mnipotence can extricate
himself, and accomplish his own purposes, without endangering an
immortal soul."

Miss Sparkes took her leave soon after, in order, as she said, to go to
the stable and take the groom's opinion. Mr. Stanley insisted that her
carriage should be brought round to the door, to which we all attended
her. He inquired which was the lame horse. Instead of answering, she
went directly up to the animal, and after patting him with some
technical jockey phrases, she fearlessly took up his hind leg, carefully
examined the foot, and while she continued standing in what appeared to
the ladies a perilous, and to me a disgusting situation, she ran over
all the terms of the veterinary art with the groom, and when Miss
Stanley expressed some fear of her danger, and some dislike of her
coarseness, she burst into a loud laugh, and slapping her on the
shoulder, asked her if it was not better to understand the properties
and diseases of so noble an animal, than to waste her time in studying
confectionery with old Goody Comfit, or in teaching the catechism to
little ragged beggar-brats?

As soon as she was gone, the lively Ph[oe]be, who, her father says, has
narrowly escaped being a wit herself, cried out: "Well, papa, I must say
that I think Miss Sparkes, with all her faults, is rather an agreeable
woman." "I grant that she is amusing," returned he, "but I do not allow
her to be quite agreeable. Between these, Ph[oe]be, there is a wide
distinction. To a correct mind, no one can be agreeable who is
incorrect. Propriety is so indispensable to agreeableness, that when a
lady allows herself to make any, even the smallest, sacrifice of
veracity, religion, modesty, candor, or the decorum of her sex, she may
be shining, she may be showy, she may be amusing, but she can not,
properly speaking, be agreeable. Miss Sparkes, I very reluctantly
confess, does sometimes make these sacrifices, in a degree to make her
friends look about them, though not in a degree to alarm her own
principles. She would not tell a direct falsehood for the world; she
does not indeed invent, but she embellishes, she enlarges, she
exaggerates, she discolors. In her moral grammar there is no positive or
comparative degree. Pink with her is scarlet. The noise of a popgun is
a cannon. A shower is a tempest. A person of small fortune is a beggar.
One in easy circumstances is a Cr[oe]sus. A girl, if not perfectly well
made, is deformity personified; if tole