“‘I have been told,’ she afterwards said, ‘that when I grew older, I should feel less; but I do not find it so! I am sooner, I think, hurt and affected than ever. I suppose it is with very old age as with extreme youth, the effect of weakness; neither of those stages of life have firmness for bearing misfortune with equanimity.’
“She keeps her good looks, however, unimpaired, except in becoming thinner; and, when not under the pressure of recent grief, she is as lively, gay, pleasant, and good-humouredly arch and playful, as she could have been at eighteen.
“‘I see, indeed,’ she said, ‘worse and worse, but I am thankful that, at my age, eighty-four, I can see at all. My chief loss is from not more quickly discerning the changes of countenance in my friends. However, to distinguish even the light is a great blessing!’
“She had no company whatever, but her beautiful great niece.[77] The Duchess was confined to her home by a bad cold.
“She was so good as to shew me a most gracious letter from her Majesty, which she had just received, and which finished thus condescendingly:
“Believe me, my dear Mrs. Delany, “Your affectionate Queen, “CHARLOTTE.”
Fortunately, also, now, Dr. Burney increased the intimacy of his acquaintance with Mr. Smelt, formerly sub-governor to the Prince of Wales;[78] a man who, for displaying human excellence in the three essential points of Understanding, Character, and Conduct, stood upon the same line of acknowledged perfection with Mr. Locke of Norbury Park. And had that virtuous and anxious parent of his people, George III., known them both at the critical instant when he was seeking a model of a true fine gentleman, for the official situation of preceptor to the heir of his sovereignty; he might have had to cope with the most surprising of difficulties, that of seeing before his choice two men, in neither of whom he could espy a blemish that could cast a preference upon the other.
The worth of both these gentlemen was known upon proof: their talents, accomplishments, and taste in the arts and in literature, were singularly similar. Each was soft and winning of speech, but firm and intrepid of conduct; and their manners, their refined high breeding, were unrivalled, save each by the other. And while the same, also, was their reputation for integrity and honour, as for learning and philosophy, the first personal delight of both was in the promotion and exercise of those gentle charities of human life, which teach us to solace and to aid our fellow-creatures.