Mrs. Delany—Her Childhood—Her First Marriage—Swift—Dr. Delany—The Dowager Duchess of Portland—Mrs. Delany a Favourite at Court—Her Flower-Work—Miss Burney’s First Visit to Mrs. Delany—Meets the Duchess of Portland—Mrs. Sleepe—Crisp—Growth of Friendship with Mrs. Delany— Society at her House—Mrs. Delany’s Reminiscences—The Lockes of Norbury Park—Mr. Smelt—Dr. Burney has an Audience of the King and Queen—The King’s Bounty to Mrs. Delany—Miss Burney Visits Windsor—Meets the King and Queen—‘Evelina’—Invention Exhausted—The King’s Opinion of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Shakespeare—The Queen and Bookstalls— Expectation—Journey to Windsor—The Terrace—Dr. Burney’s Disappointment—Proposal of the Queen to Miss Burney—Doubts and Fears— An Interview—The Decision—Mistaken Criticism—Burke’s Opinion—A Misconception—Horace Walpole’s Regret—Miss Burney’s Journals of her Life at Court—Sketches of Character—The King and Queen—Mrs. Schwellenberg—The Queen’s Lodge—Miss Burney’s Apartments—A Day’s Duties—Royal Snuff—Fictitious Names in the Diary—The Princesses—A Royal Birthday—A Walk on the Terrace—The Infant Princess Amelia. We have mentioned Mrs. Delany in our list of the more remarkable friends made by Miss Burney during the winter succeeding the publication of ‘Cecilia.’ Burke followed a fashion then prevalent when he pronounced this venerable lady the fairest model of female excellence in the previous age. Mrs. Delany owed her distinction in a great measure to the favour which she enjoyed with the royal family. Born in 1700, she was early instructed in the ways of a Court, having been brought up by an aunt who had been maid-of-honour to Queen Mary, and had received for her charge the promise of a similar employment in the household of Queen Anne. Having missed this promotion, the girl next fell into the hands of her uncle, George Granville, Lord Lansdowne, who, though celebrated by Pope as ‘the friend of every Muse,’ was not gentleman enough to treat his brother’s child with decent consideration. He forced Mary Granville, at seventeen, into a marriage with Alexander Pendarves, a Cornish squire near sixty, of drunken habits and morose manners, who sought the match chiefly to disappoint his expectant heir. After a few years, this worthy died of a fit, to the great relief of all belonging to him, but, unfortunately for his wife, without having made the provision for her which, to do him justice, he appears to have intended. Some time later the widow paid a visit to Ireland, where she became acquainted with Dean Swift, and his intimate associate, Dr. Patrick Delany, who was famed as a scholar and preacher. After her return, Swift exchanged occasional letters with her so long as he retained his reason. In 1743, Dr. Delany, then himself a widower, came over to England to offer himself to her in marriage. She accepted him, in spite of her family, whose high stomach rose against a _mésalliance_ with an Irish parson. Their influence,