well-grounding

Updated: April 30, 2025

Having made the tour of Europe, I took France again in my way home: the gallantry and good breeding of these people very much attached me to them; but what chiefly engaged my continuance here much longer than I had done in any other part, was an acquaintance I had made with a lady called Matilda: she was of a very good family in England, was sent to a monastry merely for the sake of well-grounding her in a religion, the free exercise of which is not allowed at home, and to seclude her from settling her affections on any other than the person she was destined to by the will of her parents, and to whom she had been contracted in her infancy: she was extremely young, and beautiful as an angel; and the knowledge she was pre-engaged, could not hinder me from loving her, any more than the declarations I made in her hearing against marriage, could the grateful returns she was pleased to make me: in fine, the mutual inclination we had for each other, as it rendered us deaf to all suggestions but that of gratifying it, so it also inspired us with ingenuity to surmount all the difficulties that were between our wishes and the end of them.

Eliza Fowler Haywood - The Fortunate Foundlings: Being the Genuine History of Colonel M——Rs, and His Sister,: Madam Du P——Y, the Issue of the Hon. Ch——Es M——Rs,: Son of the Late Duke of R—— L——D. Containing Many Wonderful: Accidents That Befel Them in Their Travels, and Interspersed with: the Characters and Adventures of Several Persons of Condition,: In the Most Polite Courts of Europe. the Whole Calculated for: the Entertainment and Improvement of the Youth of Both Sexes.