“As the study confab. seemed to menace duration, Mr. Twining petitioned Mr. Burney to go to the piano-forte; where he fired away in a voluntary with all the astonishing powers of his execution, and all the vigour of his genius.
“He might well be animated by such an auditor as Mr. Twining, who cannot be a deeper Grecian than he is a refined musician. How happy is my dear father that the three best, and dearest, and wisest, of his friends, should be three of the most scientific judges of his own art,—Mr. Twining, Mr. Bewley, and Mr. Crisp.
“Dear me! how came that last name into my head? I beg your pardon a thousand times. It was quite by accident. A mere slip of the pen.
“Mr. Twining, astonished, delighted, uttered the warmest praises, with all his heart; but that fervent effusion over, dropped his voice into its lowest key, to add, with a look full of arch pleasantry, ‘Now, is not this better than being tall?’
“My poor sister, Burney, was not quite well, and had a hurt on one of her fingers. But though she could not exert herself to play a solo, she consented to take her part in the noble duet for the piano-forte of Müthel; and she was no sooner seated, than Mr. Bruce re-appeared in our horizon.
“You well know that enchanting composition, which never has been more perfectly executed.
“Mr. Twining was enraptured; Mrs. Strange listened in silent wonder and pleasure; and Mr. Bruce himself was drawn into a charmed attention. His air lost its fierceness; his features relaxed into smiles; and good humour and complacency turned pride, sternness, and displeasure, out of his phiz.
“I begin now to think I have perhaps been too criticising upon poor man-mountain; and that, when he is not in the way of provocation to his vanity, he may be an amiable, as well as an agreeable man. But I suppose his giant-form, which makes every thing around him seem diminutive, has given him a notion that he was born to lord it over the rest of mankind; which, peradventure, seems to him a mere huddle of Lilliputians, as unfit to cope with him, mentally, in discourse, as corporeally in a wrestling match.
“Mr. Twining had been invited to supper; and as it now grew very late, my mother made the invitation general; which, to our great surprise, Mr. Bruce was the first to accept. Who, then, could start any objection?
“So softened had he been by the music, that he was become all courtesy. Nobody else was listened to, or looked at; and as he scarcely ever deigns to look at any body himself, he is a primary object for peering at.