The sexagenarian; or, the recollections of a literary life (Volume 1 of 2)Beloe, William
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The sexagenarian; or, the recollections of a literary life (Volume 1 of 2)
Beloe, William
Authors, English; Beloe, William, 1756-1817; English literature -- Anecdotes
Oh for the good old times! when females were satisfied with feminine
employments, with cultivating their minds so far as to enable them
to instruct their children in useful learning only, and to regulate
their families with judicious economy; to learn those graces and that
demeanour, which obtained and secured love and esteem, nor suffered the
Laban images of foreign vanities to contaminate their tents. Daughters
of England, be not beguiled; be assured that the study of politics is
not essential to female accomplishments, that the possession of this
Machiavelian knowledge will neither make you better mothers, wives, or
friends; that to obtain it, a long life, severe study, and the most
laborious investigation, are indispensably necessary. Must it not excite
the strongest emotions of contempt, to hear pert misses, just escaped
from boarding-schools, harangue in a more peremptory language than
Selden would have assumed, and with the slightest reading, and most
superficial knowledge, presume to pass judgment on the political rights
and conditions of nations?
Miss P. was one of the daughters of a venerable clergyman, who was, at
the same time, Master of a College at Cambridge, and Prebendary of N⸺. It
may therefore be presumed, though nothing at all is known of the matter,
that her education was in every respect correct, and consistent with her
sphere of life.
On the death of her parents, and at the accursed crisis of the French
Revolution, she came to the metropolis. Here she immediately, with
unreserved confidence, threw herself into the kindred arms of H. M.
W. divided her enthusiasm, and partook of all her follies. France,
France, France! Liberty, Liberty, Liberty! occupied their waking
thoughts, and disturbed their midnight dreams. In a word, they became
totally Frenchified; and as Free-masons, when once initiated into their
mysteries, retain the Shibboleth, which admits them beyond the Tyler,
so did these females suffer themselves to be so intoxicated with the
Circean draught, that the phrenzy remained incurable and unalterable.
They determined to drink at the fountain-head, so up and away for Paris.
We have heard of the Englishman at Paris, his prodigality and folly, but
heaven bless us! our English women at Paris beat their countrymen hollow,
or, to use a homely phrase, “out and out.”
“Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever
things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are
lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, if
there be any praise.”
This emphatical and beautiful apostrophe of the apostle, in the judgment
of this lady and her clan, could alone be applied to the French nation,
under the benign influence of the Revolution, and to the Polar star of
all who exercised the supreme authority in France from Robespierre to
Bonaparte.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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