The family at Webberly House was the only one in the neighbourhood of Deane, which lived in a style of ostentatious expense; its members vainly endeavouring to purchase respect by extravagance, and to transfer the ideas and hours of the beau monde to a place totally unfit for their reception. The only families within a distance often miles of their residence were—Sir Henry Seymour's, at Deane Hall—Squire Thornbull's, at Hunting Field, and Mr. Temple's, at the parsonage of Deane; all of whom lived in the most quiet manner. Beyond this distance, however, the country was more thickly inhabited, and the town of York, in the race and assize week, presented sufficient attractions to make a drive of thirty miles no impediment to the Webberlys visiting it at those times, though its allurements were not great enough to tempt their immediate neighbours from their homes. Mrs. Sullivan had purchased Webberly House, two years previous to the commencement of this narration, on the faith of an advertisement nearly as deceptious as the famous one of a celebrated auctioneer, that procured the sale of an estate on the strength of a "hanging-wood," which proved to be a gibbet on an adjoining common.

Webberly House—formerly called Simson's Folly—had been purposely tricked up for sale by a prodigal heir, when obliged to dispose of his paternal estate to discharge the debts his extravagance had incurred. As a second dupe was not easily to be found, Mrs. Sullivan now vainly endeavoured to part with it, as neither she nor her children could reconcile themselves to living in so retired a part of the country.

Mrs. Sullivan was the only child of an extremely rich hosier in Cheapside, who perhaps had saved more money than he had made, and fully instructed his daughter in all the arts of frugality, limiting her knowledge of all other arts and sciences to considerable manual dexterity in making "a pudding and a shirt," which he considered the ultimatum of female education. When Miss Leatherly was thus, according to long established opinion, qualified for matrimony, her large fortune brought her in reward a West Indian planter as a husband, from whom she acquired those habits of ostentatious arrogance, which, united to her early imbibed parsimony, formed the principal traits of her character. By this marriage Mrs. Sullivan had one son and two daughters; and, fifteen years after the birth of the former, became a widow, with a large jointure, as well as all her father's riches, at her own disposal. She received the addresses of many fortune hunters, but finally gave the preference to a handsome, good natured, dissipated Irishman, whose name she now bore. Mr. Sullivan at the period of his marriage was past the prime of life; he had long served in the Austrian armies, (for being a Catholic he was incapacitated from holding any high rank in those of his native sovereign, and therefore preferred following another standard), but his military career procuring him little except scars and honours, he gladly availed himself of the wealthy widow's evident partiality, and at first thought himself most fortunate in becoming the possessor of so large a fortune; yet soon found he had dearly purchased the affluence which inflicted on him, not only the disgusting illiberal vulgarity of his wife, but the petulant rudeness and self-sufficiency of her children. His only consolation was a daughter Mrs. Sullivan had presented him with, in the first year of their marriage, and his happiness as a father, made him in some degree forget his miseries as a husband. His heart was completely wrapped up in the charming little Caroline, and bitterly did he repent on her account, that his former prodigality had obliged him to yield to his elder brother's desire of cutting off the entail of the family estate; which must otherwise have descended to her, being settled on the females, as well as males of their ancient house. Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan associated but little together; as she was never happy except when she accompanied her elder daughters to the most fashionable watering places; whilst he, remaining at home, devoted most of his time to the little Caroline. But here, unfortunately, in the attempt to banish the uneasy feelings of his mind, he by degrees formed a habit of indulging in the pleasures of the bottle, in a greater degree than strict propriety permits. About three months before his death, the little domestic comfort he had enjoyed was exchanged for the most complete disquietude, as at that time the jealousy of his wife was roused by his introducing Miss Wildenheim into his family as his ward.—Notwithstanding his most solemn assurances, that this young lady was the daughter of a German baron, who had not only long been his commanding officer but his most zealous friend, Mrs. Sullivan constantly asserted she was his natural child. Such a paternity was in her eyes an almost unpardonable crime; for, considering her inferiority of rank and sex, she was still more unreasonable than Henry the Eighth, who made it high treason for those he sought as partners to his throne not to confess all the errors they had been guilty of in a state of celibacy. Perhaps nothing but the stipend received for Adelaide's maintenance could have reconciled Mrs. Sullivan to her residence at Webberly House, for she was too avaricious not to submit to a great deal for three hundred a year.

When Miss Wildenheim first appeared in Mr. Sullivan's family she was in the deepest mourning for a parent, who his wife felt convinced was her mother. It must be confessed, the affection Mr. Sullivan showed Adelaide, and his distracted state of mind from the period of her arrival, gave a very plausible colour to his wife's suspicions. He avoided the society of his family, and giving himself up to his habit of drinking, it in a short time proved fatal; for returning late one night from squire Thornbull's in a state of intoxication, he was killed at his own gate by falling off his horse. Miss Wildenheim's consequent affliction, and dangerous illness, left no doubt in Mrs. Sullivan's mind, as to the justice of her surmises. Enraged by this apparent confirmation of her imagined wrongs, and urged by the envious hatred the Miss Webberlys showed of Adelaide's superior charms, she determined no longer to retain under her roof an object on these accounts so obnoxious; and, as a flattering unction to her soul, persuaded herself, that a girl with ten thousand pounds fortune could never be at any great loss for a home. But at length her darling passion, covetousness, prevailed over her resentment; as she recollected, that should the brother of her late husband ever hear of her treating in such a manner a girl Mr. Sullivan had left under her protection, and in whose fate (from whatever motive) he had shown so deep an interest, her unkindness might be construed into disrespect to his memory, and as such be resented with the warmth of family pride and affection, so natural to the Irish character; and perhaps prompt the offended brother to revenge the affront, by leaving his estate to a distant cousin, who had been dreaded by her husband as a rival to Caroline. These and other pecuniary considerations finally induced Mrs. Sullivan to accept the guardianship of Miss Wildenheim in conjunction with a Mr. Austin, who was trustee to her fortune, and was said to be an old and faithful friend of her father.

However Mrs. Sullivan had failed in the character of a wife, she had always been weakly indulgent as a mother, and was easily led by her children into every expensive folly. Her son's command of money had made him, on his first entrance into life, a very desirable acquaintance to some needy young men of fashion, who, in return for the pecuniary accommodation he afforded them, did him the favour to turn his head and corrupt his morals. As he became daily more ambitious to emulate his new associates in all their 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 the highly prized works of classic fame, had a most oleaginous odour.

The contents of the shop were scarcely less various than the occupations of its master and his family. In part of the second floor, Miss Slater held her "Academy for young ladies." In the other her sister performed the office of mantua and corset maker. Their father was upholsterer, undertaker, and barber, and by consequence politician to the parish. His gratuitous office of quidnunc had perhaps gained him more wealth and patronage than all his others collectively, as in it he had never made any direct attack on the purses of his neighbours, but by reading the newspapers and gazette every market day free of cost, he assembled all the farmers of the vicinity in his shop, who generally discovered something amongst its various contents they felt an imperious necessity to purchase, thus successfully following the plan of the ingenious advertiser of——A pair of globes for nothing!!!——with an atlas, price five guineas.

On the above mentioned occasions Mr. Slater was furiously loyal, in a flaming red waistcoat, which scarcely rivalled his rubicund face.—When he first became the village orator, he had endeavoured, from motives of interest, to persuade others he felt more than he really did; and, as is commonly the case with those who exaggerate but are not hypocritical, he ended in feeling more than he got credit for.—In the proceedings of the English government he now really thought, that "whatever is is right."—And perhaps it is to be regretted, that in his class this belief is not more general.—Illiterate politicians are scarcely less dangerous than self-constituted physicians—It requires men of skill to medicate for the body physical or political.—Quacks in either injure in proportion to their ignorance and consequent audacity; it may often be better to let a disease alone, in the constitution of the state or individual, than to run the risk of aggravating it by the nostrums of the venders of concealed poisons.

Mr. Slater's window was always adorned with a bulletin of the news of the day, of his own writing! and this singular composition set at defiance all rules of grammar and orthography; but he had none of the pride of authorship, and unfeignedly thanked the village schoolmaster for his emendations, though perhaps it might sometimes be said, that the correction was the worst of the two.

The good man also amused himself with what he called "mapping" and "drawing." The few unoccupied spaces in his shop walls were stuck over with representations of the Thalaba of modern history in a variety of woful plights; and he had made more changes in the face of Europe than that archconjurer himself—for, to elucidate the Duke of Wellington's campaigns, he exhibited a map with Portugal at the wrong side of Spain[3]! not failing to take similar liberties in his representations of actions of various kinds.

It may be supposed, that a shop so filled, and a master thus accomplished, would be unremittingly attended.—In truth, "The Shop" was seldom empty; and what with haranguing, bargaining, and the ceaseless creaking of the pack-thread on its ever revolving roller, with interludes of breaking sugar, and chopping ham, the noise on market days was so deafening, that the tower of Babel might serve as an emblem, but that there only one faculty was confounded, whilst here three of the five senses were assailed at once.

At the moment of Miss Wildenheim's entrance, however, a comparative "silence reigned within the walls,"—as in the shop were only Mrs. Temple (wife of the rector) and her youngest son and daughter, the one teazing her for a Robinson Crusoe, the other coaxing for a doll; but at the sight of their "dear dote Miss Wildenheim" the little petitioners forgot their requests, and throwing their arms about her neck, to the no small damage of the muslin frill, that contrasted its snowy whiteness with the sable hue of her other garments, made her cheek glow with their kisses, whilst their friendly mother not less cordially shook her hand.

After a little social chat, Miss Wildenheim proceeded to fulfil the object of her visit to the shop, namely, to choose a novel for Miss Cecilia Webberly.—"What are you looking for there, my dear, with so much perseverance? any thing will do for her," said Mrs. Temple.—"Here's the Delicate Distress—The Innocent Seduction."—"I fear, from their titles, they would serve to aid her in her search after romance; don't you think that would be a pity?—I was looking for Patronage, or Almeria."—The peculiar tone, half foreign, half pathetic, in which Adelaide said the word pity, joined to the ludicrous but just parallel she had in sober sadness unconsciously drawn for Cecilia Webberly, struck with so comic an effect on Mrs. Temple's risible nerves, that she burst out into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. Adelaide opened her eye-lids to their utmost expansion, and cast the beautiful orbs they had concealed on Mrs. Temple's face, with a look of mingled surprise and inquiry.—"I only thought, my dear girl, (laying her hand on Miss Wildenheim's arm), it was a sin you should waste your morality and your pit-tie in so useless a manner: believe me, Miss Edgeworth's wit and sense would be lost on a girl too stupid to comprehend the one, and too silly to profit by the other: if Miss Cecilia Webberly were only a fool, I might encourage your laudable endeavours, but——" "Hush, hush, my dear Mrs. Temple, here are strangers;" and turning round Mrs. Temple discovered Sir Henry Seymour's carriage at the door. It was a vehicle as old fashioned as the owner, "the good Sir Henry," and formed a striking contrast to the showy cortÈge of the Webberly family. It was drawn in a steady quiet trot, by four heavy steeds as gray as their driver, who, seated on a hammer-cloth adorned with fringes as numerous as those on the petticoat of a modern belle, carefully avoided the sharp turns and charioteering skill of the Four-in-hand Club. Sir Henry Seymour's carriage contained only his sister-in-law, Mrs. Galton, who was addressed by Mrs. Temple with all the intimacy of friendship, and answered a variety of inquiries concerning Miss Seymour, which were made with real interest.

After giving Mrs. Temple an invitation to join a dinner party at the hall on the following Thursday, Mrs. Galton whispered, "I suspect; that elegant girl in mourning is the interesting foreigner whose unexpected appearance at Webberly House last November excited so much gossip."—"Yes, she is."—"Then pray introduce me; we have never met, though I called on her the last time I visited Mrs. Sullivan." This request was soon complied with; and the ceremony being over, Mrs. Galton politely appealed to Adelaide's taste, regarding the colours of some silks she was choosing to work a trimming for her niece's first gown, which, on her ensuing birth-day, was to mark her approach to womanhood; for in Sir Henry Seymour's family the difference in dress between sixteen and forty-five was preserved: Selina had not yet laid aside her white frock, nor was Mrs. Galton in her own person anxious to antedate the period of second childhood. Mrs. Martin and Lucy, accompanied by Mrs. Lucas, now walked in to pay their compliments to the ladies they had seen enter, and were as usual received by Mrs. Galton with the utmost civility; and as she knew that a visit to Deane Hall was an event and a distinction in the annals of village history, she included them in her invitation for Thursday, which was delightfully accepted by them. Mrs. Sullivan's carriage having now returned for Miss Wildenheim, she took her leave. And Mr. Mordaunt, having executed some business the worthy baronet had intrusted him with, entered the shop, and reminded Mrs. Galton, that if they did not hasten home, Sir Henry would be kept waiting dinner, and, what was to him of much more interest, Selina Seymour would be disappointed of her evening ride.