centuries, they must first lisp in foreign accents, taught by French servants. Even Mrs. Hartell might have perceived the folly of a Frenchwoman permitting her children to take their first lessons on that most delicate, "most cunning instrument," language, from an American servant; but it never occurred to her that the care of the French servant teacher was worse, inasmuch as the opportunities of education, moral and intellectual, for the lower classes abroad are inferior to those accessible to parallel classes at home. But, unhappily, these were not Mrs. Hartell's most serious mistakes. She never even thought of preparing the minds and manners of her children for the state of society in which they were to live, or of adapting her own conduct to the actual duties of her condition. Among other necessary effects of this fatuity was the disorder and misrule which in our domiciliary visits fall more particularly under our observation.
Mr. Hartell was a man of good moral instincts, but very little moral cultivation. He but half concealed from his children his contempt for their mother, and not at all his detestation of her French favourites. He very early took a liking to Lucy Lee. He perceived that his boy, his idol, soon preferred her to Adéle, and he knew the preferences of a child are unerring. He unwarily expressed in Adéle's presence his superior confidence in Lucy. Lucy's sweet qualities, and thoroughly tried they were, won the love of the little girls, which they constantly manifested, much to their mother's annoyance, by preferring Lucy on all occasions to Adéle. All this, of course, galled Adéle; but while her mistress was her champion she felt
