poor woman, she is cold and weary with watching." Her old friend had not seen her. Now he pulled off his spectacles, and blew his nose; and then he frowned at her severely. "You have given us all a nice fright, Elisa Engemann," he said sternly. "Who would have thought a woman arrived at your years would run away from home? You made me feel like a fool when I found your cottage empty." A wan smile came over her face. "I could not help it, neighbor, I was wanted here," she said quietly, and then she turned back to the snow. Christen caught her by the shoulder. "You must come away with me," he said. "Did you not hear the count say so just now? What will you be fit for by the time André is found?" Her eyes brimmed over at his words. "God bless you, old friend," she sobbed. "I will go with you by-and-by." she was. round; her companions did not hear; the boy stood listening to Christen's talk. She could not move; the terrible dread kept her still. Now the dull tread grew more distinct, but still Christen went on talking. Which was real, the woman asked herself, the man talking there by the fire, or the soft, dull sound on the snow path? Was it, after all, her fancy that had heard it? All at once the sound ceased, and then the spell that kept Elisa still broke. She rose up and opened the door. Outside was Monsieur von Erlach. "They are bringing them," he said, in a hushed voice. Then he stood aside, and the soldiers passed him, carrying their burdens into the hut. The snow still lies on the lower mountains, but it will be there till spring sunshine comes to melt it, for winter is everywhere; the trees are leafless, except on the pine-clothed ridge behind the vil lage, and though the water of the lake is not frozen over, the river beyond it is a long stretch of ice. Christen turned away his head; secretly he was as unwilling to leave the place as He tried to get round behind the diggers; but he found the snow too deep, and on this side it seemed to him not hard enough to climb over unaided, although since the sun had disappeared iterally the heavy outside shutters are had been freezing. It grew colder and colder. After half-an-hour's waiting, Christen went up to André's mother. "Come, neighbor," he said, "let us go down and see that all is ready against he is found." She followed him in silence; turning her head as she went she felt that part of her lay under the snow. Elisa turned away from the blazing fire, beside which Christen sat lecturing the lad who had been sent to kindle it. She had seen that all was ready, and now she sat down near the window; her body felt heavy and inert, but she was not sleepy; her faculties were awake and strained in the effort of listening. More than once she had gone outside the hut, but now she had come in again waiting waiting. Yes, it was true what Christen had said to her; when André came his mother must be there to meet him. What was that sound? This time surely it was not as Christen had said just now the wind murmuring in the chimney. The sound came again, a dull, soft tread, and a murmur of voicesnearer still. Elisa looked nearer now It is evening now, and red light gleams here and there from a chalet; but gen closed, and these keep in the firelight glow. Elisa has just shut the door that leads into the balcony, and she goes back into the room where André is lying on a sheepskin in front of the fire. The room looks warm in the dim, ruddy light, and the soup-pot over the fire sends out an appetizing smell. "Shall I light the lamp?" his mother says to André. "You will spoil your sight, my boy, if you read by firelight." André catches at her skirt as she goes to get the lamp. "sit "Not yet, little mother," he says; down and be idle a while; it is good for you to have a change and help me to be idle. I am to begin work to-morrow. Hans Christen says so." She sits down, and then he rises and kneeling beside her leans his head on her bosom. "Mother dear," he says softly, "I want to tell you something." She smiles fondly at him. Ever since the day when she was allowed to bring André home exhausted, but alive, it has seemed to Elisa as if life were too full of blessing. She does not talk much to her boy, but her eyes rest on him with loving, contented glances. He has been some weeks in recovering from his burial under the snow; his poor little comrade was dead, but now André is as strong as ever; his godfather, Hans Christen, has offered to teach him his trade. "Mother," says André, "did you guess that I was keeping a secret from you?" Elisa's heart gives a big throb, and the lad feels it as he leans against her; for a moment the struggle goes on in her heart, for she knows that she has long as guessed André's secret; and then there Comes vividly before her the huge snow hill across the lake, and the lesson she learned as she walked to and fro on the ledge below. "You will tell me your secret now," she says timidly; for as she looks at him she feels puzzled, there is such a gleam of mirth in his eyes. Mother, dear," he went on, "that is all over now. I told you that while I was lying there under the snow it seemed like years. I went on thinking and thinking more than I ever thought before, and then all at once I left off thinking about myself and poor little Heinrich, and I thought of you instead. This grief will kill her,' I said. 'Precious little mother! she has suffered so sadly; she cannot stand this.' And then presently I began to see how the mountain life I wanted would have been just as bad a trial to her as this one— what do I say? it would have been worse! for it would have given her the anguish again and again. Mother," he rose up and took both her hands in his, "I knew then for a certainty I could not be happy while you were sad, and I wondered how it was I had been so dull; it all came so clear”. he paused an instant; then he broke into a merry laugh. "You will have me to plague you always now. I mean to be a better carpenter than there is even in Dort before I'm as old as neighbor Hans." Andre's mother strained her boy to her heart as though she would make him grow there, and he felt her hot tears on his neck. KATHARINE S. MACQUOID. From The Contemporary Review. MISS BURNEY'S OWN STORY.* AFTER reading " Camilla," and liking it less than he cared to say, Horace Walpole wrote: "This author knew the world and penetrated character before she had stepped over the threshold, and now she has seen so much of it she has little or hended having seen too much, and kept no insight at all: perhaps she apprethe bags of foul air that she brought from The criticism was just, however it may the Cave of Tempests too closely tied." have been with the explanation. Time added nothing to Miss Burney's talent; as she felt more, her style only became more and more involved; as the interests of her life thickened, the interest of her books evaporated. During the four years that elapsed between the publication of "Cecilia" and her appointment at court, she wrote nothing; and, when asked the reason of her silence, she could only anthat she supposed she was exhausted. So it was. She had invested her whole stock of original fancy in "Evelina" and "Cecilia," and by the time she had gained experience of real life, she had nothing left to work it up with. swer It is tempting to go a little in detail into the story of this rapid spending of such unusually rich and promising gifts, and to consider whether it might have been avoided by a different course of circumstances. It might, perhaps, have been better for Miss Burney's later work if her first book had received more mod erate admiration; if it had been read with indifference at Streatham, and Fanny had the second daughter of Dr. Burney, who remained unknown to Johnson save as rarely said more than "Yes" and "No" when there was company in St. Martin's Street. She might then have written a in which she wrote "Evelina," and, feelsecond novel in the same desultory way ing less bound to produce something marvellous, she would perhaps have been fewer characters, and material would thus content with a simpler construction and have been saved for the next venture. several years after "Evelina," but conOr, again, had she written nothing for tented herself with seeing the world and reading, then perhaps, when the marriage dame D'Arblay. Three volumes. London: Moxon. Memoirs of Dr. Burney. By his Daughter, Ma Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay. Edited by her Niece. New edition, four volumes. London: Chatto and Windus. See "Miss Burney's Novels:" LIVING AGE, No. 2011, p. 3. of Mrs. Thrale and the death of Johnson | account for this singular arrangement, brought the Streatham episode to a nat- which, however, seems sufficiently ac ural conclusion; when society was begin- counted for by the fact that Charles rening to pall upon her, and the importance ceived his first musical instruction from a of providing for future independence to half-brother, who was organist of St. Marmake itself felt, she might (instead of garet's Church, Shrewsbury. Charles's going to court) have settled down quietly taste for music showed itself early, and in her father's house, and made herself there can be little doubt that his father an income by writing one good novel after left him at Condover with a view to its another out of her mingled intuition and cultivation : it ran in the Burney blood to experience. But such speculations are look to the arts rather than to trade or necessarily vain, and it is more profitable business for the means of living. Except to seek the explanation of what puzzled the music he got from his brother, the her contemporaries quite as much as the boy had no regular teaching till he went, inferiority of her later works -the ex- at sixteen or seventeen, to the Chester traordinary knowledge of life shown in Free School. But he saw a great deal of the early ones. Her own fear, when she life and character, and stored his memory heard that Mrs. Thrale was reading with odd anecdotes and adventures, which "Evelina," was lest that lady should he delighted in after years to relate to his think she had kept very queer company. children. From the terms in which Fanny And, though nobody put the point quite speaks of these often-told tales of her in that way, the general wonder was how father's childhood, it is clear that to them a modest and carefully brought up girl she owed much of her power of painting could have written so boisterous a circumstances of which she could have no book." The explanation is found in her personal experience. And here is a bememoirs of her father: she knew the ginning of an autobiography, never comworld by inheritance. For at least three pleted, which, had it appeared as a preface generations before Fanny, the Burney to Evelina," would have answered to family had been making itself at home in everybody's conception of the anonymous a variety of social grades. Her great- author: grandfather, James MacBurney, managed, nobody knows how, to get rid of a considerable patrimony, and to sink from the position of a country gentleman of property to that of land-steward to the Earl of Ashburnham. His son (Fanny's grandfather) married an actress, and was punished for his indiscretion by being disinherited of whatever remained of the family fortune. He dropped the Mac, and called himself James Burney. By and-by the father married a maidservant, and had a son, who became a dancingmaster. James Burney's first wife dying, he, too, married again, and this time made an entirely discreet choice. Mistress Anne Cooper was virtuous, clever, beautiful, and rich; she enjoyed, moreover, the fame of having been courted by Wycherley in the last years of his life. Several children, of whom the youngest was Charles (afterwards Dr. Burney), were This fragment, it need hardly be said, born of this marriage; and James Burney is not by Fanny Burney, but by Fanny's settled down to the profession of portrait- father. Miss Ellis, in her preface to painting in the town of Chester. Madame "Cecilia," hazards an opinion, in opposiD'Arblay mentions with astonishment tion to the authorities, that it was not that when the family removed to Chester, they left Charles behind them at Condover, a village near Shrewsbury, where he spent all his childhood and boyhood under the care of an ignorant but kindly nurse. She declares herself unable to Perhaps few have been better enabled to describe, from an actual survey, the manners and customs of the age in which he lived than myself; ascending from those of the most humble cottagers, and lowest mechanics, to the first nobility, and most elevated personages, with whom circumstances, situation, and accident, at different periods of my life, have rendered me familiar. Oppressed and laborious husbandmen; insolent and illiberal yeohospitable merchants; men of business and manry; overgrown farmers; generous and men of pleasure; men of letters; men of science; artists; sportsmen and country squires; dissipated and extravagant voluptuaries; gamesters; ambassadors; statesmen; and even sovereign princes, I have had opportunities of examining in almost every point of view: all these it is my intention to display in their respective situations; and to delineate their virtues, vices, and apparent degrees of happiness and misery. from Johnson but from Dr. Burney that the elaborate pomposities of Madame D'Arblay's later style came. To me it seems that she got them from Dr. Johnson through her father. Charles Burney was an enthusiastic admirer of the Ram bler papers, which were appearing at the time of Fanny's birth. "Evelina," written at a time when she was constantly in requisition as her father's amanuensis, has its share of Johnsonianisms; and that its share is not larger is simply due to the epistolary form in which the book is cast. At the time "Cecilia" was written, when Fanny was under Johnson's direct influence, he had left the Johnsonian style behind, and was writing the "Lives of the Poets," and reading the proof-sheets aloud at Mrs. Thrale's breakfast-table. But if, as I think, it was to her father that Fanny owed the material of her best novels (and assuredly there was no source to which she would more gladly have confessed herself indebted for everything), we may the more readily forgive Dr. Burney for having given a false direction to her efforts to improve her style. She certainly inherited from him the extraordinary personal charm that made Johnson say, "It is natural to love Burney." His friendships descended to her. She adopted his political convictions and his code of social proprieties. It is difficult to lay one's finger on anything in her whole composition that did not come from him, except, perhaps, the excessive sensitiveness that made the identification of herself and her work a constant puzzle to her friends, and the self-consciousness that resulted from her own sense of the contradiction they involved. While Charles Burney was attending the free school at Chester, Dr. Arne, the popular composer of the day, paid a visit to the town, and, struck by the boy's musical talent, persuaded his father to let him accompany him to London on the footing of an apprentice. Dr. Arne was brother to Mrs. Cibber, the actress; and at her house young Burney found himself | "in a constellation of wits, poets, actors, authors, and men of letters." It was there that some of the friendships began of which we read in the diary of Madame D'Arblay- the brotherly relation with Garrick, the less affectionate, but hardly less close, intimacy with Christopher Smart, the acquaintance with William Mason. Burney was kindly noticed by the poet Thomson, then within a few years of death, and he attached himself admiringly to Dr. Hawkesworth, editor, a little later, of the Adventurer, who had just published a didactic poem on the "Art of Preserving Health," of which Burney approved both the verse and the At the same time, that magnificent fine gentleman and dilettante, Fulke sense. Greville, was inquiring of his harpsichordmaker whether there was to be found in London a young musician capable of giving instruction in his art, and fit to associate with a gentleman. The harpsichordmaker replied that he knew many who answered to the description, and one in particular, Charles Burney, who was as fit company for a prince as for an orchestra. An introduction was arranged, and Greville invited Burney to live with him. Burney hesitated on the ground that the term of his apprenticeship to Arne was not expired; and Greville cancelled the articles by paying down a sum of £300; but Charles Burney began a new life, with Greville for his mentor. It is plain that Greville cared more for Burney's company than for his music. He associated him with all his pleasures, and introduced him to every haunt of fashionable amusement White's, Brooks's, Newmarket, Bath. But through all Burney preserved a remarkable independence; he kept clear of gambling, and continued to cultivate music with professional devotion. At Wil. bury, Greville's house in Wiltshire, he first met Samuel Crisp, and began the most sacred friendship of his life, and that in which his daughter most completely shared. But When Mr. Greville made a runaway marriage with the beautiful Miss Fanny Macartney, Charles Burney gave away the bride, and a year later he stood proxy for the Duke of Beaufort at the baptism of their first child - a daughter, who afterwards, as Mrs. Crewe, was one of the most active friends of Madame D'Arblay's middle life. The Grevilles next planned a tour on the Continent, and wanted Charles to accompany them. he had fallen in love with Miss Esther Sleepe, a young lady he had met at the house of his half-brother in Hatton Garden, and could not bear the thought of leaving her. There was a time of uncomfortable constraint and uncertainty. Miss Sleepe insisted that her lover should not break with his patrons on her account, and Burney resigned himself to the separation. But his reluctance was too evident to escape notice and inquiry on the part of the Grevilles; and on their pressing him to explain it, he confessed his attachment, and showed them a miniature of Miss Sleepe. Greville, seeing the por trait of an exceedingly pretty girl," exclaimed, "But why don't you marry her?" Burney cried, "May I?" and all difficulty vanished. The Grevilles went abroad, and Burney married Esther Sleepe, and began housekeeping somewhere in the City. rious. . . . Such almost universally is the inheritance bequeathed from mother to daughter Madame D'Arblay describes her moth- in small towns at a distance from the metroper as small and delicate, though not di-olis, where there are few suspensive (sic) subminutive in figure, with a face of fine oval jects or pursuits of interest, ambition, or literature, that can enlist either imagination or outline, light blue eyes, and a “ rosy hue." instruction into conversation. Charles Burney met her in a ball-room, and fell in love with her at first sight. But she had other qualities besides those which shine in ball-rooms: With no advantage save the simple one of early learning, or rather imbibing, the French language, from her maternal grandfather who was a native of France, but had been forced from his country by the Edict of Nantes, this gifted young creature was one of the most pleasing, well-mannered, well-read, elegant, and even cultivated of her sex. Madame D'Arblay does not tell us what was the calling of her mother's father, but she mentions that the "lovely Esther was born in the city," and "not in those dwellings of the hospitable English merchants of early days who rivalled the nobles in the accomplishments of their progeny, till by mingling in acquirements they mingled in blood." In plain English, Esther's parents were plebeian and poor; and, moreover, her father was a bad character. Her mother, on the other hand, was a good woman, for whom Fanny, when her time came, had a peculiar affection and reverence. There were, however, two ladies who made agreeable exceptions to the rule of dulness Mrs. Stephen Allen and Miss Dorothy Young. Mrs. Stephen Allen was the wife of a winemerchant of considerable fortune, and of very worthy character. She was the most celebrated beauty of Lynn, and might have been so of a much larger district, for her beauty was high, commanding, and truly uncommon; and her understanding bore the same description. She had wit at will; spirits the most vivacious and entertaining; and from a pas sionate fondness for reading she had collected stores of knowledge which she was always able and "nothing loath" to display. Miss Young was no less virtuous and cultivated, but she was plain and debetween these two ladies, and Esther formed. The closest friendship subsisted Burney soon made a third in the alliance. Mrs. Állen used to say that it was upon her pattern that she endeavored to form her own character, and Dorothy Young devoted herself to Esther's children, acting the part of volunteer nurse whenever there was occasion. Madame D'Arblay dwells with grateful tenderness on the and mentions that when her mother came recollection of her rare unselfishness, to die, she named Dolly Young to her could give their children. Dr. Burney, however, preferred a pretty wife, and after waiting six years, during which time Mrs. Allen became a widow, be married her and valued friend. instead. But Dolly remained a loved husband as the best second mother he Madame D'Arblay's account of the society of Lynn reminds us that everything does not change in a hundred and twenty After a residence of nine or ten years years. After speaking of the dulness of the place and her father's sense of its un-health re-established itself, it became the in Lynn, during which Mr. Burney's congeniality, she tells how by degrees opinion of his friends that he should resome interesting and pleasant people turn to London. The new start was made sought him out. And then she adds: in Poland Street. Madame D'Arblay dwells with especial pride and tenderness on the details of the work, and the pleasures and the friendships of the first year after the return to London. Her father's reputation as a teacher of music was now at its height, and his time was crowded with profitable engagements. In the second year her mother died of inflammation of the lungs, and Mr. Burney was left with a family of four girls and two boys. He made up his mind to send his girls, But while amongst the male inhabitants of the town Mr. Burney associated with many whose understandings, and some few whose tastes, met his own; his wife, amongst the females, was less happy, though not more fastidious. She found them occupied almost exclusively in seeking who should be earliest in importing from London what was newest and most fashionable in attire, or in vying with each other in giving and receiving splendid repasts, and in struggling to make their every rotation become more and more luxu |