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month."—"Poor girls, don't they find it very dull?"—"Oh no; I left them this morning with 'Irving's Four Orations,' and 'Southey's History of the Brazils.' Plenty of amusement, that's my maxim! Let me advise you as a friend to follow my example." Mrs. Chambers was qualified to give all this advice from living in Lower Grosvenor-street, which gave her much more knowledge of the world (especially on a fine Sunday), than could be possessed by an inhabitant of Upper Harley-street. Mrs. Partington, for the same reason, was bound to take it in seeming thankfulness. Most fortunate was it for the two Misses Partington, that their mamma was "advised as a friend." But for those soul-revolting expressions, Mrs. Partington might have been induced to call in Doctor Level to bind her daughters' back-bones over to their good. behaviour: and the two Misses Partington, in lieu of cantering under the back-wall of Marlborough House, and kicking up as much dust as a couple of countesses, might, at this present writing, have been flat on their backs, in the back drawing-room in Upper Harley-street, like a couple of Patiences on a monument, smiling at a whitewashed ceiling!
The trunk of the family-tree of the Partingtons is not the only part of that venerable fabric destined to be assailed by advice. The branches have suffered considerably by the same tempest. John Partington, the eldest son, is suspected of entertaining a penchant for Fanny Smith, a figurante at the Coburg Theatre. The affair has been long whispered in the family, and his aunt Isabella has lately thought it her duty to give him a little advice. Aunt Isabella lives in Great George-street, Westminster: a celebrated beauty in her day, but that day was not this. The private nickname of Aunt Isabella in the family, is Aunt Was-a-bella, but this has never come to her ears, as she has money to leave. Aunt Isabella now inserts red paint into the channels of her cheeks. With such an admirable specimen of "the florid gothic" under his very nose, how could Mr. Soane have clapped a Grecian court of justice upon the right flank of Westminster Hall? "Nephew John," said aunt Isabella, "sit down by the fire, but don't put your feet upon, that hearth-rug. Is not it pretty? I bought it of Mrs. Fry, who bought it of an interesting young woman in Newgate. John, you know I have your good at heart." John fidgeted, and looked wistfully at his hat, which he had left unluckily out of reach. Mrs. Isabella, after the above stock prelude, poured forth her cornucopia of advice; which she assured him she should not have given, if she had not been sure of his having too much good sense to feel offended at what she was about to say. She begged to hint to him in confidence that his goings on were no secret: she pointed to Hogarth's "Rake's Progress," a series of delicate engravings that adorned the walls of her boudoir: she then took down a volume of Bell's, "British Theatre," which she opened at George Barnwell, and assured him that it was every word true: she proved to his conviction that virtue was a good thing and vice a bad one: and concluded by intimating, that figurantes were, like tetotums, to be looked at, but not touched. John Partington promised amendment; and on the very day following, drove Fanny Smith in his Stanhope to Epsom races, in a white satin pelisse and a Leghorn hat with an undulating brim. In so doing, John Partington, I fear, acted too hastily. He should first have consulted his biographical dictionary, wherein he might surely have found many instances of men who had given up a young mistress,