another person. Yet there is a charm all
over the book, which some may place here, some there, but which
all will confess. For me it is not so much that Fanny herself is a
charming girl, and a girl of shrewd observation, of a pointed pen, and
an admirable gift of mimicry. She has all that, and more--she has a
good heart. Her sister Susan is as good as she, and there are many of
Susan's letters. But the real charm of the book, I think, is in the
series of faithful pictures it contains of the everyday round of an
everyday family. Dutch pictures all--passers-by, a knock at the front
door, callers--Mr. Young, "in light blue embroidered with silver,
a bag and sword, and walking in the rain"; a jaunt to Greenwich, a
concert at home--the Agujari in one of her humours; a masquerade--a
very private one, at the house of Mr. Laluze.... Hetty had for three
months thought of nothing else ... she went as a Savoyard with a
hurdy-gurdy fastened round her waist. Nothing could look more simple,
innocent and pretty. "My dress was a close pink Persian vest
covered with a gauze in loose pleats...." What else? Oh, a visit to
Teignmouth--Maria Allen now Mrs. Ruston; another to Worcester; quiet
days at King's Lynn, where "I have just finished _Henry and Frances_
... the greatest part of the last volume is wrote by Henry, and on
the gravest of grave subjects, and that which is most dreadful to our
thoughts, Eternal Misery...." Terrific novel: but need I go on? There
may be some to whom a description of the nothings of our life will be
as flat as the nothings themselves--but I am not of that party. The
things themselves interest me, and I confess the charm. It is the
charm of innocence and freshness, a morning dew upon the words.

The Burneys, however, can do no more for us than shed that auroral
dew. They cannot reassure us of our normal humanity, since they needed
reassurance themselves.

Where, then, shall we turn? So far as I am aware, to two only, except
for two others whom I leave out of account. Rousseau is one, for it is
long since I read him, but my recollection is that the _Confessions_
is a kind of novel, pre-meditated, selective, done with great art.
Marie Bashkirtseff is another. I have not read her at all. Of the two
who remain I leave Pepys also out of account, because, though it may
be good for us to read Pepys, it is better to have read him and be
through with it. There, under the grace of God, go a many besides
Pepys, and amo