Sabbath-day, to which she replied, “Ah weel, it is as ye say; but I think none the better o’ him for it!” Adverting to a wicked saying, that few women have the virtues of an honest man, Mrs. Montagu maintained that a little of the blame thereof falls on the men, “who are more easily deluded than persuaded into compliance. This makes the women have recourse to artifice to gain power, which, as they have gained by the weakness or caprice of those they govern, they are afraid to lose by the same kind of arts addressed to the same kind of qualities; and the flattery bestowed by the men on all the fair from fifteen, makes them so greedy of praise that they most excessively hate, detest, and revile every quality in another woman which they think can obtain it.” This is the censure, or judgment, be it remembered, on Last Century Ladies! When Mrs. Fielding, to benefit those ladies, wrote a novel called “The Penitents,” supposed to be the history of the unhappy fair ones in the Magdalen House, Mrs. Montagu remarked, hesitatingly, “As all the girls in England are reading novels, it may be useful to put them on their guard;” but she adds, decisively, “If I had a daughter, I should rather trust her to ignorance and innocence than to the effect of these cautions!” Of course, Mrs. Montagu studied the gentlemen as profoundly as the ladies. As one result, she gently laughed at Doctor Young’s philosophy, which brought him to believe that one vice corrects another, till an animal made up of ten thousand bad qualities grows to be a social creature tolerable to live with. Sir William Brown could hardly claim this toleration, for he had not discovered (said Mrs. Montagu) that the wisest man in the company is not always the most welcome, and that people are not at all times disposed to be informed. Fancy may easily bring before the reader the sort of conversation which Mrs. Montagu was able to hold with Mr. Plunket. She says of it: “Some people reduce their wit to an impalpable powder, and mix it up in a rebus; others wrap up theirs in a riddle: but mine and Mr. Plunket’s certainly went off by insensible perspiration in small talk.” She was so satisfied that there was a right place for a wise man to play the fool in, that she expressed a hope to Gilbert West (who was turning much of her thought from this world to the next) and to his wife, that “you will, both of you, leave so much of your wisdom at Wickham as would be inconvenient in town.” West feared that, at Sandleford, she sent invitations to beaux and belles to fill the vacant apartments of her mind. She merrily answered, that there was empty space enough there for French hoops and echoes of French sentiments; but she also seriously replied, “There are few of the fine world whom I should invite into my mind, and fewer still who are familiar enough there to come unasked.”