“Let me now try, my dear Mr. Crisp, if I cannot have the pleasure to make you dolorously repent your inexorability to coming to town. We have had such sweet music!—But let me begin with the company, according to your orders.
“They all arrived early, and staid the whole evening.
“The Baron de Deiden, the Danish ambassador.
“The Baroness, his wife; a sweet woman, indeed; young, pretty, accomplished, and graceful. She is reckoned the finest _dilletante_ performer on the piano-forte in Europe.
“I might be contented, you will perhaps say, to have given her this precedence in England and in Denmark; _i.e._ in her own country and in our’s: but Europe sounds more noble!
“The Honourable Miss Phipps, who came with her, or rather, I believe, was brought by her, for they are great friends; and Miss Phipps had already been with us in Queen-square. Miss Phipps is a daughter of Lord Mulgrave, and sister to the famous Polar captain. She seems full of spirit and taste.
“Sir James and Lady Lake; Sir Thomas Clarges; Mrs. and Miss Ord; and a good many others, agreeable enough, though too tedious to mention, having nothing either striking or odd in them. But the pride of the evening, as neither you, my dear Mr. Crisp, nor Mr. Twining, could be with us, was Mr. HARRIS, _of Salisbury_, author of the three treatises on Poetry, Music, and Painting; Philosophical Arrangements; Hermes, &c. He brought with him Mrs. Harris, and his second daughter, Miss Louisa, a distinguished lady-musician. Miss Harris,[2] the eldest, a cultivated and high-bred character, is, I believe, with her brother, our minister at Petersburgh.
“Hettina,[3] Mr. Burney, and our noble selves, bring up the rear.
“There was a great deal of conversation previous to the music. But as the party was too large for a general _chatterment_, every body that had not courage to stroll about and please themselves, was obliged to take up with their next neighbour. What think you, then, of my good fortune, when I tell you I happened to sit by Mr. Harris? and that that so happening, joined to my being at home,—however otherwise insignificant,—gave me the intrepidity to abandon my yea and nay responses, when he was so good as to try whether I could make any other. His looks, indeed, are so full of benignity, as well as of meaning and understanding; and his manners have a suavity so gentle, so encouraging, that, notwithstanding his high name as an author, all fear from his renown was wholly whisked away by delight in his discourse and his countenance.