Assuredly
great is the cleverness of your Radicals of '32, in providing for
themselves and their families. Yet, clever as they are, there is
one thing they cannot do--they get governments for themselves,
commissionerships for their brothers, clerkships for their sons,
but there is one thing beyond their craft--they cannot get husbands
for their daughters, who, too ugly for marriage, and with their
heads filled with the nonsense they have imbibed from gentility-
novels, go over from Socinus to the Pope, becoming sisters in fusty
convents, or having heard a few sermons in Mr. Platitude's
"chapelle," seek for admission at the establishment of mother S---,
who, after employing them for a time in various menial offices, and
making them pluck off their eyebrows hair by hair, generally
dismisses them on the plea of sluttishness; whereupon they return
to their papas to eat the bread of the country, with the
comfortable prospect of eating it still in the shape of a pension
after their sires are dead. Papa (ex uno disce omnes) living as
quietly as he can; not exactly enviably, it is true, being now and
then seen to cast an uneasy and furtive glance behind, even as an
animal is wont, who has lost by some mischance a very slight
appendage; as quietly however as he can, and as dignifiedly, a
great admirer of every genteel thing and genteel personage, the
Duke in particular, whose "Despatches," bound in red morocco, you
will find on his table.
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