[Footnote B:  This unique copy of the Journey through France, etc., is in the possession of Mr. Duncan C. Pell, of Newport, R.I.  It is to his liberality that we are indebted for the privilege of laying before the readers of the Atlantic the following portions of Mrs. Piozzi’s manuscript.]

On the first fly-leaf is the following inscription:—­

“These Books do not in any wise belong to me; they are the property of William Augustus Conway, Esq., who left them to my care, for purpose of putting notes, when he quitted Bath, May 14, 1819.

“Hester Lynch Piozzi writes this for fear lest her death happening before his return, these books might be confounded among the others in her study.”

On the next page the narrative begins, and with a truly astonishing spirit for the writing of a woman in her eightieth year.  Her old vivacity is still natural to her; there is nothing forced in the pleasantry of this introduction.

“A Lady once—­’t was many years ago—­asked me to lend her a book out of my library at Streatham Park.  ‘A book of entertainment,’ said J, ’of course.’  ‘That I don’t know or rightly comprehend;’ was her odd answer; ‘I wish for an Abridgment.’  ‘An Abridgment of what?’ ‘That,’ she replied, ’you must tell me, my Dear; for I am no reader, like you and Dr. Johnson; I only remember that the last book I read was very pretty, and my husband called it an Abridgment.’....  And if I give some account of myself here in these few little sheets prefixed to my ‘Journey thro’ Italy,’ you must kindly accept

“The Abridgment.”

The first pages of the manuscript are occupied by Mrs. Piozzi with an account of her family and of her own early life.  They contain in brief the same narrative that she gave in her “Autobiographical Memoirs,” printed by Mr. Hayward, in his first volume.  Here is a story, however, which we do not remember to have seen before.

“My heart was free, my head full of Authors, Actors, Literature in every shape; and I had a dear, dear friend, an old Dr. Collier, who said he was sixty-six years old, I remember, the day I was sixteen, and whose instructions I prized beyond all the gayeties of early life:  nor have I ever passed a day since we parted in which I have not recollected with gratitude the boundless obligations that I owe him.  He was intimate with the famous James Harris of Salisbury, Lord Malmesbury’s father, of whom you have heard how Charles Townshend said, when he took his seat in the House of Commons,—­’Who is this man?’—­to his next neighbour; ‘I never saw him before.’  ’Who?  Why, Harris the author, that wrote one book about Grammar [so he did] and one about Virtue.’  ’What does he come here for?’ replies Spanish Charles; ’he will find neither Grammar nor Virtue here.’  Well, my dear old Dr. Collier had much of both, and delighted to shake the superflux of his full mind over mine, ready to receive instruction conveyed with so much tender assiduity.”