as might best gratify the humours, prejudices, and passions of her
hearers. She had some shrewdness, much cunning, and made great
pretensions to musical and theatrical taste, and the belles lettres.
She spoke both French and Italian; ill enough, but sufficiently to
excite the admiration of those who understood neither. She had lately
persuaded Enoch to make a trip with the whole family to Paris, and she
returned with a very ample cargo of information; all very much at the
disposal of her inquisitive friends.

Her daughter, Eliza, was mamma's own child. She had an _immense deal_
of taste, no small share of vanity, and a tongue that could not tire.
She had caught the mingled cant of Enoch and her mamma, repeated
the names of public people and public places much oftener than her
prayers, and was ready to own, with no little self complacency, that
all her acquaintance told her _she was prodigious severe_.

In addition to these shining qualities, she was a musical amateur of
the first note. She could make the jacks of her harpsichord dance so
fast that no understanding ear could keep pace with them: and her
master, Signor Gridarini, affirmed every time he came to give her a
lesson, that, among all the dilettanti in Europe, there was not so
great a singer as herself. The most famous of the public performers
scarcely could equal her. In the bravura she astonished! in the
cantabile she charmed; her maestoso was inimitable! and her adagios!
Oh! they were ravishing! killing. She indeed openly accused him of
flattering her; but Signor Gridarini appealed both to his honour and
his friends; the best judges in Europe, who as she well knew all said
the same.

Of personal beauty she herself was satisfied that the Gods had kindly