Lady Frances had always a select number of friends with her. Notwithstanding her passion for music, she kept the performers in their own line; and though she venerated the liberal sciences, and contributed so largely to their cultivation, their several professors only waited on her by invitation: by this means she had it always in her power to suit her company, and never to be intruded on; as the best things are irksome to those whose inclinations, tastes, and humours, they do not suit. I have already mentioned Mrs Norden, who had the care of Lady Frances's education, and who now continued to reside with her: this Lady's seriousness was happily contrasted with Lady Eliza's sprightliness, while Lady Frances's scientifical knowledge was agreeably relieved by the strokes of nature observable in Mrs Lee--who declared she had never read, or studied, any more than to assist her decyphering what was incumbent her _to understand_. 'I hate your wise ones,' said she, 'there is no opinion so absurd but it has been mentioned by some philosopher.' She is nature itself, without disguise, quite original disdaining all imitation, even in her dress, which is simple but unaffected. She plays most divinely on the fiddle. Her genius for music is sublime and universal. She holds the fiddle like a man, and produces music in all its genuine charms, raising the soul into the finest affections. An aunt and sister of Sir Harry Bingley's were also much at Munster-house. Miss Bingley was of the same age with Lady Eliza: to the charms of a regular beauty she joins all those of a cultivated mind, together with a disposition replete with candor, and a turn for ridicule; two things rarely joined together--as a calm dispassionate love of truth, with a disposition to examine carefully, and judge impartially, with a love of diverting one's self at other people's expense, seldom meet together in the same mind. Mrs Dorothea Bingley is a maiden lady of fifty, possessed of a large independent fortune, which she proposes to bestow on her niece. She was in her youth very handsome: but having lived all her life in the country, she derived all her ideas of love from the heroic romance. To talk to her of love was a capital offence. Her rigour must be melted by the blood of giants, necromancers, and paynim knights. She expected, that, for her sake, they would retire to desarts, mourn her cruelty, _subsist_ on _nothing_, and make light of scampering over impassable mountains, and riding through unfordable rivers, without recollecting, that, while the imagination of the lover is linked to this _muddy vesture of decay_, she must now and then condescend to partake of the carnality of the vivres of the shambles.