Volume 1 — COURT DUTIES AT WINDSOR AND KEW.

[The following section and the two sections which succeed it, relate, almost exclusively, to Fanny's dreary prison- life in the royal household. Of the world without the palace, of the friends whom she had left, we hear next to nothing. The change for her was complete; the rare visits of her father, her sister, and the Lockes, one hasty excursion to Chesington, and one delightful evening at Mrs. Ord's, form nearly the sum total of her personal intercourse, during these eighteen months, with those whose kindness and sympathy had brightened her past years. She complained seldom, and only to her best-beloved Susan, but there is something truly pathetic in these occasional evidences of the struggle which she was making to conquer her repugnance, and to be happy, if that were possible, in her new situation. Dazzled by the royal condescension Fanny may have been; blinded she was not. It was her father who, possessed by a strange infatuation, remained blind to the incongruity, charmed by the fancied honour, of his daughter's position; and she, tender-hearted as she was, could not bear to inflict upon one so dear the pain which she knew must be the consequence of his enlightenment. Meanwhile, her best comfort was still in the friendship of Mrs. Delany, and this, in the course of nature, could not be of long duration. But dreary as this life of routine was to the unfortunate victim, we venture to assure the reader that he will find the victim's account of it very far from dreary. Indeed, these pages might almost be instanced to show from what unpromising materials a person endowed with humour and observation can construct a singularly entertaining narrative. Our wonder is that neither the monotony of her official duties, nor the insipidity of her associates, nor even the odious tyranny of her colleague, could wholly subdue in the author of “Evelina” and “Cecilia” that bright and humorous disposition to which the following pages bear frequent testimony.—ED.]