to mispend their time, and trouble their heads about any thing else than pursuing the present fancy; for what else is worth living for?
It is time enough surely to think of consequences when they come; and as for the antiquated notions of duty, they are not to be met with in any French novel, or any book one ever looks into, but derived almost wholly from the writings of authors, who lived a vast many ages ago, and who, as they were totally without any idea of those accomplishments which now characterize people of distinction, have been for some time sinking apace into utter contempt. It does not appear that even their most zealous admirers, for some partisans of his own sort every writer will have, can pretend to say they were ever at one ridotto.
In the important article of diversions, the ceremonial of visits, the extatick delight of unfriendly intimacies and unmeaning civilities, they are absolutely silent. Blunt truth, and downright honesty, plain clothes, staying at home, hard work, few words, and those unenlivened with censure or double meaning, are what they recommend as the ornaments and pleasures of life. Little oaths, polite dissimulation, tea-table scandal, delightful indolence, the glitter of finery, the triumph of precedence, the enchantments of flattery, they seem to have had no notion of, and I cannot but laugh to think what a figure they would have made in a drawing-room, and how frighted they would have looked at a gaming-table.
The noble zeal of patriotism that disdains authority, and tramples on laws for sport, was absolutely the aversion of these tame wretches.
