pleasure which a life of solitude admits. You will never bestow any
share of your good-will on one who deserves better. Those that have
loved longest, love best. A sudden blaze of kindness may by a single
blast of coldness be extinguished, but that fondness which length of
time has connected with many circumstances and occasions, though it
may for a while be suppressed by disgust or resentment, with or
without a cause, is hourly revived by accidental recollection.[1] To
those that have lived long together, every thing heard and every
thing seen recals some pleasure communicated, or some benefit
conferred, some petty quarrel, or some slight endearment. Esteem of
great powers, or amiable qualities newly discovered, may embroider a
day or a week, but a friendship of twenty years is interwoven with
the texture of life. A friend may be often found and lost, but an
_old friend_ never can be found, and Nature has provided that he
cannot easily be lost."

[Footnote 1:

"Yet, oh yet thyself deceive not:
Love may sink by slow decay,
But by sudden wrench believe not
Hearts can thus be torn away."--BYRON.]

The date of the following scene, as described by Madame D'Arblay in
the "Memoirs," is towards the end of November, 1783:

"Nothing had yet publicly transpired, with certainty or authority,
relative to the projects of Mrs. Thrale, who had now been nearly a
year at Bath[1]; though nothing was left unreported, or unasserted,
with respect to her proceedings. Nevertheless, how far Dr. Johnson
was himself informed, or was ignorant on the subject, neither Dr.
Burney nor his daughter could tell; and each equally feared to learn.

"Scarcely an instant, however, was the latter left alone in Bolt
Court, ere she saw the justice of her long apprehensions; for while
she planned speaking upon some topic that might have a chance to
catch the attention of the Doctor, a sudden change from kind
tranquillity to strong austerity took place in his altered
countenance; and, startled and affrighted, she held her peace....

"Thus passed a few minutes, in which she scarcely dared breathe;
while the respiration of the Doctor, on the contrary, was of
asthmatic force and loudness; then, suddenly turning to her, with an
air of mingled wrath and woe, he hoarsely ejaculated: 'Piozzi!'

"He evidently meant to say more; but the effort with which he
articulated that name robbed him of any voice for amplification, and
his whole frame grew tremu