The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 26: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

——————— THE MYSTERIES. Oo to his family ; and, taking the matter to heart, lite- | had as yet undergone no temptation. Their religion rally pined away until she sank intothetomb. Mr. Clarendon now found himself left, at the age of five- and-thirty, with two young children totally dependent upon his care; and he resulved to perform his duty towards his motherless daughters. His family still persisted in disowning him; and he accordingly re- tired into some remote and cheap district, where he reared and educated the girls to the best of his means. They grew up in all the glory of maiden loveliness: bat being deprived of the more delicate supervision of a mother, and having scarcely any female society in the seclusion which their father’s slender resources compelled him to adopt, their minds were not imbued with those strictly feminine principles which the maternal parent can alone inculcate, foster, and permanently establish Their virtue wanted the stamina necessary to maintain it when it should have to pass through the world’s ordeal: it was rather of a negative quality than otherwise—existing because it Epa was confined to a mere knowledge of the sacred writings, read and remembered like any other book, and believed in because they had been taught to hold that faith:—but the deep conviction—the holy reliauce—and the profound feeling, which constitute true religion, were deficient. They went to church with regularity, as many other giddy and thoughtless young ladies go: but they never had had any one to impress upon them the necessity of laying aside all worldly thoughts, and throwing the whole soul into the divine worship. Good-natured, affectionate, and light-hearted girls were Octavia and Pauline Claren- don: artless, frank, and innocent likewise were they, because totally ignorant of the world’s ways, and in- experienced in its snares, its perfidies, and its deceits. When their education was completed, Mr. Cla- rendon, who had long been wearied of the dull se- clusion in which he thus passed so many years, re- moved with his two daughters to London: and in OONRANKA ateilo) SS COMM