y fondness, and insisted on my giving up the Welsh
estate. I did so, hoping to live at last with my own children, at
Streatham Park;--there, however, I found no solace of the sort. So,
after entangling my purse with new repairing and furnishing that place,
retirement to Bath with my broken heart and fortune was all I could wish
or expect. Thither I hasted, heard how the possessors of Brynbella,
lived and thrived, but

'Who set the twigs will he remember
Who is in haste to sell the timber?'

"Well, no matter! One day before I left it there was talk how Love had
always Interest annexed to it. 'Nay, then,' said I, 'what is my love
for Salusbury?' 'Oh!' replied Shephard, 'there is Interest there. Mrs.
Piozzi cannot, could not, I am sure, exist without some one upon whom to
energize her affections; his Uncle is gone, and she is much obliged
to young Salusbury for being ready at her hand to pet and spoil;
her children will not suffer her to love them, and'--with a coarse
laugh--'what will she do when this fellow throws her off, as he soon
will?' Shephard was right enough. I sunk into a stupor, worse far
than all the torments I had endured: but when Canadian Indians take a
prisoner, dear Mr. Conway knows what agonies they put them to; the
man bears all without complaining,--smokes, dances, triumphs in his
anguish,--

'For the son of Alcnoomak shall never complain.'

"When a little remission comes, however, then comes the torpor too;--he
cannot then be waked by pain or moderate pleasure: and such was my
case, when your talents roused, your offered friendship opened my heart
to enjoyment Oh! never say hereafter that the obligations are on your
side. Without you, dulness, darkness, stagnation of every faculty would
have enveloped and extinguished all the powers of hapless

"H.L.P."

The picture that Mrs. Piozzi paints of herself in these last words is a
sad one. She herself was unconscious, however, of its real sadness. In
its unintentional revelations it shows us the feebleness without the
dignity of old age, vivacity without freshness of intellect, the
pretence without the reality of sentiment. "Hapless H.L.P."--to have
lived to eighty years, and to close the record of so long a life with
such words!

A little more than a year after this "Abridgment" was written, in May,
1821, Mrs. Piozzi died. Her children, from whom she had lived separated,
were around her death-bed.[C]

[Footnote C: It is but four years ago