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"I beg your pardon there," said Mrs Harrel; "a first visit ought to be returned always by the third day"

"Then have I an unanswerable excuse," said Cecilia, "for I remember that on the third day I saw her at your house"

"O that's nothing at all to the purpose; you should have waited upon her, or sent her a ticket, just the saun, and Cecilia declined any further conversation This was the first Opera she had ever heard, yet she was not wholly a stranger to Italian co assiduously studied music from a natural love of the art, attended all the best concerts her neighbourhood afforded, and regularly received from London the works of the best ained, served rather to increase than to lessen the surprize hich she heard the present perfornorance made not the least part Unconscious from the little she had acquired how much was to be learnt, she was astonished to find the inadequate power of written music to convey any idea of vocal abilities: with just knowledge enough, therefore, to understand soave to the whole Opera an avidity of attention alerness

But both the surprize and the pleasure which she received frouid, conore Pacchierotti in particular; and though not half the excellencies of that superior singer were necessary either to ah the refineenius, to be praised as they deserved, called for the judge of professors, yet a natural love of music in some measure supplied the place of cultivation, and what she could neither explain nor understand, she could feel and enjoy

The opera was Artaserse; and the pleasure she received fro drama; yet, as to all noviciates in science, whatever is least co so deeply impressed, as by the plaintive and beautiful si repetition of sono innocente! his voice, always either sweet or impassioned, delivered those words in a tone of softness, pathos, and sensibility, that struck her with a sensation not h she was, perhaps, the only person thus astonished, she was by noshe was too earnestly engaged to re notice of an old gentleainst which he leant his head in a n to be wholly absorbed in listening: and during the songs of Pacchierotti he sighed so deeply that Cecilia, struck by his uncommon sensibility to the power of music, involuntarily watched him, whenever her mind was sufficiently at liberty to attend to any emotions but its own