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She
had found some acquaintance, had been so lucky too as to find in
them the family of a most worthy old friend; and, as the completion
of good fortune, had found these friends by no means so expensively
dressed as herself. Her daily expressions were no longer, "I wish
we had some acquaintance in Bath!" They were changed into, "How
glad I am we have met with Mrs. Thorpe!" and she was as eager in
promoting the intercourse of the two families, as her young charge
and Isabella themselves could be; never satisfied with the day
unless she spent the chief of it by the side of Mrs. Thorpe, in
what they called conversation, but in which there was scarcely ever
any exchange of opinion, and not often any resemblance of subject,
for Mrs. Thorpe talked chiefly of her children, and Mrs. Allen of
her gowns.
The progress of the friendship between Catherine and Isabella was
quick as its beginning had been warm, and they passed so rapidly
through every gradation of increasing tenderness that there
was shortly no fresh proof of it to be given to their friends or
themselves. They called each other by their Christian name, were
always arm in arm when they walked, pinned up each other's train
for the dance, and were not to be divided in the set; and if a
rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still
resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves
up, to read novels together. Yes, novels; for I will not adopt
that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers,
of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances,
to the number of which they are themselves adding -- joining with
their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such
works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own
heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn
over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one
novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can
she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us
leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their
leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of
the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one
another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have
afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any
other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition
has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our
foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities
of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of
the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines
of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and
a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens -- there
seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing
the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances
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