and equally alert with the same congratulatory courtesies, were his long and rootedly attached friends, the grevilles. mr. greville, curious to behold the successor of her whom he had never named, but as one of the prettiest women he had ever seen, hastened to make his marriage visit on the first morning that he heard of the bride’s arrival in town: while of mrs. greville, the bridal visit was arranged in such form, and with such attention, as she thought would shew most consideration to its object. she came on an appointed day, that mr. burney might be certainly at home, to present her to his wife; and she stayed to spend the whole evening in poland-street.
her nearly peerless daughter, then in the first
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radiance of her matchless bloom, who had been lately married to mr. crewe, of cheshire, with the same zeal as her parents to manifest esteem and affection for mr. burney, joined the party; which consisted but of themselves, and of mr. burney’s new and original young families.
mrs. greville, as was peculiarly in her power, took the lead, and bore the burthen of the conversation; which chiefly turned upon sterne’s sentimental journey, at that time the reigning reading in vogue: but when the new mrs. burney recited, with animated encomiums, various passages of sterne’s seducing sensibility, mrs. greville, shrugging her shoulders, exclaimed: “a feeling heart is certainly a right heart; nobody will contest that: but when a man chooses to walk about the world with a cambrick handkerchief always in his hand, that he may always be ready to weep, either with man or beast,—he only turns me sick.”