TTIIE TRUE MAID OF HONOUR. Hiorningsheath, Suffolk, where her husband's relatives received her with warm welcome. Some months after, the Duchess of York chose Margaret for a maid of honour, and Mrs. Blagge was pre- vailed on to trust her tender child in the gay and frivolous Court. This was a perilous change to the young and inexperienced Margaret ; for the ladies who formed such an array of beauty there, were as silly and thoughtless as they were lovely. The greatest absurdities found favour with them ; for unfortunately there were no pursuits to employ time profitably. Reading was an occupation but little sought ; the last successful play of the laureate, Dryden, the latest Court lampoon of Dorset, or the newest love ditty of Sedley or Suckling, formed the staple of light reading of the fine ladies, unless they were sufficiently devoted to literature to turn to the sentimental and prolix romances in folio of " Clelie," or " The Grand Cyrus." "Women, in those days," says an entertaining writer, " possessed few of the means of self-amusement now in the hands of almost all the world. Music was cultivated by none but those whose strong natural taste for it made them overcome all obstacles ; drawing, or any taste for the fine arts, seems never to have been thought of, either as an employment for the hands, or as means of cultivating the mind. In spite, therefore, of the numerous tapestry chairs, carpets, beds, andhangings, now, for the most part, discarded in rags from the garrets of their grand-daughters, an almost unsatis- 11
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