Mrs Carter, loaded with languages, and much addicted to snuff and green tea, was scarcely inferior to Mrs Montagu. She was modest and almost apologetic for her much learning. She and the rest of the heady sisterhood were not without misgivings that in pursuing man's studies they might become manly, and therefore they never ceased to express in season and out of season pious female sentiments. Indeed, Mrs Carter protested against being thought of as a walking tripod, and was what used to be called "a sweet woman." Thus she writes of "the infernal composition of deadly weeds made up by Voltaire." _Candide_ was "so horrid in all respects." _Werther_ she detested. She is relieved to hear that Pascal is "very respectable," for she considered him "a dangerous author to all kinds of readers." Rousseau "quite sunk her spirits." Of course her spirits were liable to the same shock during her extensive readings among the ancients, and, indeed, she said that Quintilian's impiety was "quite shocking"; but very justly she considered that they were to be excused because they had not the light of revelation, while Voltaire and Rousseau were sinning against that light. Mrs Carter and Mrs Montagu fully agreed in their admiration for Mrs Vesey, whom they familiarly called "our Sylph." Hannah More in her _Bas Bleu_ seems to reckon her the first of the Blues, and specially commends her for the skill she displayed in breaking the formidable circle that Mrs Montagu's guests were forced to make. Her lively Irish nature was refreshing to Mrs Carter, her head full and aching after a strenuous tussle with Aristotle's _Ethics_. She wrote to Mrs Montagu: "As little of the turbulent as there is in her (our Sylph's) composition, the uproar of a mighty sea is as much adapted to the sublime of her imagination, as the soft murmurs of a gliding stream to the gentleness of her temper." The conversaziones of the Blue-stockings were as successful as might be. There was always a difficulty in procuring men. Dr Johnson could be baited from time to time. Horace Walpole, driven by curiosity, appeared and disappeared. At Mrs Ord's, 35 Queen Anne Street, where Fanny Burney met "everything delectable in the Blue way," one catches a glimpse of Mr Smelt, Captain Phillips, Dr Burney, Lord Mulgrave, Sir Lucas Pepys, and the Bishop of London. The kindness and patronage of Lord Bath and Lord Lyttelton could always be relied upon. Yet there was no full and easy interchange of ideas with men. The time had not yet come. In France it had been accomplished by the ladies who were willing to step beyond the bounds of strict propriety, but the pious English Blues were the last to wish to follow the example of their French sisters. And so their best chance of getting a man was to catch one young and struggling whom they might patronize and be kind to.