The Works of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Volume 1); Including Her Correspondence, Poems, and Essays (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: new piece of quackery that is introduced. I cannot help thinking that there is a fund of credulity in mankind that must be employed somewhere; and the money formerly given to the monks for the health of the soul, is now thrown to the doctors for the health of the body, and generally with as little prospect of success. TO THE COUNTESS OF BUTE. Brescia, Jan. 5,1747-8. DE'AR CHILD, I Am glad to hear that yourself and family are in good health; and as to the alteration you find in the world, it is only owing to your being better acquainted with it. I have never, in all my various travels, seen but two sorts of people, and thbse very like one another; I mean men and women. who always have been, and ever will be, the same. The same vices and the same follies have been the fruit of all ages, though sometimes under different names. I remember, when I returned from Turkey, meeting with the same affectation of youth among yours, and I do not doubt but your daughter will find the same, twenty years hence, among hers. One of the greatest happinesses of youth is the ignorance of evil, though it is often the ground of great indiscretions; and sometimes the active part of life is over, before an honest mind finds out how one ought to act in such a world as this. I am as much removed from it as is possible to be on this side the grave, which is from my own inclination, for I might have even here a great deal of company; the way of living in this province being, I believe, what it is in the sociable part of Scotland, and was in England a hundred years ago. I had a visit, in the holidays, of thirty horse of ladies and gentlemen, with their servants (by the waythe ladies all ride -like the late duchess of Cleveland). They came with the kind intent of staying with me at least a fortni...