“The Queen then promised that, after the next birthday, Miss Burney should be set at liberty. But the promise was ill kept; and her Majesty showed displeasure at being reminded of it.”
At length, however, the prison door was opened, and Frances was free once more. Her health was restored by traveling, and she returned to London in health and spirits. Macaulay tells us that she went to visit the palace, “her old dungeon, and found her successor already far on the way to the grave, and kept to strict duty, from morning till midnight, with a sprained ankle and a nervous fever.”
An ignorant and unlettered woman would doubtless not have found this life in the palace tedious, and our sympathy would not have been aroused for her; for as long as the earth lasts there must be human beings fitted for every station, and it is supposed, till the end of all things, there must be cooks, housemaids and dining-room servants, which will make it never possible for the whole human family to stand entirely upon the same platform socially and intellectually. And Miss Burney’s wretchedness, which calls forth our sympathy, was not because she had to perform the duties of waiting-maid, but because to a gifted and educated woman these duties were uncongenial; and congeniality means happiness; uncongeniality unhappiness.
[CHAPTER XIV.]
From the sorrows of Miss Burney in the palace—a striking contrast with the menials described in our own country homes—I will return to another charming place on James river—Powhatan Seat—a mile below Richmond, which had descended in the Mayo family two hundred years.
Here, it was said, the Indian chief Powhatan had lived, and here was shown the veritable stone supposed to have been the one upon which Captain Smith’s head was laid, when the Indian princess Pocahontas rescued him.
This historic stone, near the parlor window, was only an ugly, dark, broad, flat stone, but imagination pictured ever around it the Indian group; Smith’s head upon it; the infuriated chief with uplifted club in the act of dealing the death blow; the grief and shriek of Pocahontas, as she threw herself upon Smith imploring her father to spare him—a piercing cry to have penetrated the heart of the savage king!
Looking out from the parlor window and imagining this savage scene, how strange a contrast with the picture which met the eye within! Around the fireside assembled the loveliest family group, where kindness and affection beamed in every eye, and father, mother, brothers and sisters were linked together by tenderest devotion and sympathy.