In the state, however, in which Lynn then was found, Lynn will be found no longer. The tide of ignorance is turned; and not there alone, nor alone in any other small town, but in every village, every hamlet, nay, every cottage in the kingdom; and though mental cultivation is as slowly gradual, and as precarious of circulation, as Genius, o’erleaping all barriers, and disdaining all auxiliaries, is rapid and decisive, still the work of general improvement is advancing so universally, that the dark ages which are rolling away, would soon be lost even to man’s joy at their extirpation, but for the retrospective and noble services of the press, through which their memory—if only to be blasted—must live for ever.
There were two exceptions, nevertheless, to this stagnation of female merit, that were flowing with pellucid clearness.
The first, Mrs. Stephen Allen, has already been mentioned. She was the wife of a wine-merchant of considerable fortune, and of a very worthy character. She was the most celebrated beauty of Lynn, and might have been so of a much larger district, for her beauty was high, commanding, and truly uncommon: and her understanding bore the same description. She had wit at will; spirits the most vivacious and entertaining; and, from a passionate fondness for reading, she had collected stores of knowledge which she was always able, and “nothing loath” to display; and which raised her to as marked a pre-eminence over her townswomen in literary acquirements, as she was raised to exterior superiority from her personal charms.
The other exception, Miss Dorothy Young, was of a different description. She was not only denied beauty either of face or person, but in the first she had various unhappy defects, and in the second she was extremely deformed.
Here, however, ends all that can be said in her disfavour; for her mind was the seat of every virtue that occasion could call into use; and her disposition had a patience that no provocation could even momentarily subdue; though her feelings were so sensitive, that tears started into her eyes at every thing she either saw or heard of mortal sufferings, or of mortal unkindness—to any human creature but herself.
It may easily be imagined that this amiable Dorothy Young, and the elegant and intellectual Mrs. Allen, were peculiar and deeply attached friends.
When a professional call brought Mr. Burney and his wife to this town, that accomplished couple gave a new zest to rational, as well as a new spring to musical, society. Mr. Burney, between business and conviviality, immediately visited almost every house in the county; but his wife, less easily known, because necessarily more domestic, began her Lynn career almost exclusively with Mrs. Allen and Dolly Young, and proved to both an inestimable treasure; Mrs. Allen generously avowing that she set up Mrs. Burney as a model for her own mental improvement; and Dolly Young becoming instinctively the most affectionate, as well as most cultivated of Mrs. Burney’s friends; and with an attachment so fervent and so sincere, that she took charge of the little family upon every occasion of its increase during the nine or ten years of the Lynn residence.[13]
With regard to the extensive neighbourhood, Mr. Burney had soon nothing left to desire in hospitality, friendship, or politeness; and here, as heretofore, he scarcely ever entered a house upon terms of business, without leaving it upon those of intimacy.
The first mansions to which, naturally, his curiosity pointed, and at which his ambition aimed, were those two magnificent structures which stood loftily pre-eminent over all others in the county of Norfolk, Holcomb and Haughton; though neither the nobleness of their architecture, the grandeur of their dimensions, nor the vast expense of their erection, bore any sway in their celebrity, that could compare with what, at that period, they owed to the arts of sculpture and of painting.