side were only infantile vanities and chi- dine, and pass the evening. The pair genmerical hopes, on the other liberty, peace of erally remained together from five to eleven; mind, affluence, social enjoyments, honor- and often had no other company the whole able distinctions. Strange to say, the only time, except during the hour from eight to hesitation was on the part of Frances. Dr. nine, when the Equerries came to tea. If Burney was transported out of himself with poor Frances attempted to escape to her delight. Not such are the raptures of a own apartment, and to forget her wretchedCircassian father who has sold his pretty ness over a book, the execrable old woman daughter well to a Turkish slave-merchant. railed and stormed, and complained that she Yet Dr. Burney was an amiable man, a man was neglected. Yet, when Frances stayed, of good abilities, a man who had seen much she was constantly assailed with insolent of the world. But he seems to have thought reproaches. Literary fame was, in the eyes that going to court was like going to hea of the German crone, a blemish, a proof that ven; that to see Princes and Princesses was the person who enjoyed it was meanly born, a kind of beatific vision; that the exquisite and out of the pale of good society. All felicity enjoyed by royal persons was not her scanty stock of broken English was emconfined to themselves, but was communi- ployed to express the contempt with which cated by some mysterious efflux or reflection she regarded the author of Evelina and Ce. to all who were suffered to stand at their cilia. Frances detested cards, and indeed toilettes, or to bear their trains. He overruled all his daughter's objections, and himself escorted her to prison. The door closed. The key was turned. She, looking back with tender regret on all that she had left, and forward with anxiety and terror to the new life on which she was entering, was unable to speak or stand; and he went on his way homeward rejoicing in her marvellous prosperity.

knew nothing about them; but she soon found that the least miserable way of passing an evening with Madame Schwellenberg was at the card-table, and consented, with patient sadness, to give hours, which might have called forth the laughter and the tears of many generations, to the king of clubs and the knave of spades. Between eleven and twelve the bell rang again. Miss Burney had to pass twenty minutes or half an hour in undressing the Queen, and was then at liberty to retire, and dream that she was chatting with her brother by the quiet hearth in St. Martin's Street, that she was the centre of an admiring assemblage at Mrs. Crewe's, that Burke was calling her the first woman of the age, or that Dilly was giving her a cheque for two thousand guineas.

Men, we must suppose, are less patient than women; for we are utterly at a loss to conceive how any human being could endure such a life, while there remained a vacant garret in Grub Street, a crossing in want of a sweeper, a parish workhouse, or a parish vault. And it was for such a life that Frances Burney had given up liberty and peace, a happy fireside, attached friends, a wide and splendid circle of acquaintance, intellectual pursuits in which she was qualified to excel, and the sure hope of what to her would have been affluence.

And now began a slavery of five years, of five years taken from the best part of life, and wasted in menial drudgery or in recreations duller than even menial drudgery, under galling restraints and amidst unfriendly or uninteresting companions. The history of an ordinary day was this: Miss Burney had to rise and dress herself early, that she might be ready to answer the royal bell, which rang at half after seven. Till about eight she attended in the Queen's dressingroom, and had the honor of lacing her august mistress's stays, and of putting on the hoop, gown, and neck-handkerchief. The morning was chiefly spent in rummaging drawers and laying fine clothes in their proper places. Then the Queen was to be powdered and dressed for the day. Twice a week her majesty's hair was curled and craped; and this operation appears to have added a full hour to the business of the toilette. It was generally three before Miss Burney was at There is nothing new under the sun. The liberty. Then she had two hours at her last great master of Attic eloquence and own disposal. To these hours we owe great Attic wit, has left us a forcible and touching part of her Diary. At five she had to attend description of the misery of a man of lether colleague, Madame Schwellenberg, a ters, who, lured by hopes similar to those hateful old toad-eater, as illiterate as a of Frances, had entered the service of one chambermaid, as proud as a whole Ger- of the magnates of Rome :-" Unhappy that man Chapter, rude, peevish, unable to bear I am," cries the victim of his own childish solitude, unable to conduct herself with ambition, "would nothing content me but common decency in society. With this that I must leave mine old pursuits and mine delightful associate Frances Burney had to old companions, and the life which was

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the bread and fruit were hastily concealed. "I found," says poor Miss Burney, "that our appetites were to be supposed annihi lated, at the same moment that our strength was to be invincible."

without care, and the sleep which had no | At that moment the door opened; the Queen limit save mine own pleasure, and the walks entered; the wearied attendants sprang up; which I was free to take where I listed, and fling myself into the lowest pit of a dungeon like this? And, O God! for what? Is this the bait which enticed me? Was there no way by which I might have enjoyed in freedom comforts even greater than those which I now earn by servitude? Like a lion which has been made so tame that men may lead him about with a thread, I am dragged up and down, with broken and humbled spirit, at the heels of those to whom, in mine own domain, I should have been an object of awe and wonder. And, worst of all, I feel that here I gain no credit, that here I give no pleasure. The talents and accomplishments, which charmed a far different circle, are here out of place. I am rude in the arts of palaces, and can ill bear comparison with those whose calling, from their youth up, has been to flatter and to sue. Have I then two lives, that, after I have wasted one in the service of others, there may yet remain to me a second, which I may live unto myself?"

Now and then, indeed, events occurred which disturbed the wretched monotony of Frances Burney's life. The court moved from Kew to Windsor, and from Windsor back to Kew. One dull colonel went out of waiting, and another dull colonel came into waiting. An impertinent servant made a blunder about tea, and caused a misunderstanding between the gentlemen and the ladies. A half-witted French Protestant minister talked oddly about conjugal fidelity. An unlucky member of the household mentioned a passage in the Morning Herald reflecting on the Queen, and forthwith Madame Schwellenberg began to storm in bad English, and told him that he made her "what you call perspire!"

Yet Oxford, seen even under such disad vantages, "revived in her," to use her own words, "a consciousness to pleasure which had long lain nearly dormant." She forgot, during one moment, that she was a waitingmaid, and felt as a woman of true genius might be expected to feel amidst venerable remains of antiquity, beautiful works of art, vast repositories of knowledge, and memorials of the illustrious dead. Had she still been what she was before her father induced her to take the most fatal step of her life, we can easily imagine what pleasure she would have derived from a visit to the noblest of English cities. She might, indeed, have been forced to travel in a hack-chaise, and might not have worn so fine a gown of Chambery gauze as that in which she tot tered after the royal party; but with what delight would she have then paced the clois ters of Magdalene, compared the antique gloom of Merton with the splendor of Christ Church, and looked down from the dome of the Radcliffe Library on the magnificent sea of turrets and battlements below! How gladly would learned men have laid aside for a few hours Pindar's Odes and Aristotle's Ethics, to escort the author of Cecilia from college to college? What neat little banquets would she have found set out in their monastic cells? With what eagerness would pictures, medals, and illuminated missals have been brought forth from the most mys terious cabinets for her amusement? How much she would have had to hear and to tell about Johnson as she walked over Pembroke, and about Reynolds in the ante-chapel of New College! But these indulgences were not for one who had sold herself into bondage.

About eighteen months after the visit to Oxford, another event diversified the wearisome life which Frances led at court. Warren Hastings was brought to the bar of the House of Peers. The Queen and Prin cesses were present when the trial commenced, and Miss Burney was permitted to attend. During the subsequent proceedings

A more important occurrence was the royal visit to Oxford. Miss Burney went in the Queen's train to Nuneham, was utterly neglected there in the crowd, and could with difficulty find a servant to show the way to her bedroom, or a hairdresser to arrange her curls. She had the honor of entering Oxford in the last of a long string of carriages which formed the royal procession, of walking after the Queen all day through refectories and chapels, and of standing, half-dead with fatigue and hunger, while her august mistress was seated at an excellent cold collation. At Magdalene College, a day-rule for the same purpose was occaFrances was left for a moment in the parlor, where she sank down on a chair. A goodnatured Equerry saw that she was exhausted, and shared with her some apricots and bread, which he had wisely put into his pockets.

sionally granted to her; for the Queen took the strongest interest in the trial, and, when she could not go herself to Westminster Hall, liked to receive a report of what passed from a person who had singular powers

judiced against him, that the charges were well founded; and that Pitt and Dundas had concurred, with Fox and Sheridan, in supporting the impeachment. Surely a woman of far inferior abilities to Miss Burney, might have been expected to see that this never could have happened unless there had been a strong case against the late Governor-General. And there was, as all reasonable men now admit, a strong case against him. That there were great public services to be set off against his great crimes, is perfectly true. But his services and his crimes were equally unknown to the lady who so confidently asserted his perfect innocence, and imputed to his accusers, that is to say, to all the greatest men of all parties in the state, not merely error, but gross injustice and barbarity.

She had, it is true, occasionally seen Mr. Hastings, and had found his manners and conversation agreeable. But surely she could not be so weak as to infer from the gentleness of his deportment in a drawingroom, that he was incapable of committing a great state crime, under the influence of ambition and revenge. A silly Miss, fresh from a boarding-school, might fall into such a mistake; but the woman who had drawn the character of Mr. Monckton should have known better.

of observation, and who was, moreover, she behaved so unkindly to Mr. Burke, she personally acquainted with some of the did not even know of what Hastings was most distinguished managers. The portion accused. One thing, however, she must of the Diary which relates to this celebrated have known, that Burke had been able to proceeding is lively and picturesque. Yet convince a House of Commons, bitterly prewe read it, we own, with pain; for it seems to us to prove that the fine understanding of Frances Burney was beginning to feel the pernicious influence of a mode of life which is as incompatible with health of mind as the air of the Pomptine marshes with health of body. From the first day, she espouses the cause of Hastings with a presumptuous vehemence and acrimony quite inconsistent with the modesty and suavity of her ordinary deportment. She shudders when Burke enters the Hall at the head of the Commons. She pronounces him the cruel oppressor of an innocent man. She is at a loss to conceive how the managers can look at the defendant, and not blush. Windham comes to her from the manager's box, to offer her refreshment. "But," says she, "I could not break bread with him." Then, again she exclaims-"Ah, Mr. Windham, how came you ever engaged in so cruel, so unjust a cause?" "Mr. Burke saw me," she says, "and he bowed with the most marked civility of manner." This, be it observed, was just after his opening speech, a speech which had produced a mighty effect, and which certainly no other orator that ever lived could have made. "My curtsy," she continues, was the most ungrateful, distant, and cold; I could not do otherwise; so hurt I felt to see him the head of such a cause.' Now, not only had Burke treated her with constant kindness, but the very last act which he performed on the day on which he was turned out of the Pay-Office, about four years before this trial, was to make Dr. Burney organist of Chelsea Hospital. When, at the Westminster election, Dr. Burney was divided between his gratitude for this favor and his Tory opinions, Burke in the noblest manner disclaimed all right to exact a sacrifice of principle. "You have little or no obligations to me," he wrote; "but if you had as many as I really wish it were in my power, as it is certainly in my desire, to lay on you, I hope you do not think me capable of conferring them, in or der to subject your mind or your affairs to a painful and mischievous servitude." Was this a man to be uncivilly treated by a daughter of Dr. Burney, because she chose to differ from him respecting a vast and most complicated question, which he had studied deeply during many years, and which she had never studied at all? It is clear from Miss Burney's own statement, that when

The truth is, that she had been too long at Court. She was sinking into a slavery worse than that of the body. The iron was beginning to enter into the soul. Accustomed during many months to watch the eye of a mistress, to receive with boundless grati tude the slightest mark of royal condescension, to feel wretched at every symptom of royal displeasure, to associate only with spirits long tamed and broken in, she was degenerating into something fit for her place. Queen Charlotte was a violent partisan of Hastings; had received presents from him, and had so far departed from the severity of her virtue as to lend her countenance to his wife, whose conduct had certainly been as reprehensible as that of any of the frail beauties who were then rigidly excluded from the English Court. The King, it was well known, took the same side. To the King and Queen all the members of the household looked submissively for guidance. The impeachment, therefore, was an atrocious persecution; the managers were rascals; the defendant was the most deserving,

and the worst used man in the kingdom. of the kingly office, or that no government This was the cant of the whole palace, would be left in the country. But this was from Gold Stick in Waiting, down to the a matter of which the household never Table-Deckers and Yeomen of the Silver thought. It never occurred, as far as we Scullery; and Miss Burney canted like the can see, to the Exons and Keepers of the rest, though in livelier tones, and with less Robes, that it was necessary that there bitter feelings. should be somewhere or other a power in the state to pass laws, to preserve order, to pardon criminals, to fill up offices, to negotiate with foreign governments, to command the army and navy. Nay, these enlightened politicians, and Miss Burney among the rest, seem to have thought that any person who considered the subject with reference to the public interest, showed himself to be a badhearted man. Nobody wonders at this in a gentleman-usher; but it is melancholy to see genius sinking into such debasement.

The account which she has given of the King's illness, contains much excellent narrative and description, and will, we think, be more valued by the historians of a future age than any equal portion of Pepys' or Evelyn's Diaries. That account shows also, how affectionate and compassionate her nature was. But it shows also, we must say, that her way of life was rapidly impairing her powers of reasoning, and her sense of justice. We do not mean to discuss in this place, the question, whether the views of During more than two years after the Mr. Pitt or those of Mr. Fox respecting the King's recovery, Frances dragged on a misregency were the more correct. It is, in- erable existence at the palace. The consodeed, quite needless to discuss that ques-lations which had for a time mitigated the tion for the censure of Miss Burney falls wretchedness of servitude, were one by one alike on Pitt and Fox, on majority and mi- withdrawn. Mrs. Delany, whose society nority. She is angry with the House of had been a great resource when the Court Commons for presuming to inquire whether was at Windsor, was now dead. One of the the King was mad or not, and whether there gentlemen of the royal establishment, Colowas a chance of his recovering his senses. nel Digby, appears to have been a man of "A melancholy day," she writes; "news sense, of taste, of some reading, and of prebad both at home and abroad. At home the possessing manners. Agreeable associates dear unhappy king still worse; abroad new were scarce in the prison-house, and he and examinations voted of the physicians. Miss Burney were therefore naturally atGood heavens! what an insult does this tached to each other. She owns that she seem from Parliamentary power, to inves- valued him as a friend; and it would not tigate and bring forth to the world every cir- have been strange if his attentions had led cumstance of such a malady as is ever held her to entertain for him a sentiment warmer sacred to secrecy in the most private fami- than friendship. He quitted the Court, and lies! How indignant we all feel here, no married in a way which astonished Miss words can say." It is proper to observe, Burney greatly, and which evidently woundthat the motion which roused all this indiged her feelings, and lowered him in her esnation at Kew was made by Mr. Pitt himself; teem. The palace grew duller and duller; and that, if withstood by Mr. Pitt, it would certainly have been rejected. We see, therefore, that the loyalty of the minister, who was then generally regarded as the most heroic champion of his Prince, was lukewarm indeed when compared with the boiling zeal which filled the pages of the back-stairs and the women of the bed-chamber. Of the Regency bill, Pitt's own bill, Miss Burney speaks with horror. "I shuddered," she says, "to hear it named." And again-"Oh, how dreadful will be the day when that unhappy bill takes place! I cannot approve the plan of it." The truth is, that Mr. Pitt, whether a wise and upright statesman or not, was a statesman; and whatever motives he might have for imposing restrictions on the regent, felt that in some way or other there must be some provision made for the execution of some part

Madame Schwellenberg became more and more savage and insolent. And now the health of poor Frances began to give way: and all who saw her pale face, her emaciated figure, and her feeble walk, predicted that her sufferings would soon be over.

Frances uniformly speaks of her royal mistress, and of the princesses, with respect and affection. The princesses seem to have well deserved all the praise which is bestowed on them in the Diary. They were, we doubt not, most amiable women. But "the sweet queen," as she is constantly called in these volumes, is not by any means an object of admiration to us. She had undoubtedly sense enough to know what kind of deportment suited her high station, and self-command enough to maintain that deportment invariably. She was, in her intercourse with Miss Burney, generally gracious and affa

ble, sometimes, when displeased, cold and compared only to the grovelling superstireserved, but never, under any circunstan- tion of those Syrian devotees who made ces, rude, peevish, or violent. She knew their children pass through the fire to how to dispense, gracefully and skilfully, Moloch. When he induced his daughter those little civilities which, when paid by a to accept the place of Keeper of the Robes, sovereign, are prized at many times their he entertained, as she tells us, a hope that intrinsic value; how to pay a compliment; some worldly advantage or other, not set how to lend a book; how to ask after a rela- down in the contract of service, would be tion. But she seems to have been utterly the result of her connexion with the Court. regardless of the comfort, the health, the life What advantage he expected we do not of her attendants, when her own conveni- know, nor did he probably know himself. ence was concerned. Weak, feverish, hard- But, whatever he expected, he certainly ly able to stand, Frances had still to rise be- got nothing. Miss Burney had been hired fore seven, in order to dress the sweet for board, lodging, and two hundred a year. queen, and to sit up till midnight, in order Board, lodging, and two hundred a-year, to undress the sweet queen. The indisposi- she had duly received. We have looked tion of the handmaid could not, and did not, carefully through the Diary, in the hope of escape the notice of her royal mistress. finding some trace of those extraordinary But the established doctrine of the Court benefactions on which the Doctor reckoned. was, that all sickness was to be considered But we can discover only a promise, never as a pretence until it proved fatal. The performed, of a gown; and for this promise only way in which the invalid could clear Miss Burney was expected to return thanks, herself from the suspicion of malingering, as such as might have suited the beggar with it is called in the army, was to go on lacing whom Saint Martin, in the legend, divided and unlacing, till she dropped down dead at his cloak. The experience of four years the royal feet. "This," Miss Burney wrote, was, however, insufficient to dispel the when she was suffering cruelly from sick-illusion which had taken possession of the ness, watching, and labor, "is by no means Doctor's mind; and, between the dear from hardness of heart; far otherwise. father and the sweet queen, there seemed There is no hardness of heart in any one of to be little doubt that some day or other them; but it is prejudice, and want of per- Frances would drop down a corpse. Six sonal experience. months had elapsed since the interview between the parent and the daughter. The resignation was not sent in. The sufferer grew worse and worse. She took bark; but it soon ceased to produce a beneficial effect. She was stimulated with wine; she was soothed with opium; but in vain. Her breath began to fail. The whisper that she was in a decline spread through the Court. The pains in her side became so severe that she was forced to crawl from the card-table of the old fury to whom she was tethered, three or four times in an evening, for the purpose of taking hartshorn. Had she been a negro slave, a humane planter would have excused her from work. But her Majesty showed no mercy. Thrice a day the accursed bell still rang; the Queen was still to be dressed for the morning at seven, and to be dressed for the day at noon, and to be undressed at eleven at night.

Many strangers sympathized with the bodily and mental sufferings of this distinguished woman. All who saw her saw that her frame was sinking, that her heart was breaking. The last, it should seem, to observe the change was her father. At length, in spite of himself, his eyes were opened. In May 1790, his daughter had an interview of three hours with him, the only long interview which they had since he took her to Windsor in 1786. She told him that she was miserable, that she was worn with attendance and want of sleep, that she had no comfort in life, nothing to love, nothing to hope, that her family and friends were to her as though they were not, and were remembered by her as men remember the dead. From daybreak to midnight the same killing labor, the same recreations, more hateful than labor itself, followed each other without variety, without any interval of liberty and repose.

The Doctor was greatly dejected by this news; but was too good-natured a man not to say that, if she wished to resign, his house and arms were open to her. Still, however, he could not bear to remove her from the Court. His veneration for royalty amounted in truth to idolatry. It can be VOL. I. No. III. 39