reserved; the King has his what? what? as
he has with every one; the Princesses are
affable; the Equerries are polite; celebrities,
though of a somewhat heavy character, come
sometimes to the tea-room—Mr. De Luc the
geologist, Mr. Bryant the mythologist, and
Dr. Herschel the astronomer. But she meets
Thomas Warton, the poet, in a hasty walk,
and she must turn a deaf ear to his raptures,
for she dare not ask him to her room. No
man must come there; no lady, not in the
permitted list. Her correspondence with
Madame de Genlis is forbidden. She is
allowed to attend one day at the trial of
Warren Hastings. Edmund Burke—a name
that then stank in the court nostrils—espies
her, and places himself by her side. Oh,
Fanny, there are eyes upon you. You
stammer as your old friend—the greatest
man of his time—looks in your unaccustomed
face with the familiar look of sincere affection.
The tie is broken. He is the same;
but you must wear a mask.

We see the shadow of Fanny Burney as
illness gradually steals upon her. It must
come. If she does not send that letter of
resignation so often proposed, there will be a
tear or two in the Lodge at Windsor, for the
little woman that was so clever and so pleasant,
and yet so fidgetty and unhappy. What could
have ailed her? She had ''two new gowns
and everything handsome" about her. The
letter was sent; and Fanny soon grew well
at Norbury Park, and wrote "Camilla," and
married a pleasant emigré, and had a cottage
of her own in the lovely valley of the Mole,
and died at near ninety. We hope she was
more at home in a foreign land than in that
ugly Lodge at Windsor, of which, most
happily, not a brick is left.

WE, AND OUR MAN TOM.

            Geelong, 1851.

HERE we are all three!

When Mr. Rumble and myself had decided
upon going to work as Emigrant Farmers, of
course the first thing to be done was to find
an eligible piece of land. After applying to
the Government Land Office, and going to see
every likely spot that we could hear of within
twenty miles of Melbourne—the result being
in every case disappointment—we went over
to Geelong. Melbourne and Geelong are
fifty miles asunder, on opposite sides of Port
Philip Bay.

We had some very pleasant excursions,
principally on foot, through the country round
Geelong; at last we were attracted to the
spot upon which we are now settled. The
grand drawback upon almost every place we
visited was want of water. In Australia
there are none of those clear, rippling streams,
that glitter about the surface of an English
landscape; there are only a few, thinly scattered,
deep, black, sluggish rivers, which in
hot seasons dry up altogether, except where
there are deep holes. We are comparatively
well off for water here, having only to go two
miles to fetch it. It is not to be supposed,
however, that we abide by this natural
arrangement. Since the rainy season we have
had plenty of water close at hand, in our
reservoir or water-hole.

Our choice having ultimately fallen upon a
situation for our farm, distant a few miles
from Geelong, at Mount Swardle, we settled
about the land, and, in the next place, proceeded
to provide ourselves with that universal
means of transport here—a bullock-dray, and
its accompanying animals; also a man to
drive. In the last respect we were particularly
fortunate. Tom is a treasure; a very
respectable fellow, the son of an English
farmer, and has been out in the colony long
enough to be quite handy at all the work
required for the conversion of a wild piece
of forest land into a well-cultivated farm.

Having arranged with a carpenter in
Geelong for the building of our house, we
started for the scene of our future labours.
We took with us a dray-load of miscellaneous
articles; including provisions, axes, and other
implements wherewith to clear the forest.
Our labours for the first day or two were of
a rather desultory kind; we occupied some
time in deciding upon a good site for the
house, and clearing it of trees. The situation
chosen is upon the side of a little valley,
fronting the west, and sheltered from the
south winds; which are apt to puff and blow
here with alarming energy.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we succeeded
in bringing out from Geelong all the wood
for the house with our four bullocks.
On Thursday there occurred the Bush fire,
of which I have already sent you some
account. (See "Household Words," Vol. III.,
p. 523.) The house was completed, all but
the chimney, by the Monday following;
and so we took possession of our future
home. It is but one story high, and had
originally only three rooms; but we have
since added a fourth, and are about to add a
fifth. We had another journey out to Geelong,
to fetch bricks for the chimney: and when all
was fairly finished, Mrs. Rumble came out
from Melbourne to join her husband, and so
our proper housekeeping began. Mr. Rumble
and myself consider ourselves two of the
hardest labourers in Port Philip. Always
excepting our man Tom.

Our first great work, when we had comfortably
settled ourselves in our house and
fenced in a large garden, was to enclose the
whole of our land with a brush-fence. This
we accomplished in three weeks, to the
admiration of our neighbours: the fence being
altogether a mile and a half long. I soon
found it easy enough to buckle to work—
real hard work, under the superintendence of
Tom. I can cut down a tree as well as if I
had no other desire or duty in the world,
and stick to such business for ten hours