an exalted nature."

"Were the Lady Claypole to judge of others according to the standard of
her own exceeding excellence, Frances, we should, indeed, fall far below
what we are disposed to believe is our real value; but, like the rose,
instead of robbing less worthy flowers of their fragrance, she imparts
to them a portion of her own."

"Now should I like to call that a most courtly compliment, but for my
life I cannot--it is so true."

"You pronounce a severe satire on your father's court, my friend; and
one that I hope it merits not."

"Merits! Perhaps not--for, though the youngest and least rational of my
father's children, I can perceive there are some about him who hit upon
truth occasionally, either by chance or intention. There's that rugged
bear, Sir Thomas Pride, whom, I have heard say, my father knighted with
a mopstick--he, I do believe, speaks truth, and of a truth follows one
scriptural virtue, being no respecter of persons. As to General George
Monk, my father trusts him--and so--yet have I observed, at any mention
of Charles Stuart's name, a cunning twinkling of the eye that may yet
kindle into loyalty.--I would as soon believe in his honesty as in his
lady's gentleness. Did you hear, by the way, what Jerry, my poor
disgraced beau, Jerry White, said of her? Why, that if her husband could
raise and command a regiment endowed with his wife's spirit, he might
storm the stronghold of sin, and make Satan a state prisoner. Then our
Irish Lord Chancellor--we call him the true Steele; and, indeed, any one
who ventures to tell my father he errs, deserves credit. Yes, Sir
William Steele may certainly be called a truth-teller. Not so our last
court novelty, Griffeth Williams of Carnarvon, Esq., who though he
affects to despise all modern titles, and boasts of his blood-ties with
the Princes of Wales, Kings of France, Arragon, Castile, and Man, with
the sovereigns of Englefield and Provence to boot, yet moves every
secret engine he can find to gain a paltry baronetcy! Even you, dear
Constance, would have smiled to see the grave and courtly salutations
that passed between him and the Earl of Warwick--the haughty Earl, who
refused to sit in the same house with Pride and Hewson--a circumstance,
by the way, that caused Jerry White to say, 'he had too much _Pride_ to
attend to the mending of his _soul_.' The jest is lost unless you
remember that Hewson had been a cobbler. As to John Milton----"

"Touch him not," in