hen at school--No reply was made, or a gentle one; but she was the
first cause of contention among us. The lawyers gave her into my care,
and we took her home to our new habitation in Hanover Square, which we
opened with Music, cards, etc., on, I think, the 22 March. Miss Thrales
refused their company; so we managed as well as we could. Our affairs
were in good order, and money ready for spending. The World, as it is
called, appeared good-humored, and we were soon followed, respected, and
admired. The summer months sent us about visiting and pleasuring, ...
and after another gay London season, Streatham Park, unoccupied by
tenants, called us as if _really home_. Mr. Piozzi, with more generosity
than prudence, spent two thousand pounds on repairing and furnishing it
in 1790;--and we had danced all night, I recollect, when the news came
of Louis Seize's escape from, and recapture by, his rebel subjects."

Poor old woman, who could thus write of her own daughters!--poor old
woman, who had not heart enough either to keep the love of her children
or to grieve for its loss! Cecilia was her fourth and youngest child,
and her story, as her mother tells it, may as well be finished here.
After speaking in her manuscript of a claim on some Oxfordshire
property, disputed by her daughters, she says, in words hard and cold
as steel,--"We threw it up, therefore, and contented ourselves with the
plague Cecilia gave us, who, by dint of intriguing lovers, teazed my
soul out before she was fifteen,--when she fortunately ran away,
jumping out of the window at Streatham Park, with Mr. Mostyn of
Segraid,--a young man to whom Sir Thomas Mostyn's title will go, if he
does not marry, but whose property, being much encumbered, made him no
match for Cecy and her forty thousand pounds; and we were censured
for not taking better care, and suffering her to wed a _Welsh_
gentleman,--object of ineffable contempt to the daughters of Mr. Thrale,
with whom she always held correspondence while living with us, who
indulged her in every expense and every folly,--although allowed only
one hundred and forty pounds per ann. on her account."

After two or three years spent in London, the Piozzis resided for some
time at Streatham,--how changed in mistress and in guests from the
Streatham of which Mrs. Thrale had been the presiding genius! But after
a while they removed to Wales, where, on an old family estate belonging
to Mrs. Piozzi, they built a house, and ch