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

At that moment the door opened; the Queen entered; the wearied attendants sprang up; the bread and fruit were hastily concealed. "I found," says poor Miss Burney, “that our appetites were to be supposed annihilated, at the same moment that our strength

without care, and the sleep which had no
limit save mine own pleasure, and the walks
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 free-was to be invincible."
dom 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 pal-
aces, and can il! 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 misunder-
standing between the gentlemen and the
ladies. A half-witted French Protestant min-
ister talked oddly about conjugal fidelity.
An unlucky member of the household men-
tioned a passage in the Morning Herald re-
flecting on the Queen, and forthwith Madame
Schwellenberg began to storm in bad Eng-
lish, and told him that he made her "what
you call perspire!"

Yet Oxford, seen even under such disadvantages, "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 tottered after the royal party; but with what delight would she have then paced the cloisters 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 mysterious 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.

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 About eighteen months after the visit to Ther curls. She had the honor of entering Oxford, another event diversified the weariOxford in the last of a long string of car- some life which Frances led at court. riages which formed the royal procession, Warren Hastings was brought to the bar of of walking after the Queen all day through the House of Peers. The Queen and Prinrefectories and chapels, and of standing, cesses were present when the trial commenhalf-dead with fatigue and hunger, while her ced, and Miss Burney was permitted to ataugust mistress was seated at an excellent tend. During the subsequent proceedings cold collation. At Magdalene College, a day-rule for the same purpose was occaFrances was left for a moment in the parlor, sionally granted to her; for the Queen took where she sank down on a chair. A good- the strongest interest in the trial, and, when natured Equerry saw that she was exhausted, she could not go herself to Westminster and shared with her some apricots and bread, Hall, liked to receive a report of what pass4 which he had wisely put into his pockets. ed from a person who had singular powers

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 judiced against him, that the charges were to us to prove that the fine understanding well founded; and that Pitt and Dundas had of Frances Burney was beginning to feel concurred, with Fox and Sheridan, in supthe pernicious influence of a mode of life porting the impeachment. Surely a woman which is as incompatible with health of of far inferior abilities to Miss Burney, mind as the air of the Pomptine marshes might have been expected to see that this with health of body. From the first day, she never could have happened unless there had espouses the cause of Hastings with a pre- been a strong case against the late Governsumptuous vehemence and acrimony quite or-General. And there was, as all reasonainconsistent with the modesty and suavity ble men now admit, a strong case against of her ordinary deportment. She shudders him. That there were great public services when Burke enters the Hall at the head of to be set off against his great crimes, is perthe Commons. She pronounces him the fectly true. But his services and his crimes cruel oppressor of an innocent man. She is were equally unknown to the lady who so at a loss to conceive how the managers can confidently asserted his perfect innocence, look at the defendant, and not blush. Wind- and imputed to his accusers, that is to say, ham comes to her from the manager's box, to all the greatest men of all parties in the to offer her refreshment. "But," says she, state, not merely error, but gross injustice "I could not break bread with him." Then, and barbarity. 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 Madame Schwellenberg became more and certainly have been rejected. We more savage and insolent. And now the therefore, that the loyalty of the minister, health of poor Frances began to give way; who was then generally regarded as the and all who saw her pale face, her emaciated most heroic champion of his Prince, was figure, and her feeble walk, predicted that lukewarm indeed when compared with the her sufferings would soon be over. boiling zeal which filled the pages of the Frances uniformly speaks of her royal misback-stairs and the women of the bed-cham-tress, and of the princesses, with respect and ber. Of the Regency bill, Pitt's own bill, affection. The princesses seem to have well Miss Burney speaks with horror. "I shud-deserved all the praise which is bestowed on dered," she says, "to hear it named." And them in the Diary. They were, we doubt again-"Oh, how dreadful will be the day not, most amiable women. But "the sweet when that unhappy bill takes place! I can-queen," as she is constantly called in these not approve the plan of it." The truth is, volumes, is not by any means an object of that Mr. Pitt, whether a wise and upright admiration to us. She had undoubtedly statesman or not, was a statesman; and sense enough to know what kind of deportwhatever motives he might have for impos- ment suited her high station, and self-coming restrictions on the regent, felt that in mand enough to maintain that deportment some way or other there must be some pro- invariably. She was, in her intercourse with vision made for the execution of some part Miss Burney, generally gracious and affa

see,