Here was I, in my eagerness to get
on, refusing to wait only five minutes for my sister, breaking the
promise I had made of reading it aloud, and keeping her in suspense at
a most interesting part, by running away with the volume, which, you
are to observe, was her own, particularly her own. I am proud when I
reflect on it, and I think it must establish me in your good opinion.”

“I am very glad to hear it indeed, and now I shall never be ashamed of
liking Udolpho myself. But I really thought before, young men despised
novels amazingly.”

“It is _amazingly;_ it may well suggest _amazement_ if they do—for they
read nearly as many as women. I myself have read hundreds and hundreds. Do not imagine that you can cope with me in a knowledge of Julias and
Louisas. If we proceed to particulars, and engage in the never-ceasing
inquiry of ‘Have you read this?’ and ‘Have you read that?’ I shall soon
leave you as far behind me as—what shall I say?—I want an appropriate
simile.—as far as your friend Emily herself left poor Valancourt when
she went with her aunt into Italy. Consider how many years I have had
the start of you. I had entered on my studies at Oxford, while you were
a good little girl working your sampler at home!”

“Not very good, I am afraid. But now really, do not you think Udolpho
the nicest book in the world?”

“The nicest—by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend
upon the binding.”

“Henry,” said Miss Tilney, “you are very impertinent. Miss Morland, he
is treating you exactly as he does his sister. He is forever finding
fault with me, for some incorrectness of language, and now he is taking
the same liberty with you. The word ‘nicest,’ as you used it, did not
suit him; and you had better change it as soon as you can, or we shall
be overpowered with Johnson and Blair all the rest of the way.”

“I am sure,” cried Catherine, “I did not mean to say anything wrong;
but it _is_ a nice book, and why should not I call it so?”

“Very true,” said Henry, “and this is a very nice day, and we are
taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! it
is a very nice word indeed! it does for everything. Originally perhaps
it was applied only to express neatness, propriety, delicacy, or
refinement—people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or
their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised
in that one word.”

“While, in fact,” cried his sister, “it ought only to be applied to
you, without any commendation at all. You are more nice than wise. Come, Miss Morland, let us leave him to meditate over our faults in the
utmost propriety of diction, while we praise Udolpho in whatever terms
we like best. It is a most interesting work. You are fond of that kind
of reading?”

“To say the truth, I do not much like any other.”

“Indeed!”

“That is, I can read poetry and plays, and things of that sort, and do
not dislike travels. But history, real solemn history, I cannot be
interested in. Can you?”

“Yes, I am fond of history.”

“I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me
nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and
kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for
nothing, and hardly any women at all—it is very tiresome: and yet I
often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it
must be invention. The speeches that are put into the heroes’ mouths,
their thoughts and designs—the chief of all this must be invention, and
invention is what delights me in other books.”

“Historians, you think,” said Miss Tilney, “are not happy in their
flights of fancy. They display imagination without raising interest. I
am fond of history—and am very well contented to take the false with
the true. In the principal facts they have sources of intelligence in
former histories and records, which may be as much depended on, I
conclude, as anything that does not actually pass under one’s own
observation; and as for the little embellishments you speak of, they
are embellishments, and I like them as such. If a speech be well drawn
up, I read it with pleasure, by whomsoever it may be made—and probably
with much greater, if the production of Mr. Hume or Mr. Robertson, than
if the genuine words of Caractacus, Agricola, or Alfred the Great.”

“You are fond of history! and so are Mr. Allen and my father; and I
have two brothers who do not dislike it. So many instances within my
small circle of friends is remarkable! at this rate, I shall not pity
the writers of history any longer. If people like to read their books,
it is all very well, but to be at so much trouble in filling great
volumes, which, as I used to think, nobody would willingly ever look
into, to be labouring only for the torment of little boys and girls,
always struck me as a hard fate; and though I know it is all very right
and necessary, I have often wondered at the person’s courage that could
sit down on purpose to do it.”

“That little boys and girls should be tormented,” said Henry, “is what
no one at all acquainted with human nature in a civilized state can
deny; but in behalf of our most distinguished historians, I must
observe that they might well be offended at being supposed to have no
higher aim, and that by their method and style, they are perfectly well
qualified to torment readers of the most advanced reason and mature
time of life. I use the verb ‘to torment,’ as I observed to be your own
method, instead of ‘to instruct,’ supposing them to be now admitted as
synonymous.”

“You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you had
been as much used as myself to hear poor little children first learning
their letters and then learning to spell, if you had ever seen how
stupid they can be for a whole morning together, and how tired my poor
mother is at the end of it, as I am in the habit of seeing almost every
day of my life at home, you would allow that to _torment_ and to
_instruct_ might sometimes be used as synonymous words.”

“Very probably. But historians are not accountable for the difficulty
of learning to read; and even you yourself, who do not altogether seem
particularly friendly to very severe, very intense application, may
perhaps be brought to acknowledge that it is very well worth-while to
be tormented for two or three years of one’s life, for the sake of
being able to read all the rest of it. Consider—if reading had not been
taught, Mrs. Radcliffe would have written in vain—or perhaps might not
have written at all.”

Catherine assented—and a very warm panegyric from her on that lady’s
merits closed the subject. The Tilneys were soon engaged in another on
which she had nothing to say. They were viewing the country with the
eyes of persons accustomed to drawing, and decided on its capability of
being formed into pictures, with all the eagerness of real taste. Here
Catherine was quite lost.