on reads!--she enters into the very spirit of her subject
--this she could have from nobody but you! An intended praise; but, as
the subjects were, would have been a severe satire in the mouth of an
enemy!--While the fond, the inconsiderate mother, with a delighted air,
would cry, Why, I cannot but say, Miss Horton does credit to her
tutoress! And then a Come hither, my best Love! and, with a kiss of
approbation, What a pleasure to your dear papa, had he lived to see your
improvements, my Charmer! Concluding with a sigh of satisfaction, her
eyes turning round upon the circle, to take in all the silent applauses
of theirs! But little though the fond, the foolish mother, what the
plant would be, which was springing up from these seeds! Little imagined
she, that her own ruin, as well as her child's, was to be the consequence
of this fine education; and that, in the same ill-fated hour, the honour
of both mother and daughter was to become a sacrifice to the intriguing
invader.

This, the laughing girl, when abandoned to her evil destiny, and in
company with her sister Sally, and others, each recounting their
settings-out, their progress, and their fall, frequently related to be
her education and manner of training-up.

This, and to see a succession of humble servants buzzing about a mother,
who took too much pride in addresses of that kind, what a beginning, what
an example, to a constitution of tinder, so prepared to receive the spark
struck, from the steely forehead and flinty heart of such a libertine as
at last it was their fortune to be encountered by!

In short, as Miss grew up under the influences of such a directress, and
of books so light and frothy, with the inflaming additions of music,
concerts, operas, plays, assemblies, balls, and the rest of the rabble of
amusements of modern life, it is no wonder that, like early fruit, she
was soon ripened to the hand of the insidious gatherer.

At fifteen, she owned she was ready to fancy herself the heroine of every
novel and of every comedy she read, so well did she enter into the spirit
of her subject; she glowed to become the object of some hero's flame; and
perfectly longed to begin an intrigue, and even to be run away with by
some enterprising lover: yet had neither confinement nor check to
apprehend from her indiscreet mother, which she thought absolutely
necessary to constitute a Parthenissa!

Nevertheless, with all these fine modern qualities, did she com