We hear from Lady Bloomfield that the sum total of a Maid of Honour's obligations, when she is in residence, like a canon, is to give the Queen her bouquet before dinner every other day. In reality, the young lady and her companions, as well as the older and more experienced Ladies and Women of the Bedchamber, are in waiting to drive, ride, or walk with the Queen when she desires their society, to sit near her at dinner, to share her occupations--such as reading, music, drawing, needlework--when she wishes it, to help to make up any games, dances, &c. &c. These favoured damsels enjoy a modest income of three hundred a year, and wear a badge--the Queen's picture, surrounded with brilliants on a red bow--such as the public may have seen in the portraits of several of the Maids of Honour belonging to the Queen which were exhibited on the walls of the Academy within recent years. The hours of "the Maids" never were so early as those of their royal mistress, while their labours, like their responsibilities, have been light as thistledown in comparison with hers. The greatest restriction imposed on these youthful members of the Household, when Lady Bloomfield as Miss Liddell figured among them, seems to have been that they were expected to be at their posts, and they were not at liberty to entertain all visitors in their private sitting-rooms, but had to receive some of their friends in a drawing-room which belonged to the ladies in common. The routine of the Palace passes before us, unpretentious in its dignity as the actual life was led: the waiting of the ladies in the corridor to meet the Queen when she left her apartments and accompany her to dinner; the talk at the dinner-table; the round game of cards--_vingt-et-un_, or some other in the evening, for which the stakes were so low, that the players were accustomed to provide themselves with a stock of new shillings, sixpences, and fourpenny pieces, and the winnings were now threepence, now eightpence; the workers and talkers in the background. In spite of different times and different manners, there is a slight flavour of Queen Charlotte's drawing-room, in Miss Burney's day, about the whole scene.