Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/169

 Rh informed, cultivated, and sagacious woman," played, danced, acted with all the grace of a comedienne, wept tears of emotion without disfiguring her pretty face, and, when asked if she read the novels of the day (what a question!), replied with a sigh: "But too often! I wish I did not." Miss Burney and Mrs. Thrale were so impressed—as well they might be—by this little Selina Birch, that they speculated long and fondly upon the destiny reserved for one who so easily eclipsed the other miraculous children of this highly miraculous age.

"Doubtful as it is whether we shall ever see the sweet Syren again," writes Miss Burney, "nothing, as Mrs. Thrale said to her" (this, too, was well advised), "can be more certain than that we shall hear of her again, let her go whither she will. Charmed as we all were, we agreed that to have the care of her would be distraction. 'She seems the girl in the world,' Mrs. Thrale wisely said, 'to attain the highest reach of human perfection as a man's mistress. As such she would be a second Cleopatra, and have the world at her command.'