To possess a power is almost always to be conscious of it. No one knew better than Miss Burney what she could do, or how to select subjects that displayed her excellence.

Her second novel, “Cecilia,” though it has not the charm and the seduction of “Evelina,” is, even more than that pleasing tale, an acute mirror of the passing follies of the day. It is admirably adapted to display Miss Burney's faculty for bringing out forcibly the weaknesses and ridicules of men and women, and so long as the incidents are chosen with reference to those two objects, the tale remains excellent.

Cecilia is a beautiful and accomplished heiress of twenty. A few months more will put her in possession of an estate with a rental of three thousand a year, and clogged by only one condition, that the happy possessor of her hand shall also assume her surname of Beverley. From this, and from the accident of being left for a few months to the guardianship of three gentlemen of very different tempers, spring all the troubles of the beautiful orphan. The three guardians are admirably drawn. Mr. Briggs is a sordid miser, Mr. Harrel is extravagant to profligacy, and Mr. Delvile, a gentleman of ancient birth and pompous pride, can never recover the surprise into which he is thrown at finding himself in conjunction with two such individuals.