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Diary now speak for itself: and dull or unfeeling and unreflecting must be the reader who does not find matter for serious regret and severe remark in what we quote. We hardly know whether the personages for whose sakes so much idle parade was made, or the hearts and the limbs which were worn out in the service, were most to be pitied. However, here is the account of Fanny's routine of court life.

I rise at six o'clock, dress in a morning gown and cap, and wait my first summons, which is at all times from seven to near eight, but commonly in the exact half hour between them. The Queen never sends for me till her hair is dressed. This, in a morning, is always done by her wardrobewoman, Mrs. Thielky, a German, but who speaks English perfectly well. Mrs. Schwellenberg, since the first week, has never come down in a morning at all. The Queen's dress is finished by Mrs. Thielky and myself. No maid ever enters the room while the Queen is in it. Mrs. Thielky hands the things to me, and I put them on. "Tis fortunate for me I have not the handing them! I should never know which to take first, embarrassed as I am, and should run a prodigious risk of giving the gown before the hoop, and the fan before the neck-kerchief. By eight o'clock, or a little after, for she is extremely expeditious, she is dressed. She then goes out to join the King, and be joined by the princesses, and they all proceed to the King's chapel in the Castle, to prayers, attended by the governesses of the princesses, and the King's equerry. Various others at times attend; but only these indispensably. I then return to my own room to breakfast. I make this meal the most pleasant part of the day; I have a book for my companion, and I allow myself an hour for it. ** At nine o'clock I send off my breakfast things, and relinquish my book, to make a serious and steady examination of everything I have upon my hands in the way of business-in which preparations for dress are always included, not for the present day alone, but for the court-days, which require a particular dress; for the next arriving birth-day of any of the royal family, every one of which requires new apparel; for Kew, where the dress is plainest; and for going on here, where the dress is very pleasant to me, requiring no show nor finery, but merely to be neat, not inelegant, and moderately fashionable. That over, I have my time at my own disposal till a quarter before twelve, except on Wednesdays and Saturdays, when I have it only to a quarter before eleven. My rummages and business sometimes occupy me uninterruptedly to those hours. When they do not, I give till ten to necessary letters of duty, ceremony, or long arrears ;-and now, from ten to the times I have mentioned, I devote to walking. These times mentioned call me to the irksome and quick-returning labours of the toilette. The hour advanced on the Wednesdays and Saturdays is for curling and craping the hair, which it now requires twice a week. A quarter before one is the usual time for the Queen to begin dressing for the day. Mrs. Schwellenberg then constantly attends; so do I; Mrs. Thielky, of course, at all times. We help her off with her gown, and on with the powdering things, and then the hair-dresser is admitted. She generally reads the newspapers during that operation. When she observes that I have run to VOL. II. (1842.) NO. I.

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her but half dressed, she constantly gives me leave to return and finish as soon as she is seated. If she is grave, and reads steadily on, she dismisses me, whether I am dressed or not; but at all times she never forgets to send me away while she is powdering, with a consideration not to spoil my clothes, that one would not expect belonged to her high station. Neither does she ever detain me without making a point of reading here and there some little paragraph aloud. When I return, I finish, if anything is undone, my dress, and then take Baretti's Dialogues, my dearest Fredy's Tablet of Memory, or some such disjointed matter, for the few minutes that elapse ere I am again summoned. I find her then always removed to her state dressing-room, if any room in this private mansion can have the epithet of state. There, in a very short time, her dress is finished. She then says she won't detain me, and I hear and see no more of her till bedtime. It is commonly three o'clock when I am thus set at large. And I have then two hours quite at my own disposal: but, in the natural course of things, not a moment after! * *At five, we have dinner. Mrs. Schwellenberg and I meet in the eating-room. We are commonly tête-à tête when there is anybody added, it is from her invitation only. Whatever right my place might afford me of also inviting my friends to the table I have now totally lost by want of courage and spirits to claim it originally. When we have dined, we go upstairs to her apartment, which is directly over mine. Here we have coffee till the terracing is over: this is at about eight o'clock. Our tête-à-tête then finishes, and we come down again to the eating-room. There the equerry, whoever he is, comes to tea constantly, and with him any gentleman that the King or Queen may have invited for the evening; and when tea is over, he conducts them, and goes himself, to the concert-room. This is commonly about nine o'clock. From that time, if Mrs. Schwellenberg is alone, I never quit her for a minute, till I come to my little supper at near eleven. Between eleven and twelve my last summons takes place, earlier and later occasionally. Twenty minutes is the customary time then spent with the Queen: half an hour, I believe, is seldom exceeded. I then come back, and after doing whatever I can to forward my dress for the next morning, I go to bed-and to sleep, too, believe me the early rising, and a long day's attention to new affairs and occupations, cause a fatigue so bodily, that nothing mental stands against it, and to sleep I fall the moment I have put out my candle and laid down my head. With regard to those summonses I speak of, I will now explain myself. My summons, upon all regular occasions— that is, morning, noon, and night toilettes-is neither more nor less than a bell. Upon extraordinary occasions a page is commonly sent.

I felt inexpressibly discomfited by this mode of call. A bell!-it seemed so mortifying a mark of servitude, I always felt myself blush, though alone, with conscious shame at my own strange degradation.

One would have thought that Miss Burney, who had apartments of her own, might have been mistress in regard to her own meals. Hear how this stood:

Westerhall, one of Mrs. Schwellenberg's domestics, called me out of the room. John waited to speak to me in the gallery. "What time,

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"What supper?"

ma'am," cried he, "shall have your supper?" you cried I. "I only eat fruit as usual." "Have not you ordered supper, ma'am, for to-night?" "No." "There is one cooking for you-a fowl and peas." "It's some great mistake; run down and tell them so." I returned to the company, and would have related the adventure, had I been in spirits: but voluntary speech escaped me not. Where I am not happy, or forced to it, it never does. In silence and in quiet, I court repose and revival; and I think, my dearest Susan, I feel that they will come. Presently I was called out again. Ma'am," cried John," the supper is ordered in your name. I saw the order-the clerk of the kitchen gave it in." This was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. I desired him to run down forthwith, and inquire by whose directions all this was done. He came back, and said, "By Sir Francis Drake's." Sir Francis Drake is, I think, steward of the household. I then desired him to interfere no more, but let the matter be pursued in their own way. As soon as the company was gone, all but a Miss Mawer, who is on a visit to Mrs. Schwellenberg, I told my tale. Mrs. Schwellenberg said the orders had been hers, that a hot supper belonged to my establishment, and that sometimes she might come and eat it with me. I had now not a word to add. At ten o'clock, both she and Miss Mawer accompanied me to my room. Miss Mawer is an old maid; tall, thin, sharp-featured, hurrying and disagreeable in her manner, but, I believe, good-natured and good-hearted, from all I have observed in her. The smell of the meat soon grew offensive to Mrs. Schwellenberg, who left me with Miss Mawer. As I never eat any myself at night, all I could devise to make the perfume tolerable, was to consider it as an opportunity for a lesson in carving: so I went to work straightforward to mangle my unbidden guest, for the use and service of Miss Mawer.

On one occasion, when their majesties were about to visit Nuneham Harcourt, there was a scene between Madame Schwellenberg and Fanny:

At the second toilette to-day, Mrs. Schwellenberg, who left the dressingroom before me, called out at the door, "Miss Bernar, when you have done from the Queen, come to my room." There was something rather more peremptory in the order than was quite pleasant to me, and I rather drily answered, "Very well, Mrs. Schwellenberg." When I went

to Mrs. Schwellenberg, she said, "You might know I had something to say to you, by my calling you before the Queen." She then proceeded to a long prelude, which I could but ill comprehend, save that it conveyed much of obligation on my part, and favour on hers; and then ended with "I might tell you now, the Queen is going to Oxford, and you might go with her; it is a secret-you might not tell it nobody. But I tell you once, I shall do for you what I can; you are to have a gown." I stared, and drew back, with a look so undisguised of wonder and displeasure at this extraordinary speech, that I saw it was understood, and she then thought it time, therefore, to name her authority, which, with great emphasis, she did thus: "The Queen will give you a gown! The Queen says

132

Madame D'Arblay's Diary and Letters.

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you are not rich," &c. There was something in the manner of this quite intolerable to me; and I hastily interrupted her with saying, " I have two new gowns by me, and therefore do not require another. Perhaps a proposed present from her Majesty was never so received before! but the grossness of the manner of the messenger swallowed up the graciousness of the design in the principal; and I had not even a wish to conceal how little it was to my taste. The highest surprise sat upon her brow: she had imagined that a gown-that any present-would have been caught at with obsequious avidity; but indeed she was mistaken. Seeing the wonder and displeasure now hers, I calmly added, "The Queen is very good, and I am very sensible of her Majesty's graciousness; but there is not, in this instance, the least occasion for it." Miss Bernar," cried she, quite angrily, "I tell you once, when the Queen will give you a gown, you must be humble, thankful, when you are Duchess of Ancaster!

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Miss Burney travelled to Nuneham in company with Miss Planta, governess to the princesses. See what it is to be of the royal suite:

All

In going across the park to the entrance, we saw not a creature. were busy, either in attendance upon the royal guests, or in finding hiding places from whence to peep at them. We stopped at the portico,—but not even a porter was there; we were obliged to get out of the carriage by the help of one of the postilions, and to enter the house by the help of wet grass, which would not suffer me to stay out of it, otherwise I felt so strange in going in uninvited and unconducted, that I should have begged leave to stroll about till somebody appeared. Miss Planta, more used to these expeditions, though with quite as little taste for them, led the way, and said we had best go and see for our own rooms. I was quite of the same opinion, but much at a loss how we might find them. We went through various passages, unknowing whither they might lead us, till at length we encountered a prodigious fine servant. Miss Planta asked him for Lady Harcourt's maid; he bowed slightly, and passed on without making any answer. Very pleasant this!-I then begged we might turn back, not caring for another adventure of the same sort. Miss Planta complied; and we met two more of the yellow-laced saunterers, with whom she had precisely the same success. I think I never remember to have felt so much shame from my situation as at that time. To arrive at a house where no mistress nor master of it cared about receiving me; to wander about a guest uninvited, a visitor unthought of; without even a room to go to, a person to inquire for, or even a servant to speak to. ** We strayed thus, backwards and forwards, for a full quarter of an hour, in these nearly deserted straggling passages: and then, at length, met a French woman, whom Miss Planta immediately seized upon; it was Lady Harcourt's woman, and Miss Planta had seen her at Windsor. "Pray show us," cried Miss Planta, "where we are to go." She was civil, and led us to a parlour looking very pleasantly upon the park, and asked if we would have some tea. Miss Planta assented. She told us the King and Queen were in the park, and left us. As there was a garden-door to this room, I thought it

very possible the royal party and their suite might return to the house that way. This gave great addition to my discomposure, for I thought that to see them all in this forlorn plight would be still the worst part of the business; I therefore pressed Miss Planta to let us make another attempt to discover our own rooms. Miss Planta laughed exceedingly at my disturbance, but complied very obligingly with my request. The wardrobe women had already been shown to the rooms they were to prepare for the Queen and the Princesses. ** In this, our second wandering forth, we had no better success than in the first; we either met nobody, or only were crossed by such superfine men in laced liveries, that we attempted not to question them. My constant dread was of meeting any of the royal party, while I knew not whither to run. Miss Planta, more inured to such situations, was not at all surprised by our difficulties and disgraces, and only diverted by my distress from them. We met at last with Mhaughendorf, and Miss Planta eagerly desired to be conducted to the Princesses' rooms, that she might see if everything was prepared for them. When they had looked at the apartments destined for the Princesses, Miss Planta proposed our sitting down to our tea in the Princess Elizabeth's room.

We might go on to quote numerous instances of excessive fatigue from long waiting and keeping all the time a standing posture, and this too without tasting food, while in the royal presence; for to sit and to eat in such circumstances are equally forbidden; while the positive annoyances amounting to insults were sometimes unbearable according to the habits of thinking of the right-hearted and not yet hardened or hackneyed Diarist. Even some of her servile offices to the Queen appear hardly to have squared with her pupilage in a healthier sphere. Altogether the volume has a moral to teach, and it preaches it well.

NOTICES.

ART. XVI.--Theopneustia. The Plenary Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. From the French of L. GAUSSEN. Bagster.

THE first paper of our present number was printed before we were aware that S. Bagster and Sons had published a translation of this invaluable work. We are glad to have it in our power to announce the fact. Every biblical and religious reader who speaks the English language ought to rejoice that he may now have ready access to one of the most instructive and attractive books we ever read,-attractive, enlightening, and exalting in a remarkable degree, whatever be the performance, or the walk of literature with which a comparison may be instituted. But after the space which we have allotted to the professor's work in a preceding article, it is - not necessary to do more than make this statement. The few passages of

the translation which we have had an opportunity to examine, are elegantly true to the original.

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