This declaration from a young lady for whom I now perceived I had imbibed the most ardent affection, gave me great uneasiness; that affection however was purely platonic and spiritual, for personal charms she had no more to boast of, that ever I discovered, than _Mingotti_ herself. Besides the disadvantage of a contortion in the ogle, vulgarly called a squint of the eye, and a very long red nose, she had a mouth, which tho’ it opened from ear to ear, discovered to the eye nothing but the sad remains of a set of ebony teeth, which more resembled the ruins of an old cathedral, than the polished ivory which adorns the comic mouth of the celebrated Mrs. _Ab-ngt-n_. There was yet another circumstance to disgust the sensualist, and deter him from approaching this Syren with an improper familiarity; and that was the great offensiveness of her breath, which was so violent, that any person not “determined” like me “to hear, see,” and smell “nothing but music,” might have thought it hardly atoned for by the sweetness of her voice. Yet none of these circumstances damped the ardor of my spiritual attachment, founded, as it was, upon a solid basis, the love of song;—it was embodied harmony, the tuneful soul which I adored. The reader who is unacquainted with the difference between a gross sensual passion, and a sublime, harmonic sympathy, may perhaps be surprized when I tell him, that while I was thus devoted to the divine _Gluckinella_, I was at the same time personally captivated by the corporeal attractions of a little black-ey’d Gypsy, the wife of a barber in the town, who often shaved me for a tune; yet did not these grosser feelings the least impair or abate my musical platonic love. I might perhaps be excused, were I to conceal the progress and issue of these different amours; but they are so intimately blended with the scientific part of my work, and were attended with such important consequences to myself in my professional capacity, that I doubt not the narration will prove of great utility to my brethren. For it was no common temptation that deluded me; tho’ Mrs. _Sharpset_ was abundantly handsome, I could have resisted “the blandishments of beauty,” if a desire of making dangerous experiments upon the power and effects of music upon female passion had not seized my brain. For I had taken notice, that the imagination of this young woman was exceedingly lively and far out-stripped her husband’s, who was a plain dull man with little fire or enthusiasm in his composition. I plainly perceived this in all her gestures and movements, but when I sung some tender sentimental air, her involuntary sighs, blushes, and languid attitude, betrayed too plainly the irritability of her nervs, and that fine susceptibility of soft emotions with which nature has endowed the sex. No wonder that in a rude, uncultivated state of nature as I then was, I caught the subtle fire from her contagious eyes. Ah! how