father. I think I dream it wide awake, too; the desire is so strong that it pursues me night and day, and almost persuades me it has something in it of reality : and I do not choose to discourage even ideal happiness.
DR. BURNEY's DIPLOMA.
(Madame d'Arblay to Dr. Burney.) No. 13, Rue d'Anjou, 14th April, 1811. …..Have you received the letter in which I related that your diploma has been brought to me by the perpetual secretary of the class of the Fine Arts of the Institute of France?(212) I shall not have it conveyed but by some very certain hand, and that, now, is most difficult to find. M. Le Breton has given me, also, a book of the list of your camarades, in which he has written your name. He says it will be printed in next year's register. He has delivered to me, moreover, a medal, which is a mark of distinction reserved for peculiar honour to peculiar select personages. Do you suppose I do not often—often—often think who would like, and be fittest to be the bearer to you of these honours? . . .
How kind was the collection of letters you made more precious by endorsing! I beseech you to thank all my dear correspondents, and to bespeak their patience for answers, which shall arrive by every wind that I can make blow their way; but yet more, beseech their generous attention to my impatience for more, should the wind blow fair for me before it will let me hail them in return. Difficultly can they figure to themselves my joy—my emotion at receiving letters from such dates as they can give me!
[During this year Madame d'Arblay's correspondence with her English connexions was interrupted not only by the difficulty of conveying letters, but also by a dangerous illness and the menace of a cancer, from which she could only be relieved by submitting to a painful and hazardous operation. The fortitude with which she bore this suffering, and her generous solicitude for Monsieur d'Arblay and those around her, excited the warmest sympathy in all who heard of her trial, and her French friends universally gave her the name of l'ange,(213) so touched were they by her tenderness and Magnanimity.]
(157) " Dr. Orkborne" is the name of one of the characters in "Camilla," a pedantic scholar, who lives only in his books.-ED.
(158) Widow of Sir Robert Strange, the celebrated engraver, and a very old friend of the Burney family. She was a Scotchwoman (her maiden name, Isabel Lumisden), and in her younger days an enthusiastic Jacobite. She obliged her lover, Strange, to join the young Pretender in 1745, and afterwards married him against her father's wish.-ED.
(159) "The other Bell" was the daughter of Sir Robert and Lady Strange.-ED.
(160) Wife of Sir Lucas Pepys, the physician.-ED.
(161) Anna Letitia Barbauld, the well-known author, and editor of Richardson's Correspondence, etc.-ED.