175
PRETENDERS TO LITERATURE,
And pretenders to superior sanctity, (teachers,) are the worst characters of this class, for they know just enough to feel that they are impostors, in their degree. French emigrants, partaking of both descriptions, a few years ago, overran the land; the queue of that safety-seeking race still inhabit here, and teach their doubtful morals, and a deference for their language it by no means deserves. The nobility and gentry were the chief dupes of those fawning hypocrites; but they descended also into the kitchen, and tasted in the pantries of middling tradesmen the good cheer of John Bull; while they des,iised his manners, and honest blunt prejudices, which has kept his more genuine offspring uncontaminated with the monkey-tricks and false philosophy which was imported with their fears. The consequences are, that our manners have undergone a change by no means for the better, (which they ought to have done when altered at all) and our language is contaminated to the last degree of Frenchification. At the tables of those who can afford to give them good dinners, we find those of our own (triple) nation in abundance, who pretend to an intimate acquaintance with
