Sav. I may as well give it up! You had always the art of placing your faults in the best light; and I can't help loving you, faults and all: so, to start a subject which must please you, When do you expect Miss Hardy?
Doric. Oh, the hour of expectation is past. She is arrived, and I this morning had the honour of an interview at Pleadwell's. The writings were ready; and, in obedience to the will of Mr. Hardy, we met to sign and seal.
Sav. Has the event answered? Did your heart leap, or sink, when you beheld your Mistress?
Doric. Faith, neither one nor t'other; she's a fine girl, as far as mere flesh and blood goes.——But——
Sav. But what?
Doric. Why, she's only a fine girl; complexion, shape, and features; nothing more.
Sav. Is not that enough?
Doric. No! she should have spirit! fire! l'air enjoué! that something, that nothing, which every body feels, and which no body can describe, in the resistless charmers of Italy and France.
Sav. Thanks to the parsimony of my father, that kept me from travel! I would not have lost my relish for true unaffected English beauty, to have been quarrell'd for by all the Belles of Versailles and Florence.
Doric. Pho! thou hast no taste. English beauty! 'Tis insipidity; it wants the zest, it wants poignancy, Frank! Why, I have known a Frenchwoman, indebted to nature for no one thing but a pair of decent eyes, reckon in her suite as many Counts, Marquisses, and Petits Maîtres, as would satisfy three dozen of our first-rate toasts. I have known an Italian Marquizina make ten conquests in stepping from her carriage, and carry her slaves from one city to another, whose real intrinsic beauty would have yielded to half the little Grisettes that pace your Mall on a Sunday.