There was little gayety in the life at Brynbella, or at Bath,—­and the society that Mrs. Piozzi now saw was made up chiefly of new and for the most part uninteresting acquaintances.  The old Streatham set, with a few exceptions, were dead, and of the few that remained none retained their former relations with its mistress.  But she suffered little from the change, was contented to win and accept the flattery of inferior people, and, instead of spending her faculties in soothing the “radically wretched life” of Johnson, used them, perhaps not less happily, in lightening the sufferings of Piozzi during his last years.  She tells a touching story of him in these days.

“Piozzi’s fine hand upon the organ and pianoforte deserted him.  Gout, such as I never knew, fastened on his fingers, distorting them into every dreadful shape. ...  A little girl, shewn to him as a musical wonder of five years old, said,’ Pray, Sir, why are your fingers wrapped up in black silk so?’ ‘My Dear,’ replied he, ’they are in mourning for my Voice.’  ‘Oh, me!’ cries the child, ’is she dead?’ He sung an easy song, and the Baby exclaimed, ’Ah, Sir! you are very naughty,—­you tell fibs!’ Poor Dears! and both gone now!!”

There were no morbid sensibilities in Mrs. Piozzi’s composition.  She can tell all her sorrows without ever a tear.  A mark of exclamation looks better than a blot.  And yet she had suffered; but it had been with such suffering as makes the soul hard rather than tender.  The pages with which she ends this narrative of her life are curiously characteristic.

“When life was gradually, but perceptibly, closing round him [Piozzi] at Bath, in 1808, I asked him if he would wish to converse with a Romish priest,—­we had full opportunity there.  ‘By no means,’ said he.  ’Call Mr. Leman of the Crescent.’  We did so,—­poor Bessy ran and fetched him.  Mr. Piozzi received the blessed Sacrament at his hands; but recovered sufficiently to go home and die in his own house.  I sent for Salusbury, but he came three hours too late,—­his master, Mr. Shephard, with him.  In another year he went to Oxford, where he spent me above seven hundred pounds per annum, and kept me in continual terror lest the bad habits of the place should ruin him, body, soul, and purse.  His old school-fellow, Smythe Owen,—­then.  Pemberton,—­accompanied him, and to that gentleman’s sister he of course gave his heart.  The Lady and her friends took advantage of my fondness, and insisted on my giving up the Welsh estate.  I did so, hoping to live at last with my own children, at Streatham Park;—­there, however, I found no solace of the sort.  So, after entangling my purse with new repairing and furnishing that place, retirement to Bath with my broken heart and fortune was all I could wish or expect.  Thither I hasted, heard how the possessors of Brynbella, lived and thrived, but

  ’Who set the twigs will he remember
  Who is in haste to sell the timber?’