I felt very much obliged to him, for I saw his curiosity was all alive, I wished I could have kissed his hand.  He still, however, kept me in talk, and still upon music.

“To me,” said he, " it appears quite as strange to meet with people who have no ear for music, and cannot distinguish one air from another, as to meet with people who are dumb.  Lady Bell Finch once told me that she had heard there was some difference between a psalm, a minuet, and a country dance, but she declared they all sounded alike to her!  There are people who have no eye for difference of colour.  The Duke of Marlborough actually cannot tell scarlet from green!”

He then told me an anecdote of his mistaking one of those colours for another, which was very laughable, but I do not remember it clearly enough to write it.  How unfortunate for true virtuosi that such an eye should possess objects worthy the most discerning—­the treasures of Blenheim! " I do not find, though,” added his majesty, “that this defect runs in his family, for Lady Di Beauclerk, draws very finely.”

He then went to Mr. Bernard Dewes.

Almost instantly upon his leaving me, a very gentle voice called out-” Miss Burney!”

It was the queen’s.  I walked a little nearer her, and a gracious inclination of her head made me go quite up to her.

“You have been,” she said, “at Mrs. Walsingham’s?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“She has a pretty place, I believe?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Were You ever there before?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Oh, shocking! shocking ! thought I ; what will"Mrs. Delany say to all these monosyllables ?

“Has not she lately made some improvements?”

“Yes, ma’am; she has built a conservatory.” 308

Then followed some questions about its situation, during which the king came up to us; and she then, ceasing to address me in particular, began a general sort of conversation, with a spirit and animation that I had not at all expected, and which seemed the result of the great and benevolent pleasure she took in giving entertainment to Mrs. Delany.

A drawing-room during A fog.

The subject was the last Drawing-room, which she had been in town to keep on Thursday, during the dense fog.

“I assure you, ma’am,” cried she to Mrs. Delany, “it was so dark, there was no seeing anything, and no knowing any body.  And Lady Harcourt could be of no help to tell me who people were, for when it was light, she can’t see and now it was dark, I could not see myself.  So it was in vain for me to go on in that manner, without knowing which I had spoken to, and which was waiting for me; so I said to Lady Harcourt, ’We had better stop, and stand quite still, for I don’t know anybody, no more than you do.  But if we stand still, they will all come up in the end, and we must ask them who they are, and if I have spoken to them yet, or not:  for it is very odd to do it, but what else can we manage?’”