To taste celestial, stable joys—
O may we still together keep—
Or may our death he endless sleep!
“Lynn Regis, 19th Dec. 1751.”
The wife and the babies were soon now in his arms; and this generous appreciator of the various charms of the one, and kind protector of the infantile feebleness of the other, cast away every remnant of discontent; and devoted himself to his family and profession, with an ardour that left nothing unattempted that seemed within the grasp of industry, and nothing unaccomplished that came within the reach of perseverance.
He had immediately for his pupils the daughters of every house in Lynn, whose chief had the smallest pretensions to belonging to the upper classes of the town; while almost all persons of rank in its vicinity, eagerly sought the assistance of the new professor for polishing the education of their females: and all alike coveted his society for their own information or entertainment.
First amongst those with whom these latter advantages might be reciprocated, stood, as usual, in towns far off from the metropolis, the physicians; who, for general education, learning, science, and politeness, are as frequently the leaders in literature as they are the oracles in health; and who, with the confraternity of the vicar, and the superior lawyer, are commonly the allowed despots of erudition and the belles lettres in provincial circles.
But while amongst the male inhabitants of the town, Mr. Burney associated with many whose understandings, and some few whose tastes, met his own; his wife, amongst the females, was less happy, though not more fastidious. She found them occupied almost exclusively, in seeking who should be earliest in importing from London what was newest and most fashionable in attire; or in vying with each other in giving and receiving splendid repasts; and in struggling to make their every rotation become more and more luxurious.
By no means was this love of frippery, or feebleness of character among the females, peculiar to Lynn: such, ALMOST[12] universally, is the inheritance bequeathed from mother to daughter in small towns at a distance from the metropolis; where there are few suspensive subjects or pursuits of interest, ambition, or literature, that can enlist either imagination or instruction into conversation.
That men, when equally removed from the busy turmoils of cities, or the meditative studies of retirement, to such circumscribed spheres, should manifest more vigour of mind, may not always be owing to possessing it; but rather to their escaping, through the calls of business, that inertness which casts the females upon themselves: for though many are the calls more refined than those of business, there are few that more completely do away with insignificancy.