children, and the exertion of almost every virtue. Madame d'Henin finishes her letter with charging me to call her to the remembrance of those friends whom she so highly venerates, and whom she always flatters herself she yet shall visit again.

May 13. Ah, my dearest friends-what a melancholy end to my hopes and my letter. I have just heard that Lord Whitworth set off for Chantilly last night; war therefore seems inevitable; and my grief, I, who feel myself now of two countries, is far greater than I can wish to express. While posts are yet open, write to me, my beloved friend, and by Hamburgh. I trust we may still and regularly correspond, long as the letters may be in travelling. As our letters never treat but of our private concerns, health, and welfare, neither country can object to our intercourse. Let me not therefore lose a solace I shall more than ever require in this lengthened absence-an absence for which I was so little prepared, and to which I am so little able to reconcile myself. I can but pray for peace. My dearest friends will join the prayer, made with the whole troubled soul of their tenderly affectionate

F. D'A.

Madame d'Arblay to Dr. Burney.

Passy, May 6, 1803.

IF my dearest father has the smallest idea of the suspense and terror in which I have spent this last fortnight, from the daily menace of war, he will be glad, I am sure, of the respite allowed me— if no more-from a visit I have just received from

Mrs. Huber, who assures me the Ambassador has postponed his setting off, and consented to send another courier. To say how I pray for his success would indeed be needless. I have hardly closed my eyes many nights past. My dearest father will easily conceive the varying conflicts of our minds, and how mutual are our sufferings. We have everywhere announced our intention to embrace you next October, the state of M. d'Arblay's affairs makes it impossible for him to indulge me sooner; but if the war takes place, the difficulties of procuring licence, passports, passage, and the ruinous length of travelling through Hamburgh, as well as the deadly sickness of so long a voyage—all these thoughts torment me night and day, and rest will, I fear, be a stranger to my eyes till the conflict is terminated; and then, whether it will bring me back rest, or added rest-robbing materials for destroying it, who can tell? At all events, let me intreat to hear from you, my beloved padre, as speedily as possible. Our last accounts of you were good, with regard to your recovery from the influenza. God grant you may be able to confirm the assurance of your re

establishment!

We were buoyed up here for some days with the hope that General Lauriston was gone to England as plenipo, to end the dread contest without new effusion of blood but Paris, like London, teems with hourly false reports, and this intelligence, unhappily, was of the number. The continued kindness and friendship of that gentleman for M. d'Arblay make me take a warm interest in whatever belongs to him. About ten days ago, when M. d'Arblay called upon him, relative to the affair so long impending of his retraite,

he took his hand, and said, "Fais-moi ton compliment.' You are sure how heartily M. d'Arblay would be ready to comply" but what," he demanded, " can be new to you of honours?" "I have succeeded," he answered, "for you!-the First Consul has signed your mémoire." When such delicacy is joined to warm attachment, my dearest father will not wonder I should be touched by it. The forms of the business, however, are not yet quite completed, but it has passed all the difficulties which could impede its conclusion. At any other time I should have announced this with far more spirit, but my heart is at present so oppressed with the still remaining fear of hostilities, that I can merely state the fact; and rejoice that-small, very small as it proves—M. d'Arblay has now something in his native country, where all other claims are vain, and all other expectations completely destroyed. He had been flattered with recovering some portion, at least, of his landed property near Joigny; but those who have purchased it during his exile add such enormous and unaccountable charges to what they paid for it at that period, that it is become, to us, wholly unattainable.

Madame d'Arblay to Dr. Burney.

MY DEAREST FATHER,

May 14, 1803.❘

gone.

I

THE enclosed missed the opportunity for which it was written, and now-the ambassador is am offered a place for this in a conveyance follows him; and it is well something was ready, for I am incapable of writing now, further than expressing my ceaseless prayers for a speedy restoration of

peace. My dearest father!-how impossible to describe my distress. Had I any other partner upon earth I could hardly support it at all: but he suffers nearly as much as myself. He has just received the retraite, which is a mark of being under government protection, and that is much. You will easily, however, conceive how completely it makes it impossible for him to quit his country during a war. I need write nothing explanatory; and I cannot, in the disordered state of my nerves, from this bitter stroke, do more now than pray Heaven to bless and preserve beloved father, and to restore the nations to peace, and me to his arms.

my

Madame d'Arblay to Dr. Burney.

Passy, April 11, 1804.

We live in the most quiet, and, I think, enviable retirement. Our house is larger than we require, but not a quarter furnished. Our view is extremely pretty from it, and always cheerful; we rarely go out, yet always are pleased to return. We have our books, our prate, and our boy-how, with all this, can we, or ought we to suffer ourselves to complain of our narrowed and narrowing income? If we are still able to continue at Passy, endeared to me now beyond any other residence away from you all, by a friendship I have formed here with one of the sweetest women I have ever known, Madame de Maisonneuve, and to M. d'Arblay by similar sentiments for all her family, our philosophy will not be put to severer trials than it can sustain. And this engages us to bear a thousand small priva

tions which we might, perhaps, escape, by shutting ourselves up in some spot more remote from the capital. But as my deprivation of the society of my friends is what I most lament, so something that approaches nearest to what I have lost affords me the best reparation.

Madame d'Arblay to Dr. Burney.

Passy, May 29th, 1805. BEFORE I expected it, my promised opportunity for again writing to my most dear father is arrived. I entirely forget whether, before the breaking out of the war stopt our correspondence, M. d'Arblay had already obtained his retraite ; and, consequently, whether that is an event I have mentioned or not. Be that as it may, he now has it—it is 1500 livres, or £62. 10s. per annum. But all our resources from England ceasing with the peace, we had so little left from what we had brought over, and M. d'Arblay has found so nearly nothing remaining of his natural and hereditary claims in his own province, that he determined upon applying for some employment that might enable him to live with independence, however parsimoniously. This he has, with infinite difficulty, &c., at length obtained, and he is now a redacteur in the civil department of les Batimens, &c. This is no sinecure. He attends at his bureau from half past nine to half past four o'clock every day; and as we live so far off as Passy he is obliged to set off for his office between eight and nine. and does not return to his hermitage till past five. However, what necessity has urged us to desire, and made him solicit, we must not, now acquired, name or