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ribbons and filling snuff-boxes.  To grant her a pension on the civil list would have been an act of judicious liberality honourable to the Court.  If this was impracticable, the next best thing was to let her alone.  That the king and queen meant her nothing but kindness, we do not in the least doubt.  But their kindness was the kindness of persons raised high above the mass of mankind, accustomed to be addressed with profound deference, accustomed to see all who approach them mortified by their coldness and elated by their smiles.  They fancied that to be noticed by them, to be near them, to serve them, was in itself a kind of happiness ; and that Frances Burney ought to be full of gratitude for being permitted to purchase, by the surrender of health, wealth, freedom, domestic affection and literary fame, the privilege of standing behind a royal chair and holding a pair of royal gloves.

And who can blame them ?  Who can wonder that princes should be under such a delusion when they are encouraged in it by the very persons who suffer from it most cruelly ?  Was it to be expected that George iii. and Queen Charlotte should understand the interest of Frances Burney better, or promote it with more zeal, than herself and her father ?  No deception was practised.  The conditions of the house of bondage were set forth with all simplicity.  The hook was presented without a bait ; the net was spread in sight of the bird, and the naked hook was greedily swallowed, and the silly bird made haste to entangle herself in the net.

It is not strange indeed that an invitation to Court should have caused a fluttering in the bosom of an inexperienced woman.  But it was the duty of the parent to watch over the child, and to show her, that on one side were only infantine vanities and chimerical hopes, on the other, liberty, peace of mind, affluence, social enjoyments, honourable distinctions.  Strange to say, the only hesitation was on the part of Frances.  Dr. Burney was transported out of himself with delight.  Not such are the raptures of a Circassian father who has sold his pretty daughter well to a Turkish slave merchant.  Yet Dr. Burney was an amiable man a man of good abilities, a man who had seen much of the world.  But he seems to have thought that going to Court was like going to heaven ; that to see princes and princesses was a kind of beatific vision ; that the exquisite felicity enjoyed by royal persons Was not confined to themselves, but was communicated by some mysterious efflux or reflection to all who were suffered to stand at their 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 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.