multitude are uncovered. Fanny has not
arrived quite in good time; but she is brought
with Lady Louisa Clayton, and a place is
obtained. Up and down walk the King and
Queen, and the Princesses, and the Equerries;
the crowd squeeze themselves into the narrowest
space as they come, and close in after
they have passed. Fanny is shy, and draws
her hat over her face; she thinks her real
errand will be suspected; but her chaperon
puts her forward. The King has his how
d'ye do—and when did you come—and how
long shall you stay—and when do you come
again—and—happy little Burney—"Pray,
how goes on the Muse?"—"Not at all,
sir."—"No! But why? why not?"—
"I—I—I am afraid, sir."—"And why? of
what?"—and the King pokes his head under
her hat—"Oh! she's afraid." Doctor Burney
had no word—and he didn't get the place.

It is the 7th of August of the same year—
the birthday of the little Princess Amelia.
All the royal family are "new dressed;"
people of distinction come to the terrace as to
a drawing-room. Miss Burney, too—who is
now one of the queen's attendants—is new
dressed; and why should she not go to the
terrace? She does go with Mrs. Delany.
The King stops to speak to the good old lady
—and he once or twice addresses her
companion. The Queen—when her attendant
catches her eye—expresses, by one look of
surprise, that she ought not to have been
there. Fanny, in a flutter, kisses the little
Princess of three years' old—and before the
people of distinction, too! In truth, Miss
Burney, you are much too impulsive; three
months have made a great difference in your
position, which you rather fail to comprehend.
A spiteful Quarterly Reviewer—who found
out that you were five-and-twenty, and not
seventeen, when you wrote "Evelina"—says,
with the grandest of airs, that your chief, if
not sole recommendations to the royal favour
were your "literary merits," and your "personal
manners!" No doubt, you presumed
upon those qualities, sometimes—and it was
long before you were aware that they were
not wanted in your position.

"Literary merits" have not very often
public recognition, and when a demonstration
comes it is generally embarrassing. There
was a time when Miss Burney, with the
Montagues and Thrales about her, would
have sate calmly in a box at the theatre, and
received, without much blushing, a tribute to
her reputation. She is now in the Equerries'
box—the balcony box—at one of the great
theatres, in the front row; the Royal Family
and their suite immediately opposite. The
second Lady of the Robes has been kindly
permitted a few hours of relaxation. Miss
Farren comes on to speak the epilogue to a
new play. Fanny leans forward with her
opera-glass, intent upon the graceful actress.
There is a compliment to female writers, and
she listens with breathless attention. What?
Is it herself—who has been doomed to hear,
from rude Mrs. Schwellenberg, that she "hates
all novels"—to whom these two lines apply?

     "Let sweet Cecilia gain your just applause,
     Whose every passion yields to Nature's laws."

The King raises his opera-glass to look at
her, and laughs immoderately; the Queen
looks up too; the Princesses look; the maids
of honour look. Fanny puts up her fan, and
sits back for the rest of the night. Popular
applause—and that midnight "bell" when
she returns to the palace!

We have read the "Diary and Letters of
Madame D'Arblay," with a real feeling of
pity for her in those Miss Burney days at
Windsor, and Kew, and Buckingham Palace.
Never was a flattered and petted lady—the
most successful writer of fiction in an age
when authoresses were few—subjected to such
bitter mortifications, as in those two or three
years of her imprisonment in that waiting–maid
life. We see her restless shadow as she
enters, with the royal cortège, an unbidden
guest, into the halls of Nuneham; no servant
to show her to her room—no welcome—no
offered refreshment. Plain Mrs. Schwellenberg
gives her a premonition when, with
her own pretensions as Miss Burney, she tells
the German lady that she had been introduced
to Lord Harcourt at Sir Joshua Reynolds's:
—"O! it is the same—that is nothing—when
you go with the Queen, it is enough; they
might be civil to you for that sake. You
might go quite without no, what you call,
fuss; you might take no gown but what you
go in; that is enough—you might have no
servant—for what? You might keep on your
riding-dress. There is no need you might be
seen. I shall do every thing I can to assist
you to appear for nobody." Literary merits,
and personal manners! put them up in
lavender, Miss Burney; they will not wear
well here with the new gown that the Queen
gives you.

It is the 1st of January, 1787, and Fanny
Burney is entering a wise resolve in her
diary: "I opened the new year with what
composure I could acquire. I considered it
as the first year of my being settled in a
permanent situation, and made anew the best
resolutions I was equal to forming, that I
would do what I could to curb all spirit of
repining, and to content myself calmly,
unresistingly at least, with my destiny." She has
mistaken the real nature of the "permanent
situation." It is no fault of hers that she is
unfitted for it; it is no fault of her royal
benefactors—for they wished to be so—that her
promotion is degradation. Her destiny is an
unnatural one, and she must repine. The
habitués of a court have their own exclusive
associations of rank and ambition, of fashion
and parade, to console them for the
inconveniences of the "honour" in which they live.
But the literary lady's-maid—what sympathy
has she? The Queen is condescending, but