described with relentless minuteness. If a lady goes to a ball, we are not merely told that she looked radiant in "white and gold," or in "scarlet tulle," after the present slipshod fashion; but we are carefully informed that "a scarf of cerulean tint flew between her right shoulder and her left hip, being buttoned at each end by a row of rubies. A coronet of diamonds, through which there passed a white branch of the feathers of the ostrich, was inserted on the left decline of her lovely head." And so on, until the costume is complete.
By this time women had regularly enrolled themselves in the victorious army of novel-writers, and had won fame and fortune in the field. Consider the brilliant and instantaneous success of Frances Burney. Think of the excitement she aroused, and the honors heaped thick and fast upon her. A woman of twenty-six when she wrote "Evelina," she was able, by dint of short stature and childish ways, to pass for a girl of seventeen, which increased amazingly the popular interest in her novel. Sheridan swore he could not believe so young a thing could manifest such genius, and begged her to write him a comedy on the spot. Sir
