“The sisters of Shakespeare’s Ophelia, Otway’s Belvidera, Richardson’s Pamela,” says M. Taine, “constitute a race by themselves, soft and fair, with blue eyes, lily whiteness, blushing, of timid delicacy, serious sweetness, framed to yield, bend, cling.” This French generalization touching Englishwomen might have been drawn from Fanny Burney. She had all the “sweetness, devotion, patience, inextinguishable affection,” on which the brilliant Frenchman rings his changes. Her gift of humor, of a keen mind, seems to have been a thing apart, and not in the least to have affected her relations with those immediately around her; she saw them always through a veil of affection and reverence. Her father, whom Macaulay so censures for his carelessness, to her is ever “my dearest father,” “gay, facile and sweet”; she bows in spirit before plain, dull King George and his “sweet queen”; is tremblingly anxious to please the princesses; finds old Mrs. Delany a saint, an angel; cannot bring herself to refuse the overwhelming favor of a court position which she does not want. Yet this woman, who, as acute Mrs. Thrale phrased it, “loved the world reverentially,” was as ready as the most unconventional of beings to lose that world for love. She married D’Arblay in meek defiance of her father’s wish (though indeed Dr. Burney was unresentful); in defiance of public opinion--and it is difficult to realize the state of English opinion concerning Frenchmen at that date; and on a pecuniary basis which makes one smile--her pension of £100 per annum from the queen. M. D’Arblay could not present himself with her at Windsor. She was ecstatically joyful once because the king vouchsafed him recognition on the terrace. Little touches like this throughout the diary show us that she never ceased to value dross, but none the less, she was willing instantly to give it up for gold. The record of the Arcadian life and happiness of these young people of forty-odd is delightful reading. How exquisite is D’Arblay’s romantic reply to the offer of a commission in the French army, that he could only accept it on condition that he should never be required to bear arms against the countrymen of his wife! Conceive the reception of this communication by Napoleon Bonaparte! In 1802 the D’Arblays went, with their little son, to Paris. One would like the romance to end with “they lived happy ever after.” Alas, it is reality after all, not romance; and we must read Frances’s deeply touching account of the death of D’Arblay at Paris in 1812. She survived him twenty-eight years; survived, indeed, their son, her “dear Alex,” who died in 1832. The mother lived on lonely in London till 1840. She published after her marriage the following works: _Brief Reflections Relative to the French Emigrant Clergy_, 1793. _Edwin and Elgitha_, a tragedy, 1795. _Camilla_, a novel, published by subscription in 1796, from which she obtained 3,000 guineas. _The Wanderer_, a tale, 1814.