For like a friend's consoling sighs, Alas! for those, who long have borne, What tears will fall, but those of heaven! CHAPTER XVII. FRANCES D'ARBLAY. Nor many years since, in the boyhood of the young men of this generation, there dwelt on England's surface, in the faded fashionable quarters of London, in choice old houses, in good suburbs of the capital, at Bath, Clifton, and various other towns equally respectable, certain ancient and venerable ladies of a class no longer existing. They were stately in their head dresses, urbane and overpowering in their demeanour, and overwhelmingly moral in their epistolary correspondences. Between seventy and ninety years of age they exchanged sonorous letters of polite congratulations on the little joys, and of pious condolence on the genteel sorrows, that varied the monotony of their philosophic lives; of which achievements of their erudite pens, much has been conveyed to the unhallowed world by the pub lishers of memoirs-always amusing, and almost always prolix. The good old times, the flippancy of the present ones, the virtues of George the Third, the beauty and grace of his progeny, the maternal excellence of Queen Charlotte,' the virulent hatred of all order and religion displayed by the French regicides, the unutterable vices of Napoleon, grave gossip, and stiff pleasantries, such as once constituted sprightly humour in the royal cottage at Kew, what treatment Pitt had adopted for his gout during his last visit at Bath, and a thousand other equally interesting topics these ancient ladies discussed in a sufficiently comic and impres sive manner. Some of them called London 'Lunnun,' and expressed their gratitude in society by avowing themselves to be much obleeged; and whenever they expatiated on the immeasurable genius of Edmund Burke, (which was often indeed) they did so in rounded periods of talk, such as we never hear now-a-days, and the construction of which they had learnt from the Rambler and Rasselas, or the grand utterances of the Doctor himself, at Streatham, or Sir Joshua's. All these highly favoured ones have disappeared (abstinence from wine having preserved the women a generation longer than the men); and now we deem ourselves in luck's way, if we chance to come on an old lady who can boast of having been at school with the Miss Burneys, or who says with a vehement affectation of anger—" I never was more indignant than I was when I was only seventeen years old, and Sam Johnson positively had the assurance to kiss me!" Of these extinct celebrities-the blue stockings of the last of the good old times, Madame d'Arblay will ever be amongst the most prominent and approved. Frances Burney (afterwards d'Arblay) was the second daughter and third child of that good and successful musician, Dr. Burney, who was as distinguished in the world by his varied information and delightful cordiality of manner, as he was by his professional skill. Dr. Johnson said that his heart went forth to meet Burney; and wherever the musician went, he made friends amongst high and low. For some years he lived at Lynn Regis, in the county of Norfolk, where he was organist, with a very good salary for his services in the church, and had moreover an excellent business as teacher of music in the town and neighbourhood. He had not resided long in that province, before his social qualities became so known and highly appreciated, that not only did he command the best society in his immediate vicinity, but the houses of the principal aristocracy, for thirty miles round, were always open to receive him. It was in Lynn that Frances was born in the July of 1752; and at Lynn she remained till 1760, during which year her father bade farewell to provincial seclusion, and returned to his powerful patrons in London, whom he had quitted only because symptoms of pulmonary disease made his physicians warn him to fly the impure air of the capital. Taking a house in Poland Street (then a street of good pretensions to fashion) he soon brought pupils round him, and had every hour of his day occupied by the wealthy and distinguished; and from that time to the conclusion of his long life he was a prosperous man ;-certainly he lost a wife he was very fond of, but then he married another whom he loved full as much; and he experienced the drawback of a large family, but then it was a family of highly gifted chil. dren who did well-one son (James) entering the navy, and after much service rising to be an Admiral; another son (Charles) obtaining the reputation (undeservedly-but that matters not) of being a profound Grecian, flourishing in his vocation of schoolmaster, and leaving behind him a very valuable library which the nation purchased for the British Museum; Frances rising to be a maid of honour to Queen Charlotte, and achieving an European fame by her writings and wit; another daughter (Sarah) distinguishing herself by the production of novels, not so celebrated but as good as her sisters; and some of the remaining girls making more than good matches. Very probably the success of the children arose in no small measure from the instructive and brilliant society in which they were nurtured, for they were not imprisoned in nurseries, but they were allowed by their indulgent father to mingle freely with his guests, who comprised the most distinguished members of the literary, the musical, and the art circles, and also (on the occasion of concerts at the doctor's house), the most august of the aristocracy. As a child, Frances was known to be a terrible littl dunce; she would not spell, she would not read, she could scarcely be induced to learn her letters. Judicious friends reminded her mamma of the teaching of Solomon, and urged her to act upon it; but Mrs. Burney replied to these severe counsellors that she was quite at ease on the subject, and was sure that Fanny would do well one day. Not long after this, the kind mother died, and from that time Fanny was left to grow up as she best might, under the genial influences of her father and home. Doctor Burney married again, and two of his daughters were sent to France for an education; but Fanny remained in the paternal house, left to her own ways by her kind step-mother, which ways consisted of close companionship with her father, remarkable amiability to the little ones of the family, and a singularly demure bearing to strangers. Dr. Burney was an elegant verse-writer, and a good (on the subject of his own profession-a learned) author; and seeing him at all spare moments engaged with his pen set Fanny an example which she soon followed. The child took to scribbling; and never lost the cacoethes. The kind papa gave her encouragement; and soon the little stories, she was continually penning in secret, were tolerable specimens of grammar and spelling. The doctor availed himself of her services to make his copies for the pressan employment that caused her much pride and satisfaction. Years passed on; brothers made their first successful steps in life, sisters fell in love-and Miss Fanny, at the latter end of January, 1778, when she was in her twenty-sixth year, published "Evelina "-a novel in three volumes. Of the history of this book's composition it would be easy to say much, but not much that is true; for the question of the time when the authoress wrote it is enveloped in strange and laughable mystery. It was at one time generally asserted and credited that Miss Burney was only seventeen years old, when she composed the tale, which was indeed |