Mrs. Dross aspired to be _somebody_, aped the nobility, and gave magnificent routs, which were attended by many noble personages, and by all that portion of the fashionable world that will go anywhere for a crowd and a supper. Their idea of virtue consisted in having no debts, going regularly to church, and feeding the parson; their idea of charity, in paying the poor-rates, and putting down their names to public subscriptions: and they had a profound contempt for every species of learning, which they associated indissolubly with rags and famine, and with that neglect of the main chance, which they regarded as the most deadly of all deadly sins. But as they had several hopeful children, and as Mrs. Dross found it was fashionable to have a governess and a _tutorer_, they had looked out for two pieces of human furniture under these denominations, and my capricious destiny led me to their splendid dwelling in the latter capacity. I found the governess, Miss Pliant, very admirably adapted to her situation. She did not presume to have a will of her own. Suspended like Mahomet’s coffin between the mistress and the housekeeper, despising the one, and despised by the other, her mind seemed unconscious of its vacancy, and her heart of its loneliness. She had neither feelings nor principles, either of good or ill: perfectly selfish, perfectly cold-hearted, and perfectly obsequious, she was contented with her situation, because it seemed likely to lead to an advantageous establishment; for if ever she thought of marriage, it was only in the light of a system of bargain, in which youth and beauty were very well disposed of when bartered for age and money. She was highly accomplished: a very scientific musician, without any soul in her performance; a most skilful copier of landscapes, without the least taste for the beauties of nature; and a proficient in French grammar, though she had read no book in that language but _Telemaque_, and hated the names of Rousseau and Voltaire, because she had heard them called rascals by her father, who had taken his opinion on trust from the Reverend Mr. Simony, who had never read a page of either of them.