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taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies.
Oh! It is a very nice word indeed! It does for everything.
Originally perhaps it was applied only to express neatness, propriety,
delicacy, or refinement -- people were nice in their dress, in
their sentiments, or their choice. But now every commendation on
every subject is comprised in that one word."
"While, in fact," cried his sister, "it ought only to be applied
to you, without any commendation at all. You are more nice than
wise. Come, Miss Morland, let us leave him to meditate over our
faults in the utmost propriety of diction, while we praise Udolpho
in whatever terms we like best. It is a most interesting work.
You are fond of that kind of reading?"
"To say the truth, I do not much like any other."
"Indeed!"
"That is, I can read poetry and plays, and things of that sort,
and do not dislike travels. But history, real solemn history, I
cannot be interested in. Can you?"
"Yes, I am fond of history."
"I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells
me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of
popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men
all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all -- it is very
tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull,
for a great deal of it must be invention. The speeches that are
put into the heroes' mouths, their thoughts and designs -- the chief
of all this must be invention, and invention is what delights me
in other books."
"Historians, you think," said Miss Tilney, "are not happy in
their flights of fancy. They display imagination without raising
interest. I am fond of history -- and am very well contented to
take the false with the true. In the principal facts they have
sources of intelligence in former histories and records, which
may be as much depended on, I conclude, as anything that does not
actually pass under one's own observation; and as for the little
embellishments you speak of, they are embellishments, and I like
them as such. If a speech be well drawn up, I read it with pleasure,
by whomsoever it may be made -- and probably with much greater, if
the production of Mr. Hume or Mr. Robertson, than if the genuine
words of Caractacus, Agricola, or Alfred the Great."
"You are fond of history! And so are Mr. Allen and my father;
and I have two brothers who do not dislike it. So many instances
within my small circle of friends is remarkable! At this rate, I
shall not pity the writers of history any longer. If people like
to read their books, it is all very well, but to be at so much trouble
in filling great volumes, which, as I used to think, nobody would
willingly ever look into, to be labouring only for the torment of
little boys and girls, always struck me as a hard fate; and though
I know it is all very right and necessary, I have often wondered
at the person's courage that could sit down on purpose to do it.
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