t I am by nature destitute
of those exterior twin appendages, hanging ornaments, and
(architecturally speaking) handsome volutes to the human capital.
Better my mother had never borne me.--I am, I think, rather delicately
than copiously provided with those conduits; and I feel no disposition
to envy the mule for his plenty, or the mole for her exactness,
in those ingenious labyrinthine inlets--those indispensable
side-intelligencers.

Neither have I incurred, or done any thing to incur, with Defoe,
that hideous disfigurement, which constrained him to draw upon
assurance--to feel "quite unabashed," and at ease upon that article.
I was never, I thank my stars, in the pillory; nor, if I read them
aright, is it within the compass of my destiny, that I ever should be.

When therefore I say that I have no ear, you will understand me
to mean--_for music_.--To say that this heart never melted at the
concourse of sweet sounds, would be a foul self-libel.--"_Water
parted from the sea_" never fails to move it strangely. So does "_In
Infancy_." But they were used to be sung at her harpsichord (the
old-fashioned instrument in vogue in those days) by a gentlewoman--the
gentlest, sure, that ever merited the appellation--the sweetest--why
should I hesitate to name Mrs. S----, once the blooming Fanny
Weatheral of the Temple--who had power to thrill the soul of Elia,
small imp as he was, even in his long coats; and to make him glow,
tremble, and blush with a passion, that not faintly indicated the
day-spring of that absorbing sentiment, which was afterwards destined
to overwhelm and subdue his nature quite, for Alice W----n.

I even think that _sentimentally_ I am disposed to harmony. But
_organically_ I am incapable of a tune. I have been practising "_God
save the King_" all my life; whistling and humming of it over to
myself in solitary corners; and am not yet arrived, they tell me,
within many quavers of it. Yet hath the loyalty of Elia never been
impeached.

I am not without suspicion, that I have an undeveloped faculty of
music within me. For, thrumming, in my wild way, on my friend A.'s
piano, the other morning, while he was engaged in an adjoining
parlour,--on his return he was pleased to say, "_he thought it could
not be the maid_!" On his first surprise at hearing the keys touched
in somewhat an airy and masterful way, not dreaming of me, his
suspicions had lighted on _Jenny_. But a grace, snatched from a
superior refineme