Mrs. Streatfield is very—­very little, but perfectly well made, thin, genteel, and delicate.  She has been quite beautiful, and has still so much of beauty left, that to call it only the remains of a fine face seems hardly doing her justice.  She is very lively, and an excellent mimic, and is, I think, as much superior to her daughter in natural gifts as her daughter is to her in acquired ones:  and how infinitely preferable are parts without education to education without parts!

The fair S. S. is really in higher beauty than I have ever yet seen her; and she was so caressing, so soft, so amiable, that I felt myself insensibly inclining to her with an affectionate

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regard.  “If it was not for that little, gush,” as Dr. Delap Said, I should certainly have taken a very great fancy to her ; but tears so ready-oh, they blot out my fair opinion of her!  Yet whenever I am with her, I like, nay, almost love her, for her manners are exceedingly captivating ; but when I quit her, I do not find that she improves by being thought over-no, nor talked over; for Mrs. Thrale, who is always disposed to half adore her in her presence, can never converse about her without exciting her own contempt by recapitulating what has passed.  This, however, must always be certain, whatever may be doubtful, that she is a girl in no respect like any other.

But I have not yet done with the mother:  I have told you of her vivacity and her mimicry, but her character is yet not half told.  She has a kind of whimsical conceit and odd affectation, that, joined to a very singular sort of humour, makes her always seem to be rehearsing some scene in a comedy.  She takes off, if she mentions them, all her own children, and, though she quite adores them, renders them ridiculous with all her power.  She laughs at herself for her smallness and for her vagaries, just with the same ease and ridicule as if she were speaking Of some other person ; and, while perpetually hinting at being old and broken, she is continually frisking, flaunting, and playing tricks, like a young coquet.

When I was introduced to her by Mrs. Thrale, who said, “Give me leave, ma’am, to present to you a friend of your daughter’s—­Miss Burney,” she advanced to me with a tripping pace, and, taking one of my fingers, said, “Allow me, ma’am, will you, to create a little -acquaintance with you.”

And, indeed, I readily entered into an alliance with her, for I found nothing at Tunbridge half so entertaining, except, indeed, Miss Birch, of whom hereafter.

A bewitching prodigy.

Tunbridge Wells is a place that to me appeared very Singular; the country is all rock, and every part of it is either up or down hill, scarce ten yards square being level ground in the whole place:  the houses, too, are scattered about in a strange wild manner, and look as if they had been dropt where they stand by accident, for they form neither streets nor squares, but seem strewed promiscuously, except, indeed, where the shopkeepers live, who have got two or three dirty little lanes, much like dirty little lanes in other places,