It was in 1749 that Charles Burney took to wife the lady before mentioned, who, on her mother’s side, was of French origin, and grandchild of a Huguenot refugee named Dubois. Esther Sleepe herself was bred in the City of London, and her future husband first saw her at the house of his elder brother, Richard Burney, in Hatton Garden. To his fashionable friends the marriage must have seemed an imprudent one, for Miss Sleepe had no fortune to compensate for her obscure parentage. From the ‘Memoirs of Dr. Burney,’[4] we learn that her father was a man of ill conduct; but Fanny everywhere speaks with enthusiasm of her mother’s mother. Somewhat strangely, this lady herself adhered to the Roman Catholic creed, though she was the child of a man exiled by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and though she suffered her own daughter Esther to be brought up in the Anglican Communion. In view of the union which Frances Burney afterwards contracted, it is as well to bear in mind that one of her parents was partly of French extraction. In consequence of his wife’s connections, Charles Burney on his marriage hired a house in the City. He was presently elected organist of St. Dionis Backchurch, produced several pieces of music, and laid himself out to obtain pupils. These flocked to him from all sides. The Grevilles had gone abroad shortly after he left them, but he could still count on their influence, and that of the friends they had procured him, while he found new supporters daily among the merchants and bankers east of Temple Bar. His wife bore him a first-born son, who was baptized James, according to the immemorial usage of the Burney race, and then a daughter, who received her mother’s name of Esther. But when all things looked fair and promising, the sky suddenly became overcast. The young father’s health broke down: a violent attack of fever was succeeded by a train of symptoms threatening consumption; and, as a last resource, he was ordered by his medical adviser, the poet-physician Armstrong,[5] to throw up his employments in London and go to live in the country.