ful beyond all that he had ever heard. Sir Charles Bell
thought it was "only Grassini who conveyed the idea of the united power
of music and action. She did not act only without being ridiculous, but
with an effect equal to Mrs. Siddons. The 'O Dio' of Mrs. Billington was
a bar of music, but in the strange, almost unnatural voice of Grassini,
it went to the soul." Elsewhere he speaks of "her dignity, truth, and
affecting simplicity."

VI.

About the time of Mara's departure from England Mrs. Billington was
wonderfully popular. No fashionable concert was complete without her,
and the constant demand for her services enabled her to fix her own
price. Her income averaged fifteen thousand pounds a year, and at one
time she was reckoned as worth nearly one hundred thousand pounds. She
spent her large means with a judicious liberality, and the greatest
people in the land were glad to be her guests. She settled a liberal
annuity on her father. Having no children, she adopted two, one the
daughter of an old friend named Madocks, who afterward became her
principal legatee. Her hospitality crowded her house with the most
brilliant men in art, literature, and politics; and it was said that the
stranger who would see all the great people of the London world brought
together should get a card to one of Billington's receptions. Her
affability and kindness sometimes got her into scrapes. An eminent
barrister who was at her house one night gave her some advice on a
legal matter, and sent in a bill for services amounting to three hundred
pounds. Mrs. Billington paid it promptly, but the lawyer ceased to be
her guest. As a hostess she was said to have been irresistibly charming,
alike from her personal beauty and the witchery of her manners.

Her kindness and good nature in dealing with her sister artists Avere
proverbial. When Grassini, who at first was unpopular in England, was
in despair as to how she should make an impression, Mrs. Billington
proposed to sing with her in Winter's opera of "Il Ratto di Proserpina,"
from which time dated the success of the Italian singer. Toward Mara
she had exerted similar good will, ignoring all professional jealousies.
Miss Parke, a concert-singer, was once angry because Billington's name
was in bigger type. The latter ordered her name to be printed in the
smallest letters used; "and much Miss Parke gained by her corpulent
type," says the narrator. Lord Mount Edgcumbe tells us that the operas
i