“To Mrs. Phillips.

“I have just passed a delicious day, my Susanna, with Mrs. Delany; the most pleasing I have spent with her yet. She entrusted to me her collection of letters from Dean Swift and Dr. Young; and told me all the anecdotes that occurred to her of both, and of her acquaintance with them. How grievous that her sight continues enfeebling! all her other senses, and all her faculties are perfect—though she thinks otherwise. ‘My friends,’ she said, ‘will last me, I believe, as long as I last, because they are very good; but the pleasure of our friendship is now all to be received by me! for I have lost the power of returning any!’

“If she spoke on any other subject such untruths, I should not revere her, as I now do, to my heart’s core. She had been in great affliction at the death of Lady Mansfield; for whom the Duchess Dowager of Portland had grieved, she said, yet more deeply: and they had shut themselves up together from all other company. ‘But to-day,’ she added, with a most soft smile, ‘her Grace could not come; and I felt I quite required a cordial,—so I sent to beg for Miss Burney.’

“‘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.”