er
hurt either you or Mr. Piozzi, I am no less sorry than surprised; and
that if it offended you, I sincerely beg your pardon.

"Not to that time, however, can I wait to acknowledge the pain an
accusation so unexpected has caused me, nor the heartfelt
satisfaction with which I shall receive, when you are able to write
it, a softer renewal of regard.

"May Heaven direct and bless you!

"F.B.

"N.B. This is the sketch of the answer which F.B. most painfully
wrote to the unmerited reproach of not sending _cordial
congratulations_ upon a marriage which she had uniformly, openly, and
with deep and avowed affliction, thought wrong."

_Mrs. Piozzi to Miss Burney_.

"'Wellbeck Street, No. 33, Cavendish Square.
"'Friday, Aug. 13, 1784.

"'Give yourself no serious concern, sweetest Burney, All is well, and
I am too happy myself to make a friend otherwise; quiet your kind
heart immediately, and love my husband if you love his and your

"'H.L. PIOZZI.'

"N.B. To this kind note, F.B. wrote the warmest and most affectionate
and heartfelt reply; but never received another word! And here and
thus stopped a correspondence of six years of almost unequalled
partiality, and fondness on her side; and affection, gratitude,
admiration, and sincerity on that of F.B., who could only conjecture
the cessation to be caused by the resentment of Piozzi, when informed
of her constant opposition to the union."

If F.B. thought it wrong, she knew it to be inevitable, and in the
conviction that it was so, she and her father had connived at the
secret preparations for it in the preceding May.

A very distinguished friend, whose masterly works are the result of a
consummate study of the passions, after dwelling on the
"impertinence" of the hostility her marriage provoked, writes: "She
was evidently a very vain woman, but her vanity was sensitive, and
very much allied to that exactingness of heart which gives charm and
character to woman. I suspect it was this sensitiveness which made
her misunderstood by her children." The justness of this theory of
her conduct is demonstrated by the self-communings in "Thraliana;"
and she misunderstood them as much as they misunderstood her. By her
own showing she had little reason to complain of what they _did_ in
the matter of the marriage; it was what they said, or rather did not
say, that irritated her. She yearned for sympathy, which was sternly,
chillingly, almost insultingly withheld.

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