For a considerable time the income on which she, her husband, and her child subsisted, did not exceed £125 a year. They were too independent in spirit to accept assistance from friends; too upright to rely on contingencies; and Madame D’Arblay pursued, in all the minutiæ of domestic life, a course of self-denial such as, she wrote to her Susanna, “would make you laugh to see, though perhaps cry to hear.” With all this, her mind and thoughts were never shut up in her economy. It was at this period that she originated the invitation sent by her and M. D’Arblay to his friend the Comte de Narbonne, to make their cottage his home; and it was also during these straitened circumstances that she withdrew her comedy of ‘Love and Fashion’ from rehearsal, in dutiful compliance with the wishes of her father; although the management of Covent Garden had promised her £400 for the manuscript. [Sidenote: Fidelity.] Queen Charlotte’s expression, that she was “true as gold,” was abundantly verified in her friendship. SARAH CHAUNCEY WOOLSEY, Edr.: ‘Diary and Letters of Frances Burney, Mme. D’Arblay.’ * * * * * The novels give an impression of a singularly keen, clever, observant woman, with a sense of the ridiculous too much developed to be a very sympathetic, or even safe, friend.... She is seen to best advantage in the book where she appears as daughter, sister, friend, servant (there is really no other word for the position she held at court), and finally wife and mother. In the ‘Diary and Letters’ we not only learn how largely voluntary were the restrictions she imposed upon her literary work, but how much her private life gained in charm and usefulness by the subordination of the author’s part; and, learning this, we forgive her the more easily for having partially hidden the talent which, well husbanded, might have given us more ‘Evelinas’ and ‘Cecilias.’... Delightful as ‘Evelina’ and ‘Cecilia’ are to those whose taste they suit, it is doubtful whether we should get more enjoyment out of a dozen novels of the same quality than we do out of these two. And ... at the present moment these two are more than enough for most people. MARY ELIZABETH CHRISTIE: ‘Miss Burney’s Novels.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Her old age.] I attended her during the last twenty years of her long life. She lived in almost total seclusion from all but a few members of her own family; changed her lodgings more frequently than her dresses and occupied herself laboriously in composing those later works which retain so little of the charm of her earlier writings. Mr. Rogers was the only literary man who seemed to know of her existence. SIR HENRY HOLLAND: ‘Recollections of Past Life.’ New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1872. * * * * *