The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties (Volume 1 of 5). Burney Fanny

to quizzes,' said Mr Riley, addressing the hitherto silent young man, 'how comes it, Mr Ireton, that we have not had one word from you all this time?'

      'What do you mean by aprôpos, Sir?' demanded the young man, somewhat piqued.

      'Faith, I don't very well know. I am no very good French dictionary. But I always say aprôpos, when I am at a loss how to introduce any thing. Let us hear, however, where you have been passing your thoughts all this time. Are you afraid the sea should be impregnated with informers, instead of salt, and so won't venture to give breath to an idea, lest it should be floated back to Signor Robespierre, and hodge-podged into a conspiracy?'

      'Ay, your thoughts, your thoughts! give us your thoughts, Ireton!' cried the young lady, 'I am tired to death of my own.'

      'Why, I have been reflecting, for this last hour or two, what a singular circumstance it is, that in all the domains that I have scampered over upon the continent, I have not met with one young person who could hit my fancy as a companion for life.'

      'And I, Sir, think,' said the sea officer, turning to him with some severity, 'that a man who could go out of old England to chuse himself a wife, never deserves to set foot on it again! If I knew any worse punishment, I should name it.'

      This silenced Mr Ireton; and not another word was uttered, till the opening of day displayed the British shore.

      The sea officer then gave a hearty huzza, which was echoed by Harleigh; while Riley, as the light gleamed upon the old and tattered garments of the stranger, burst into a loud laugh, exclaiming, 'Faith, I should like to know what such a demoiselle as this should come away from her own country for? What could you be afraid of, hay! demoiselle?' —

      She turned her head from him in silence. Harleigh enquired, in French, whether she had escaped the general contagion, from which almost all in the boat had suffered, of sickness.

      She cheerfully replied, Yes! She had escaped every evil!

      'The demoiselle is soon contented,' said Riley; 'but I cannot for my life make out who she is, nor what she wants. Why won't you tell us, demoiselle? I should like to know your history.'

      'Much obliged for the new fellow traveller you have given us, Mr Harleigh!' said Mrs Maple, contemptuously examining her; 'I have really some curiosity myself, to be informed what could put into such a body's mind as that, to want to come over to England.'

      'The desire of learning the language, I hope!' cried Harleigh, 'for I should be sorry that she knew it already!'

      'I wish, at least, she would tell us,' said the young lady, 'how she happened to find out our vessel just at the moment we were sailing.'

      'And I should be glad to discover,' cried Riley, 'why she understands English on and off at her pleasure, now so ready, and now answering one never a word.'

      The old sea officer, touching his hat as he addressed her, said, 'For my part, Madam, I hope the compliment you make our country in coming to it, is that of preferring good people to bad; in which case every Englishman should honour and welcome you.'

      'And I hope,' cried Harleigh, while the stranger seemed hesitating how to answer, 'that this patriotic benevolence is comprehended; if not, I will attempt a translation.'

      'I speak French so indifferently, which, however, I don't much mind,' cried the Admiral, 'that I am afraid the gentlewoman would hardly understand me, or else I would translate for myself.'

      The stranger now, with a strong expression of gratitude, replied in English, but with a foreign accent, 'It is only how to thank you I am at a loss, Sir; I understand you perfectly.'

      'So I could have sworn!' cried Riley, with a laugh, 'I could have sworn that this would be the turn for understanding English again! And you can speak it, too, can you, Mistress?'

      'And pray, good woman,' demanded Mrs Maple, staring at her, 'how came you to learn English? Have you lived in any English family? If you have, I should be glad to know their names.'

      'Ay, their names! their names!' was echoed from Mrs Maple by her niece.

      The stranger looked down, and stammered, but said nothing that could distinctly be heard.

      Riley, laughing again, though provoked, exclaimed, 'There! now you ask her a question, she won't comprehend a word more! I was sure how 'twould be! They are clever beings, those French, they are, faith! always playing fools' tricks, like so many monkies, yet always lighting right upon their feet, like so many cats!'

      'You must resign your demoiselle, as Mr Riley calls her, for a heroine;' whispered the young lady to Mr Harleigh. 'Her dress is not merely shabby; 'tis vulgar. I have lost all hope of a pretty nun. She can be nothing above a house-maid.'

      'She is interesting by her solitary situation,' he answered, 'be she what she may by her rank: and her voice, I think, is singularly pleasing.'

      'Oh, you must fall in love with her, I suppose, as a thing of course. If, however, she has one atom that is native in her, how will she be choaked by our foggy atmosphere!'

      'And has our atmosphere, Elinor, no purifying particles, that, in defiance of its occasional mists, render it salubrious?'

      'Oh, I don't mean alone the foggy air that she must inhale; but the foggy souls whom she must see and hear. If she have no political bias, that sets natural feelings aside, she'll go off in a lethargy, from ennui, the very first week. For myself I confess, from my happiness in going forth into the world at this sublime juncture, of turning men into infants, in order to teach them better how to grow up, I feel as if I had never awaked into life, till I had opened my eyes on that side of the channel.'

      'And can you, Elinor, with a mind so powerful, however – pardon me! – wild, have witnessed…'

      'Oh, I know what you mean! – but those excesses are only the first froth of the cauldron. When once 'tis skimmed, you will find the composition clear, sparkling, delicious!'

      'Has, then, the large draught which, in a two years' residence amidst that combustion, you have, perforce, quaffed, of revolutionary beverage, left you, in defiance of its noxious qualities, still thus…' He hesitated.

      'Inebriated, you would say, Albert,' cried she, laughing, 'if you blushed not for me at the idea. But, in this one point, your liberality, though matchless in every other, is terribly narrowed by adhesion to old tenets. You enjoy not therefore, as you ought, this glorious epoch, that lifts our minds from slavery and from nothingness, into play and vigour; and leaves us no longer, as heretofore, merely making believe that we are thinking beings.'

      'Unbridled liberty, Elinor, cannot rush upon a state, without letting it loose to barbarism. Nothing, without danger, is suddenly unshackled: safety demands control from the baby to the despot.'

      'The opening essays here,' she replied, 'have certainly been calamitous: but, when all minor articles are progressive, in rising to perfection, must the world in a mass alone stand still, because its amelioration would be costly? Can any thing be so absurd, so preposterous, as to seek to improve mankind individually, yet bid it stand still collectively? What is education, but reversing propensities; making the idle industrious, the rude civil, and the ignorant learned? And do you not, for every student thus turned out of his likings, his vagaries, or his vices, to be new modelled, call this alteration improvement? Why, then, must you brand all similar efforts for new organizing states, nations, and bodies of society, by that word of unmeaning alarm, innovation?'

      'To reverse, Elinor, is not to new model, but to destroy. This education, with which you illustrate your maxims, does it begin with the birth? Does it not, on the contrary, work its way by the gentlest gradations, one part almost imperceptibly preparing for another, throughout all the stages of childhood to adolescence, and of adolescence to manhood? If you give Homer before the Primer, do you think that you shall make a man of learning? If you shew the planetary system to the child who has not yet trundled his hoop, do you believe that you will form a mathematician? And if you put a rapier into his hands before he has been exercised with foils, – what is your guarantee for the safety of his professor?'

      Just then the stranger, having taken off her gloves, to arrange an old shawl, in which she was