compelled me to laugh, yet I was really irritated with the captain, for carrying his love of tormenting--sport, he calls it to such harshness and unjustifiable extremes." And Miss Burney expected, no doubt with reason, that her reader would be amused by all this. In the same work a nobleman and a fashionable commoner are described as settling a bet by a race between two decrepit women over eighty years of age. "When the signal was given for them to set off, the poor creatures, feeble and frightened, ran against each other: and neither of them being able to support the shock, they both fell on the ground. * * * Again they set off, and hobbled along, nearly even with each other, for some time, yet frequently, to the inexpressible diversion of the company, they stumbled and tottered. * * * Not long after, a foot of one of the poor women slipped, and with great force she came again to the ground. * * * Mr. Coverley went himself to help her, and insisted that the other should stop. A debate ensued, but the poor creature was too much hurt to move, and declared her utter inability to make another attempt. Mr. Coverley was quite brutal; he swore at her with unmanly rage, and seemed scarce able to refrain even from striking her." It would be impossible perhaps to find a party of the upper ranks gathered at a country house at the present time, composed of persons who could have endured, without remonstrance, such treatment of a pair of superannuated horses; yet Miss Burney describes the efforts and sufferings of these old women as affording inexpressible diversion to the ladies and gentlemen who figure in her novel, and she evidently expects the reader to be equally entertained. "Evelina" was written by a young woman who saw the best society, who was maid of honor to Queen Charlotte, who was universally admired for her delicacy and her talents, and whose novels are among the most refined of the time.