her figure--but why describe her figure? Has not
all the world seen her at the Theatres Royal and in America under the
name of Miss Ligonier?

Until Mrs. Walker arrived, Miss Larkins was the undisputed princess of
the Baroski company--the Semiramide, the Rosina, the Tamina, the Donna
Anna. Baroski vaunted her everywhere as the great rising genius of the
day, bade Catalani look to her laurels, and questioned whether Miss
Stephens could sing a ballad like his pupil. Mrs. Howard Walker arrived,
and created, on the first occasion, no small sensation. She improved,
and the little society became speedily divided into Walkerites and
Larkinsians; and between these two ladies (as indeed between Guzzard and
Bulger before mentioned, between Miss Brunck and Miss Horsman, the two
contraltos, and between the chorus-singers, after their kind) a great
rivalry arose. Larkins was certainly the better singer; but could
her straw-coloured curls and dumpy high-shouldered figure bear any
comparison with the jetty ringlets and stately form of Morgiana? Did not
Mrs. Walker, too, come to the music-lesson in her carriage, and with a
black velvet gown and Cashmere shawl, while poor Larkins meekly stepped
from Bell Yard, Temple Bar, in an old print gown and clogs, which she
left in the hall? "Larkins sing!" said Mrs. Crump, sarcastically; "I'm
sure she ought; her mouth's big enough to sing a duet." Poor Larkins had
no one to make epigrams in her behoof; her mother was at home tending
the younger ones, her father abroad following the duties of his
profession; she had but one protector, as she thought, and that one
was Baroski. Mrs. Crump did not fail to tell Lumley Limpiter of her own
former triumphs, and to sing him "Tink-a-tink," which we have previously
heard, and to state how in former days she had been called the
Ravenswing. And Lumley, on this hint, made a poem, in which he compared
Morgiana's hair to the plumage of the Raven's wing, and Larkinissa's to
that of the canary; by which two names the ladies began soon to be known
in the school.

Ere long the flight of the Ravenswing became evidently stronger, whereas
that of the canary was seen evidently to droop. When Morgiana sang, all
the room would cry "Bravo!" when Amelia performed, scarce a hand
was raised for applause of her, except Morgiana's own, and that the
Larkinses thought was lifted in odious triumph, rather than in sympathy,
for Miss L. was of an envious turn, and little understood