“Prejudice, education, accident!—those have saved you.”
“Perhaps so,” cried I. “And one thing more, I acknowledge myself obliged to, on various occasions—fear. I run no risks that I see—I run—but it is always away from all danger that I perceive.”
“You do not, however, call that virtue, ma’am—you do not call that the rule of right?”
“No—I dare not—I must be content that it is certainly not the rule of wrong.”
He began then an harangue upon the universality of depravity and frailty that I heard with much displeasure; for, it seems to me, those most encourage such general ideas of general worthlessness who most wish to found upon them partial excuses for their own. MISS BURNEY AMONG HER OLD FRIENDS.
Jan. 31.—-And now I must finish my account of this month by my own assembly at my dear Mrs. Ord’s.
I passed through the friendly hands of Miss Ord to the most cordial ones of Mrs. Garrick,[252] who frankly embraced me, saying, “Do I see you, once more, before I die, my tear little spark? for your father is my flame, all my life, and you are a little spark of that flame!”
She added how much she had wished to visit me at the queen’s house, when she found I no longer came about the world; but that she was too discreet, and I did not dare say “Do come!” unauthorized.
Then came Mr. Pepys, and he spoke to me instantly, of the ‘Streatham Letters.’ He is in agony as to his own fate, but said there could be no doubt of my faring well. Not, I assured him, to my own content, if named at all.
We were interrupted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. I was quite glad to see him; and we began chatting with all our old spirit, and he quite raved against my present life of confinement, an the invisibility it had occasioned, etc., etc.