University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.
Necessary to understanding the first.

Lightfoot Lee, Esq. was a gentleman of an honourable
family; honourable, not only from its antiquity,
but from the talents, worth, and services of
its deceased members, and its present representative.
He possessed a large estate in one of the southern
states, but preferred living in the city during the
period in which his daughter Lucia, who was his
only child, was acquiring the accomplishments of a
fashionable education. He was a good scholar, and
had seen enough of the frippery of life to relish the
beauties of an unaffected simplicity in speech and
action. He could not endure to hear a person talking
for effect, or disturbing the pleasant, unstudied
chit-chat of a social party, by full mouthed declamations,
and inflated nothings, delivered with all
the pomp of an oracle. Grimace and affectation of
all kind, he despised; and among all the affectations
of the day, that which is vulgarly called a blue

stocking made him the most impatient. Among the
admirers, which the beauty and fortune of Lucia attracted
around her, his most favourite aversion was
a Mr. Fitzgiles Goshawk, who wrote doggrel rhymes
almost equal to Lord Byron; and whose conversation
perpetually reminded him, as he said, of a falling
meteor, which, when handled, proves nothing
but a jelly—a cold, dull mass, that glitters only while
it is shooting.

Lucia, on the contrary, though naturally a fine,
sensible girl, full of artless simplicity, and free from
all pretence or affectation, admired Mr. Goshawk
excessively. He had written much, thought little,
and spoken a great deal. He had been admired by
unquestionable judges, as the best imitator extant;
and had passed the ordeal of the London Literary
Gazette. He was the greatest prodigal on earth—in
words; and it was impossible for him to say the
simplest thing without rising into a certain lofty enthusiasm,
flinging his metaphors about like sky rockets,
and serpentining around and around his subject,
like an enamoured cock pigeon.

Our heroine—for such is Lucia, was, we grieve
to say it, a little of the azure tint. She was not
exactly blue, but she certainly inhabited that circle
of the rainbow; and, when reflected on by the bright
rays of Mr. Fitzgiles Goshawk, was sometimes of
the deepest shade of indigo. Then her words were
mighty; her criticisms positive; her tones decisive;
and her enthusiasm, though it might not be without

effect, was certainly without cause. At times, however,
when not excited by the immediate contact of
a congenial spirit, she would become simple, natural,
touching, affecting, and lovely. Instead of standing
on stilts, striving at wit, and challenging admiration,
she would remind one of Allworthy's description
of Sophia Western. “I never,” says that good
man, “heard any thing of pertness, or what is called
repartee, out of her mouth; no pretence to wit,
much less to that kind of wisdom which is the result
of great learning and experience, the affectation
of which, in a young woman, is as absurd as
any of the affectations of an ape.” Truth obliges us
to say, that Lucia only realized this fine sketch of a
young woman, when acting from the unstudied impulses
of nature, among her familiar domestic associates,
where she did not think it worth her while to
glitter. Among the azure hose of the fashionable
world, she strove to shine, the sun of the magic circle,
until, like the sun, the eye turned away, not in
admiration of its blurting mid-day splendours, but
to seek relief in the more inviting twilight of an ordinary
intellect. In short, our heroine was an
heiress, a belle, a beauty; and, would it were not so,
a blue stocking—or in the exalted phraseology of
the day, an azure hose.

The morning after the conversation recorded in
our first chapter, Highfield arrived. The old gentleman
did not kick him out of doors as he threatened;
and Lucia, though she did not therefore signalize

herself by letting him in, received him with a
smile and a hand of gentle welcome—one as bright
as the sunbeam, the other as soft as a ray of the
moon. The old gentleman was stiff—very stiff;
Charles was his favourite nephew; he had brought
him up, and intended, as he said, to make a man
of him.

“Well, uncle,” said Charles, “I hope I did not
disappoint you. I promise you I studied night and
day.”

“Mischief, I suppose,” said the other, gruffly.

“A little sometimes, uncle; but I minded the
main chance. I hope you are satisfied.”

“No, sir—I'm not satisfied, sir—dammee, sir, if I
will be satisfied, and dammee if I ever forgive you!”
and the good gentleman stumped about according
to custom.

Charles looked at Lucia, as if to inquire the meaning
of this explosion; and Lucia looked most mischievously
mysterious, but said nothing.

“Pray, sir,” said Highfield, who on some occasions
was as proud as Lucifer, “pray, sir, how
have I merited this reception from my benefactor?”

“I've a great mind to turn you out of my
doors.”

“I can go without turning, sir.” And he took
up his hat.

“Answer me, sir—are you not a great blockhead?”

“If I am, uncle, nature made me so.”

“I've a great mind to send you back to college,
and make you go all over your studies again.”

“What! the Greek alphabet—the Pons Asinorum—the
plus and the minus—the labour of all labours,
a composition upon nothing—and the worry
of all worries, the examination? Spare me, uncle,
this time.”

“You deserve it, you blockhead.”

“My excellent friend and benefactor,” said
Charles, approaching and taking his uncle's hand,
“if I have offended you, I most solemnly declare it
was without intention. If I have done any thing
unworthy of myself, or displeasing to you; or if I
have omitted any act of duty, gratitude, or affection,
tell me of it frankly, and frankly will I offer excuse
and make atonement. What have I done, or left undone?”

I declare, thought Lucia, that puts me in mind of
Mr. Goshawk—how eloquent!

The tears came into the old gentleman's eyes at
this appeal of his nephew.

“You've missed the first honour,” exclaimed he,
with a burst of indignation, mingled with affection;
“O Charles! Charles!”

“Indeed, uncle, I have not. I gained it honestly
and fairly, against one of the finest fellows in the
world, though I say it.”

“What! you did gain it?”

“Ay, uncle.”

“And you spoke the valedictory!”

“I did, sir. The newspapers, I perceive, made
a mistake, owing to a similarity between my name
and that of the head dunce of the class. I should
have written to let you know, but I wanted to have
the pleasure of telling it myself.”

“My dear Charles!” cried the old gentleman,
“give me your hand; I ought to have known you
inherited the first honour from your mother. There
never was a Lee that did not carry away the first honour
every where. But these blundering newspapers.
The other day they put my name to an advertisement
of a three-story horse, with folding doors and marble
mantel-pieces. Lucia, come here, you baggage,
and wish me joy.”

“I can't, father, I'm jealous.”

“Pooh! you shall love him as well as I do, before
you are as old as I am.”

Hum, thought Lucia, that is more than you
know, father. When Lucia retired, she could not
help thinking of this prophecy of the old gentleman.
“He is certainly handsome; but then what is beauty
in a man? It is intellect, genius, enthusiasm—
mind, mind alone—bear witness earth and heaven!
that constitutes the divinity of man. Certainly his
eyes are as bright as—and his person tall, straight,
and elegant. But then what are these to the lofty
aspirations of Genius? I wonder if he can waltz.
He must be clever, for he gained the first honour.
But then Mr. Goshawk says that none but dull boys
make a figure at college. And then he talks just

like a common person. I wonder if he can write
poetry; for I am determined never to marry a man
that is not inspired. He is certainly much handsomer
than Mr. Goshawk; but then Mr. Goshawk
uses such beautiful language! I declare I sometimes
hardly know what he is saying. My cousin
is certainly handsome, but his coat don't fit him half
so well as Mr. Goshawk's.”

How much longer this cogitation might have continued,
is a mystery, had not the young lady at this
moment been called away to accompany her relative,
Mrs. Coates, one of the smallest of small ladies, and
for that reason sometimes called by her mischievous
particular friends, in her absence, Mrs. Petticoats.
Mrs. Coates was educated in England, as was the
fashion of the better sort of colonists before the Revolution,
and is so still among ignorant upstart people,
who have not got over the colonial feeling. She
had in early life married an English officer, connected
with the skirts of one or two titled families, with whose
names the good lady was perfectly familiar. Her
conversation, when not literary, or liquorary as she
termed it, was all restrospective, and she talked wonderfully
of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and Sir Richard
Gammon, together with divers lords and ladies of
the court calendar. Her toryism was invincible, and
if there was any body in the world she hated past
all human understanding, it was `that Bonaparte,'
as she called him. Her favourite topics were the
development, which she was pleased to call devil-opement—of

the infant mind; the progress of the
age; the march of intellect, and the wonderful properties
of the steam engine, which she considered
altogether superior to any man machine of her acquaintance,
except Mr. Fitzgiles Goshawk. Though
in the main a well principled woman, there was a
cold, English selfishness in her character, and a minute
attention to her own comfort and accommodation,
to the neglect of other people, that effectually
prevented her ever being admired or beloved. It
was a favourite boast with her, that no nation understood
the meaning of the word comfort but the
English; to which her cousin, Mr. Lee, would
sometimes retort, by affirming “it was no wonder,
since no people were ever more remarkable for attending
to their own wants, at the expense of
others.”

Mrs. Coates sent to invite Lucia to go out with
her, to assist in the selection of a riband, which was
always a matter of great delicacy and circumspection
with Mrs. Petticoats. She admired Mr. Goshawk
beyond all other human beings, because he
wrote so like Lord Byron, and spoke like a whirlwind.
“Ah, Lucy,” would she say, “he will make
an extinguished man, will that Mr. Goosehawk.”