Miss Rose now appeared from the interior room of her apartment, to
welcome her father and his friends. The little labours in which she had
been employed obviously showed a natural taste, which required only
cultivation. Her father had taught her French and Italian, and a few of
the ordinary authors in those languages ornamented her shelves. He had
endeavoured also to be her preceptor in music; but as he began with the
more abstruse doctrines of the science, and was not perhaps master of
them himself, she had made no proficiency farther than to be able to
accompany her voice with the harpsichord; but even this was not very
common in Scotland at that period. To make amends, she sung with great
taste and feeling, and with a respect to the sense of what she uttered
that might be proposed in example to ladies of much superior musical
talent. Her natural good sense taught her that, if, as we are assured by
high authority, music be 'married to immortal verse,' they are very often
divorced by the performer in a most shameful manner. It was perhaps owing
to this sensibility to poetry, and power of combining its expression with
those of the musical notes, that her singing gave more pleasure to all
the unlearned in music, and even to many of the learned, than could have
been communicated by a much finer voice and more brilliant execution
unguided by the same delicacy of feeling.
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