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while her august mistress was seated at an excellent cold collation.  At Magdalene college, Frances was left for a moment in a parlour, where she sank down on a chair.  A good-natured equerry saw that she was exhausted, and shared with her some apricots and bread which he had wisely put into his pockets.  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 was to be invincible.”

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 waiting-maid, 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 ride 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 splendour of Christchurch, and looked down from the dome of the Radcliffe library on the magnificent sea of turrets and battlements below!  How gladly should 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 antechapel of New college.  But these indulgences were not for one who had sold herself into bondage.

About eighteen months after the visit to Oxford, another event diversified the wearisome life which Frances led at Court.  Warren Hastings was brought to the bar of the House of Peers.  The queen and princesses were present when the trial commenced, and Miss Burney was permitted to attend.  During the subsequent proceedings, a day rule for the same purpose was occasionally granted to her; for the queen took the strongest interest in the trial, and, when she could not go herself to Westminster-hall, liked to receive a report of what passed from a person who had singular powers of observation, and who was, moreover, personally acquainted with some of the most distinguished managers.  The portion of the “Diary” which relates to this celebrated proceed-