravity, some
trivial points of ceremony, as a matter of the last importance; of
which she was a competent judge, from having lived in the fashionable
world so long: that world to which the ignorant look up as we do to the
sun.
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