0, she wrote thus to Dr. Gray: "What a good example have you
set them (his children)! going to visit dear mama at Twickenham--long
may they keep their parents, pretty creatures! and long may they have
sense to know and feel that no love is like parental affection,--the
only good perhaps which cannot be flung away."[1]

[Footnote 1: "We may have many friends in life, but we can only have
one mother: a discovery, says Gray, which I never made till it was
too late."--ROGERS.]

Madame D'Arblay states that her father was not disinclined to admit
Mrs. Piozzi's right to consult her own notions of happiness in the
choice of a second husband, had not the paramount duty of watching
over her unmarried daughters interfered. But they might have
accompanied her to Italy as was once contemplated; and had they done
so, they would have seen everything and everybody in it under the
most favourable auspices. The course chosen for them by the eldest
was the most perilous of the two submitted for their choice. The
lady, Miss Nicholson, whom their mother had so carefully selected as
their companion, soon left them; or according to another version was
summarily dismissed by Miss Thrale (afterwards Viscountess Keith),
who fortunately was endowed with high principle, firmness, and
energy. She could not take up her abode with either of her guardians,
one a bachelor under forty, the other the prototype of Briggs, the
old miser in "Caecilia." She could not accept Johnson's hospitality in
Bolt Court, still tenanted by the survivors of his menagerie; where,
a few months later, she sate by his death-bed and received his
blessing. She therefore called to her aid an old nurse-maid, named
Tib, who had been much trusted by her father, and with this homely
but respectable duenna, she shut herself up in the house at Brighton,
limited her expenses to her allowance of 200_l._ a-year, and
resolutely set about the course of study which seemed best adapted to
absorb attention and prevent her thoughts from wandering. Hebrew,
Mathematics, Fortification, and Perspective have been named to me by
one of trusted friends as specimens of her acquirements and her
pursuits.

"There's a Divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we may."

In that solitary abode at Brighton, and in the companionship of Tib,
may have been laid the foundation of a character than which few,
through the changeful scenes of a long and prosperous life, have
exercised more benefi