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Bath society now took up astronomy as a fad, and fashionable ladies named the planets both backward and forward from a blackboard list set up in the Pump-House by Fanny Burney, the clever one. Herschel was invited to give popular lectures on the music of the spheres. Herschel's music-parlors were besieged by good people who wanted to make engagements with him to look through his telescope.

'He had come down one morning to the breakfast-room, and been a considerable time by himself before any body appeared. When, on a subsequent day, he was twitted by Mrs. Thrale for being very late, which he generally was, he defended himself by alluding to the extraordinary morning, when he had been too early. "Madame, I do not like to come down to VACUITY." 'Dr. Burney having remarked that Mr.

It is not necessary to inquire whether opulence be an adequate compensation for the sacrifice of bodily and mental freedom; for Frances Burney paid for leave to be a prisoner and a menial.

Burney's sons had got the command of a ship, wrote: 'I question if any ship upon the ocean goes out attended with more good wishes than that which carries the fate of Burney. I love all of that breed whom I can be said to know, and one or two whom I hardly know I love upon credit, and love them because they love each other. Piozzi Letters, ii. 225. See post, Nov. 16, 1784. Vol. ii. p. 38.

But, as usual, we must turn to a member of her own sex for the last word in the matter. Fanny Burney met her frequently, and made several recording entries in her diary. Here is the first vignette: "She is middle-sized, very thin, and looks infirm; she has a sensible and penetrating countenance, and the air and manner of a woman accustomed to being distinguished, and of great parts. Dr.

"Stop jabbering, girls, and I'll tell you everything," said Jo, wondering if Miss Burney felt any grander over her Evelina than she did over her 'Rival Painters'. Having told how she disposed of her tales, Jo added, "And when I went to get my answer, the man said he liked them both, but didn't pay beginners, only let them print in his paper, and noticed the stories.

Thrale should have left Johnson £200 a year; which, from a fortune like his, would have been a very inconsiderable deduction. Beattie's Life, ed. 1824, p. 290. Miss Burney thus writes of the day of the sale: 'Mrs. Thrale went early to town, to meet all the executors, and Mr. Barclay, the Quaker, who was the bidder.

With Johnson's cordial approbation of the book was mingled a fondness, half gallant half paternal, for the writer; and this fondness his age and character entitled him to show without restraint. He began by putting her hand to his lips. But he soon clasped her in his huge arms, and implored her to be a good girl. She was his pet, his dear love, his dear little Burney, his little character-monger.

Miss Burney went in the royal train to Nuneham, was utterly neglected there in the crowd, and could with difficulty find a servant to show the way to her bedroom, or a hairdresser to arrange her curls.

It will be objected that marriage was her object. If so, there were opportunities at Court she could not have elsewhere, and among the grave clergy who attended, a suitable settlement might have been found. Miss Burney, as the lady of a Bishop, dispensing a serious hospitality and amending his Charges to his clergy, would have been in her right place.