238 
throughout the voyage. As no request was attended to, and 
no inquiry answered, which was presented m writing, he was 
t/hns dviv&Ti Qi^QiVU to speak. , -« 
I will mention another instance,— the case of an accomplish 
lady with whose writings many persons here are familiar, 
allude to the late Mrs. Tonna, under which name, however, 
nerhans few will recognize the celebrated authoress I am ad- 
verting to,-“ Charlotte Elizabeth.” The following interesting 
particulars respecting this lady .were communi^ted to me by 
her husband, Mr. Tonna, shortly after her death, ma letter 
which I have the writer’s permission to make public . 
“ Mrs Tonna [Charlotte Elizabeth] lost her hearing at the age of nine or 
ten It was entbely gone-I believe from a thickening of the membrane of 
the tympanum. No sound of any kind reachedher, as a sound, 
was acutely sensitive to vibrations, whether conveyed through the air 
through a solid medium. In this way the vibrations from an or ^“’ “ 
the sounding-board of a piano-forte, gave her great pleasure ; andfmmhe 
recollection of Handel’s music, she took great delight ir i it ; and ta b 
vibrations would recoiled the sounds so familiar m her childish days, 
will see some particulars of this in her ‘ Personal Recollections. 
“ On one occasion, at the age of twenty-two or twenty-three * 
dance wasplayed : the tune was called the ‘ Recovery, *erhy thmofwhch 
is very peculiar. She was as usual at her station with her hand on the 
sounding-board, when some friends present expressed a doubt as to the pos 
sibility of her forming any idea of the tune. She sat down at once and 
wrote a song, which I possess, most perfectly adapted to the tune in all 
Ch “ n |here is a poem of hers beginning ‘ No generous toil declining,’ whichit 
is quite difficult to read as poetry until informed that it ™, written the 
tune of ‘ A rose-tree in full bearing,’ and to that it is perfectly adapted. The 
poem is included in the volume of ‘Posthumous Poems about to be pub- 
lished, in which it will be plainly seen that most of her poems were written 
to mental tunes. All conversation was conveyed to 
spelling each word, without any attempt at shorthand, which she said always 
confused her. After repeating to her sermons and speeches ta the most 
rapid Irish speakers, I have often been distressed at the apparent impose ? 
of her having understood me ; for I felt that I had repeatedly rather indi- 
cated than completed the formation of each letter. Seeing my distress i, s 
would often begin and give me every head of division of the sermon , to^the 
with the most striking passages, verbatim, as the orator had uttered the . 
“We never divided the words, but spelt on the letters as fast as it was 
possible to form them on the fingers. When in society, I have ‘ 
to her a general conversation, and communicating the remarks made by each 
individual, her eye would incessantly range about the room, catch the expres- 
“n of each spier’s face, and yet never lose a word of what was sa,d. 
