In fact, the whole expedition might have seemed to be planned for the purpose of convincing her that any importance she had once enjoyed was now absolutely gone. Their Majesties went to Nuneham to breakfast. Miss Burney followed in the afternoon, with Miss Planta, English teacher of the Princesses, Mrs. Thielky, the Queen’s wardrobe-woman, and one or two more of the royal attendants. On their arrival, they found the house to be ‘one of those straggling, half-new, half-old, half-comfortable, and half-forlorn mansions, that are begun in one generation and finished in another.’ We have a graphic and amusing description of accidents encountered and discomforts endured, before the hapless and helpless diarist was settled for the night: the being handed from her carriage by a common postilion; the deserted hall, where not even a porter was to be seen; the entire absence of a welcome, the whole family being in the Park, with the King and Queen and Princesses, and the mistress of the house having deputed no one to act for her; the want of assistance in searching for her apartment; the wanderings through unknown mazy passages; the ‘superfine men in yellow-laced liveries’ occasionally met sauntering along, who disdained to waste a word in answer to inquiries; the sitting down at length in despair in a room destined for one of the Princesses; the alarm at being surprised there by its owner and her sisters; the subsequent promises, only made to be broken, of guidance to the wished-for haven; and finally, when that haven had at last been reached, the humiliation of being summoned to supper by a gentleman-footman haughtily calling out from the foot of the stairs, ‘_The equerries want the ladies!_’ It is impossible to read the account of these ‘difficulties and disgraces’ without seeing that the shy, sensitive, flattered novel-writer had indeed mistaken her vocation when she accepted service in a royal household. The next day was Sunday, and was appointed to be observed, after due attendance at Church, by a visit to the University of Oxford. Late on Saturday night, Miss Burney received the Queen’s commands to belong to the suite on the morrow, and rejoiced exceedingly that she had brought with her a new Chambéry gauze, instead of only the dress she wore, according to her Cerbera’s advice. We abridge Fanny’s narrative of her laborious Sabbath: “AUGUST 13TH.—At six o’clock my hairdresser, to my great satisfaction, arrived. Full two hours was he at work, yet was I not finished, when Swarthy, the Queen’s hairdresser, came rapping at my door, to tell me her Majesty’s hair was done, and she was waiting for me. I hurried as fast as I could, and ran down without any cap. She smiled at sight of my hasty attire, and said I should not be distressed about a hairdresser the next day, but employ Swarthy’s assistant, as soon as he had done with the Princesses: ‘You should have had him,’ she added, ‘to-day, if I had known you wanted him.’