 most sovereign contempt.

After some remark of Mrs. Stanley, in favor of the household virtues, Mr. Carlton said, "Mr. Addison in the Spectator, and Dr. Johnson in the Rambler, 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-stich hangings for which she had no walls, and her embroidery for which she had no use. The poor man pathetically laments her detestable catalogues 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 of 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 well-imagined 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 can not 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."

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
