SHAKESPEARE.


Mr Dragwell has already made honourable mention of his wife; it will
therefore only be necessary to add that he had one daughter, a handsome
lively girl, engaged to a Mr Ramsden, the new surgeon of the place, who
had stepped into the shoes and the _good-will_ of one who had retired
from forty years' practice upon the good people of Overton. Fanny
Dragwell had many good qualities, and many others which were rather
doubtful. One of the latter had procured her more enemies than at her
age she had any right to expect. It was what the French term "malice,"
which bears a very different signification from the same word in our own
language. She delighted in all practical jokes, and would carry them to
an excess, at the very idea of which others would be startled; but it
must be acknowledged that she generally selected as her victims those
who from their conduct towards others richly deserved retaliation. The
various tricks which she had played upon certain cross old spinsters,
tattlers, scandal-mongers, and backbiters, often were the theme of
conversation and of mirth: but this description of _espièglerie_
contains a most serious objection; which is, that to carry on a
successful and well-arranged plot, there must be a total disregard of
truth. Latterly, Miss Fanny had had no one to practise upon except Mr
Ramsden, during the period of his courtship--a period at which women
never appear to so much advantage, nor men appear so silly. But even for
this, the time was past, as latterly she had become so much attached to
him that distress on his part was a source of annoyance to herself.
When, therefore, her father came home, narrating the circumstances which
had occurred, and the plan which had been meditated, Fanny entered gaily
into the scheme. Mrs Forster had long been her abhorrence; and an insult
to Mr Ramsden, who had latterly been designated by Mrs Forster as a