resolution; and we are by no means sure that, in accepting for her the offered place, he proved himself a less practical man than the ‘irresponsible reviewers’ who have derided him as a moon-struck worshipper of royalty. Burke, who certainly did not undervalue Miss Burney, and who knew something of her family circumstances, was delighted at the news, and thought that the Queen had never shown more good sense than in appointing Miss Burney to her service; though he afterwards owned to having miscalculated, when the service turned out to mean confinement to such a companion as Mrs. Schwellenberg. But neither the irksomeness of the duty, nor the character of Mrs. Schwellenberg, was known to the outer world. Both required experience to make them understood. How by degrees they disclosed themselves to Miss Burney, we shall learn presently. For the feud which sprang up between the two ladies, it must, in fairness, be owned that the elder was not wholly answerable. Miss Burney—we ought now properly to call her Mrs. Burney—had been appointed second Keeper of the Robes. She seems to have supposed that this put her on a level with Mrs. Schwellenberg, giving the latter the advantage of formal precedence only. But whatever had been the relation of Mrs. Haggerdorn to her colleague, it appears clear that Fanny, a much younger, and quite inexperienced person, was intended to be subordinate. Thus, when she expresses a fear that, by want of spirit to assert it, she had lost a right to invite guests to table, we cannot but remember that, in the terms proposed to her, the table had been described as Mrs. Schwellenberg’s. The chief Keeper, as we shall see, was coarse and offensive in speech, domineering and tyrannical in action, but her junior sometimes resented a tone of superiority and command which their royal mistress evidently thought natural and reasonable.