“At length Mr. Burke appeared, accompanied by Mr. Elliot. He shook hands with my father as soon as he had paid his devoirs to Mrs. Crewe, but he returned my curtsey with so distant a bow, that I concluded myself quite lost with him, from my evident solicitude in poor Mr. Hastings’s cause. I could not wish that less obvious, thinking as I think of it; but I felt infinitely grieved to lose the favour of a man whom, in all other articles, I so much venerate, and whom, indeed, I esteem and admire as the very first man of true genius now living in this country. “Mrs. Crewe introduced me to Mr. Elliot: I am sure we were already personally known to each other, for I have seen him perpetually in the Managers’ Box, whence, as often, he must have seen me in the Great Chamberlain’s. He is a tall, thin young man, plain in face, dress, and manner, but sensible, and possibly much besides; he was reserved, however, and little else appeared. “The moment I was named, to my great joy I found Mr. Burke had not recollected me. He is more near-sighted considerably than myself. ‘Miss Burney!’ he now exclaimed, coming forward, and quite kindly taking my hand, ‘I did not see you;’ and then he spoke very sweet words of the meeting, and of my looking far better than ‘while I was a courtier,’ and of how he rejoiced to see that I so little suited that station. ‘You look,’ cried he, ‘quite renewed, revived, disengaged; you seemed, when I conversed with you last at the trial, quite altered; I never saw such a change for the better as quitting a Court has brought about!’ “Ah! thought I, this is simply a mistake from reasoning according to your own feelings. I only seemed altered for the worse at the trial, because I there looked coldly and distantly, from distaste and disaffection to your proceedings; and I here look changed for the better, only because I here meet you without the chill of disapprobation, and with the glow of my first admiration of you and your talents! “Mrs. Crewe gave him her place, and he sat by me, and entered into a most animated conversation upon Lord Macartney and his Chinese expedition, and the two Chinese youths who were to accompany it. These last he described minutely, and spoke of the extent of the undertaking in high, and perhaps fanciful, terms, but with allusions and anecdotes intermixed, so full of general information and brilliant ideas, that I soon felt the whole of my first enthusiasm return, and with it a sensation of pleasure that made the day delicious to me.