the

The

repeated offers of marriage, which she refers | thing like social life or death. The father wholly to her father, exceedingly angry that he and daughter were in town, trembling with should not be the first applied to. Often car- a thousand apprehensions, up to the last ried away by the anti-hero, but rescued either moment; while the mother, not less anxious, by her father or the hero. Often reduced to waited in the pretty cottage in the wintry support herself and her father by her talents, weather for the all-important news. and work for her bread; continually cheated seriousness of the crisis, and the tender and defrauded of her hire; worn down to a skeleton, and now and then starved to death. At thoughtfulness of the writer, are shown on address of this letter. very "Mrs. last, hunted out of civilized society, denied the poor shelter of the humblest cottage, they are Mitford-good news," is written outside, compelled to retreat into Kamskatcha, where that the very first glance might be reassurthe poor father, quite worn down, finding his ing:end approaching throws himself on the ground, and after four or five hours of tender advice and parental admonition to his miserable child, expires in a fine burst of literary enthusiasm, intermingled with invectives against the holders of tithes. Heroine inconsolable for some time, but afterwards crawls back towards her former country, having at least twenty narrow escapes of falling into the hands of anti-hero; and at last,in the very nick of time, turning a corner to

avoid him, runs into the arms of the hero him

self, who, having just shaken off the scruples which fettered him before, was at the very moment setting off in pursuit of her. The tenderest and completest éclaircissement takes place, and they are happily united. Throughout the whole work heroine to be in the most elegant society, and living in high style."

dearest mother, without writing a few lines to "I cannot suffer this parcel to go to you, my tell you of the complete success of my play. It was received, not merely with rapturous apdisapprobation from beginning to end. We had plause, but without the slightest symptom of not a single order in the house, so that from first to last the approbation was sincere and general. William Harness and Mr. Talfourd are both quite satisfied with the whole affair, and between joy for my triumph and sympathy with my other friends are half-crazy. Mrs. Trollope, the play, has cried herself half blind. I am, and have been, perfectly calm, and am merely tired with the great number of friends whom I have seen to-day.

God bless you, my dearest mother! Papa is quite well, and happier than you can imagine. He had really half do both of us wish to share our happiness with a mind to go to you instead of writing, so much you."

66

"A real impression has been made, and a reputation of the highest order established," she writes a little later to her friend Sir William Elford, complaining, however, playfully, that her second volume of Our Village, " which had just been published, was likely to harm the tragedy, as "people will never allow anybody the power of doing two things well; and because it is admitted that I write playful prose, there be many who assume that I cannot write serious verse.

Miss Mitford's literary fame stands upon a much slighter and less substantial basis than does that of Miss Austen. Indeed it is rather what she herself calls a literary life than any actual work which has made her so well known; and as a literary life, her modest, kindly, long career is remarkable enough. A variety of pleasant sketches chief among which is her sketch of herself and her flowery cottage- and descriptions of the pretty, luxuriant, leafy landscape, in which all her little pictures are enclosed, are the things which occur to our mind when we meet with her name; yet this pleasant, tranquil paysagiste began her life by the tuThis is so true, that it is diffimultuous triumphs of a dramatic author, cult even to imagine the comely face of our and had the curious sensation of seeing Cov- pleasant village historian growing pale with ent Garden filled to the doors, "so im- fright in the stage-box of a vast and crowdmense a house that you might have walked ed theatre, where "the white handkerchiefs over the heads in the pit," to listen to her are going continually," and the vast auditragedies. It is a strange episode in the ence weeps and thrills with tragic interest. most tranquil of lives. Her first attempt The reader smiles, and feels disposed to was in a play called "Julian," which we are doubt the narrative, even when it stands curtly informed was successful, but which before him in all the integrity of print; for was assailed by a storm of criticism and anything less tragic, less solemn, than the speedily withdrawn. Her second success sweet-tempered round-about woman, to she thus describes, with a moderation and whom her flowers and her dogs and her vilcalmness which is remarkable after the ex- lage neighbours come so natural, could not citement of such a moment, to her mother. be conceived. We do not recognize her in The family were in great straits by this that grand accidental episode of her life, time, caused by Dr. Mitford's folly, and the any more than we can sit down to read Fossuccess or failure of this play meant some-cari (which all the same is perfectly read

able). It is only when she is back again | women are obliged to bear, "relying with a among her green lanes, among her geran- blessed sanguineness on my poor endeavours, iums, that we can identify our friend. But has not, I believe, even inquired for a situawith such surroundings we know no English writer who is more supreme in her gentle way. It is not a great way. There is no tragedy here, and such notes of pain as must come into every human strain, are struck so softly, and come so tenderly into the brighter measure, that they sound no harsher than a sigh. But this flowery, leafy, sunny Berks, with its streams and its woods, its cottages and its country-folks, its simple ways and rural quiet, where was there ever any English country more clearly put upon paper? How real and vivid was the impression it made (we remember) upon one little north-country imagination ever so many years ago! The scent of the violets, and the rustle of the great branched trees, and every detail of the landscape came before us as if we had been there nay, more powerfully than if we had been there, as imagination is always more exquisite than fact. For that intense and well-remembered delight, it is fit that we should render Miss Mitford all the thanks that words can express. It is not perhaps so high an intellectual enjoyment as that which is given, to a mind capable of appreciating them, by Miss Austen's wonderful pictures, yet the recollection is sweeter to the heart.

tion; and I do not press the matter, though I anxiously wish it, being willing to give one more trial to the theatre. If I could but get the assurance of earning for my dear father and mother a humble competence, I should be the happiest creature in the world. But for these dear ties I should never write another line, but go out in some situation as other destitute women do." This was her encouragement, poor soul, in undertaking what she calls the boldest attempt ever made by woman" - a grand historical tragedy on the subject of Charles I. and Cromwell, a work which, after costing her infinite pains, was considered dangerous by the Lord Chamberlain, who refused his licence for its representation. She was at this time some years over thirty, at the height of a woman's powers, but not at the height of her hopes; for by that time life has begun to drag a little with the solitary. The only thing which mitigates our indignation against the father who, with "blessed sanguineness," could thus put himself upon his child's shoulders to be supported is, that he and the tenderer, sweeter mother filled her life at least with domestic happiness. "I hope," she adds, with quick compunction after the plaint we have just quoted, Nothing could be more unlike the calm"there is no want of duty in my wishing existence of the author of "Pride and Preju- | him to contribute his efforts with mine to dice" than the anxious harassed life led by our support."

Mary Mitford. The fitful splendour which He was her first object all her life; and flickered about her youth had long disap- it is only by such a faint implied reproof as peared. The little family, after various struggles to retain its position, had been driven out of the house which the father and mother had taken such pleasure in building, into a tiny cottage in a village street; and instead of the calm which so many people think — erroneously, in our opinion to be essential for all mental work, it was among cares of the most depressing kind that Miss Mitford took up as a profession the work which she had fondly dallied with through all her earlier years. "I may in time make something of my poor, poor brains," she cries, pathetically, after her first dramatic failure. "I am now chained to a desk eight, ten, twelve hours a-day at mere drudgery. All my thoughts of writing are for hard money. All my correspondence is on hard business. Oh, pity me! pity me! My very mind is sinking under the fatigue and anxiety. My dear father," she adds at a later period, with that pitiful endurance of the meanness of the men belonging to them, and anxious endeavours to give it the best possible aspect to the world, which some

the above that she ever betrays to the outside world any sense of his sins against her. But her love for him was that of a mother rather than a daughter an anxious, protecting, not unsuspicious affection. She writes to him with expressions of fondness which sound exaggerated, though they are apparently natural to her- - but always with a latent sense that he is naughty, and that there will be various matters to forgive and forget when he comes back from his rovings. A strange picture! One can see the two women at home in their anxious consultations - the mother and daughter, who think there is nobody like him in the world, and yet lay their kind heads together and wonder what he may be about - how he may be squandering their substance, what new burdens he may bring back to be made the best of. Yet what a handsome, fine, white-haired gentleman -a father to be proud of- does he appear in "Our Village," half seen in the sanctuary of his study, a magistrate and authority! Such a half-conscious, dear deception is common

enough among women whom the world few alleviations of a destiny that is wearing thinks comfortably blind to all their idol's down my health and mind and spirits and defects, not knowing, like a stupid world strength- a life spent in efforts beyond as it is, that it is their very keenness of my powers, and which will end in the worksight which produces that mist of tender house or in Bedlam as the body or mind illusion thus hung up and held up to dazzle shall sink first. He ought to feel this, but other eyes. he does not."

The success of the tragedies seems to There are many of these melancholy halfhave been a fitful and not very profitable complaints in the latter part of her, or kind of success; but "Our Village" went rather of her father's, life. Her destiny into fourteen editions in the course of a hangs very heavily upon her. She was not few years, and a fluctuating unsteady sort born, she feels, for such a fate; neither, of prosperity visited the cottage. They set she thinks, with natural generalizing, was up a pony and chaise, and by times were any woman ever intended to support a in good spirits; but it does not seem that family forgetting, as was also quite natuMiss Mitford was ever fully reconciled to ral, how many women do. She goes over that stern necessity of labour, which to a little list of literary women, in her sad some people in this world is so great a moments, to prove this unsatisfactory thegrievance, and to some so great a blessing. ory. Mrs. Hofland is ill, Mrs. Hall is ill, She had been brought up in wealth and Miss Landon dead, and so on through a ease, for one thing, and had the feeling melancholy catalogue. As the master of upon her, however concealed, that the the house grew older and more infirm, life money which ought to have maintained grew ever harder and harder in the cottage herself and her family had been squandered. at Three Mile Cross. He who had never Besides, she was one of the Northumber-been considerate became exacting, and in land Mitfords, allied to very great people his demands upon her for personal tendance, indeed; and though there is no appearance forgot that she had to be the breadwinner of any contempt for her craft or its profes- as well as the nurse; while she, poor soul, sors naturally arising in her own mind, it worn to death with long hours of reading must have been a little hard to struggle to him, nursing him, watching his every against her father's feelings on the subject want, felt guilty and wretched to the botfeelings which remind us of one or two tom of her heart that she could not at the of Mr. Dickens's characters, of the digni- same time work for him, and carry on a fied Mr. Turvey drop and of Mr. Bray in double labour. For his sake she had given "Nicholas Nickleby." "My father," she up a prospect opened to her by the kindness writes, very kind to me in many respects, of some distant relatives, who proposed to very attentive if I'm ill, very solicitous that her to live with them and be their companmy garden should be nicely kept, that I ion -"not a dependant, but a daughter." should go out with him and be amused, is They were people whom she liked and yet, so far as art, literature, and the drama trusted, and the arrangement would have are concerned, of a temper infinitely diffi- given her immediate ease and some permacult to deal with. He hates and despises nent provision; but she gives it up with a them and all their professors, looks on them sigh, in consideration of her father's comwith hatred and scorn, and is constantly fort. To have left him here would have taunting me with my friends' and my been impossible," she says; "and if Mr. people, as he calls them, reproaching me Ragget had (as I believe he would) given if I hold the slightest intercourse with either him a home at Odiam, the sacrifice of his editor, artist, or actor, and treating with old habits, his old friends, the blameless frank contempt every one not of a certain self-importance which results from his stastation in the county. He ought to tion as chairman of the Reading Bench, remember," pleads the poor authoress, not and his really influential position in the without a certain feeling of caste in her own county, where we are much respected in person, and not sure that, after all, he may spite of our poverty, would have been far be right and she is demeaning herself, too much to ask or to permit." This possithat it is not for my own pleasure, but bility, accordingly, was given up; but as from a sense of duty, that I have been the weary years stole on, and the old man, thrown in the way of such persons; and he whose comforts must not be infringed whatshould allow for the natural sympathy of ever happened, descended lower and lower similar pursuits, and the natural wish to do into that feebleness of age in which even the little that one so poor and so powerless the generous and amiable become exacting can do to bring merit, and that of a very without knowing it, heavier and heavier high order, into notice. It is one of the clouds stole over the devoted daughter,

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66

66

and her weariness or perhaps the fact
that her life by this time was cheered by
female friends to whom she could utter her
heart more freely-forces her into speech.
"After all, a wretched life is mine," she
cries in her despair.
66 Health is
gone;

and if I can but last while my dear father
requires me if the little money we have
can but last-then it would matter little
how soon I too were released. .. My
life is only valuable, as being useful to him."
And then come heartrending letters to the
faithful friend, Mr. Harness, who lived to
plan and partially edit these volumes, but
who is dead since their publication. He
was her trustee, and held in his hands the
last remnant of her mother's fortune, and
not very long before it had been necessary
for her to write him a sharp, brief note,
strangely concentrated in its pain and
shame, begging him to receive no applica-
tions for any part of this money except such
as came from herself. But when the last
stage of this long struggle comes, the poor
soul, who can see no future beyond her
father's death, and cares for no provision,
nor anticipates any want of one after that
event, changes her tone; and she writes to
him as follows, with a piteous pleading and
remorseful self-accusation which goes to the
reader's heart:

"I have to entreat of you that you will suffer so much money as may be. necessary to pay our debts to be taken from that in Mr. Blandy's hands - say the two hundred pounds lately paid in. The necessity for this has arisen, partly from the infamous conduct of Messrs. Finden, but chiefly from my dear father's state of health and spirits, which has made me little better than a nurse; and lastly, from my own want of strength, which has prevented my exerting nyself as I ought to have done to remedy these disappointmeats. Nobody, to see me, would believe the wretched state of my health. Could you know all I have to undergo and suffer, you would rather wonder that I am alive, than that (joined to all I have to do with my dear father reading to him, waiting upon him, playing at cribbage with him, and bearing, alone, the depression of a man once so strong and so active, and now so feeble) — you would rather wonder that I have lived through this winter, than that I have failed to provide the means of support for our little household.

"I am, however, rather better now, and feel that, if relieved from this debt, which weighs me down, I shall (as I have told my dear father that I must) rather seem to neglect him in the minor points of reading to him, &c., than again fail in working at my desk. Be assured that if you allow me to go to my writing with a clear mind, I shall not again be found wanting. It has been all my fault now, and if that fault be visited upon my father's white head, and he be

sent to jail for my omissions, I should certainly not long remain to grieve over my sin, for such it is. It is a great trial, for my father has never for the last four years, been two months without some attack of immediate danger, and the nursing and attending him are in themselves almost more than can be done by a person whose own state of health involves constant attention, and mind and body. But I see now that a portion leaves her well-nigh exhausted and unnerved in of the more fatiguing part of this attendance (say the reading aloud) must be relinquished, and however grievous, it shall be so, for the more stringent duty of earning our daily bread. I will do this, and you, I am sure, will enable me to go with a free mind to my task. I am sure that you will do so. It would be a most false and mistaken friendship for me which should induce you to hesitate, for my very heart would be broken if aught should befall his grey

hairs.

provident; he still is irritable and difficult to "My dear father has, years ago, been imlive with; but he is a person of a thousand virtues honest, faithful, just, and true, and kind. There are very, very few half so good in this mixed world. It is my fault that this money is needed entirely my fault; and, if it be withheld, I am well assured of the consequences to both: law proceedings will be commenced; my dear father will be overthrown mind and body, and I shall never know another happy hour. I feel after this that you will not refuse me the kindness that I ask.""

This letter, dated in July 1811, was followed in about six months by another in a similar strain:

"I sit down with inexpressible reluctance to write to you, my ever dear and kind friend, because I well know that you will blame me for the occasion; but it must be said, and I can only entreat your indulgence and your sympathy. My poor father has passed this winter in a miserable state of health and spirits. His eyesight fails him now so completely that he cannot even read the leading articles in the newspapers. Accordingly, I have not only every day gone through the daily paper, debates and all, which forms a sort of necessity to one who has so long taken an interest in everything that passes, but, after that, I have read to him from dark till bedtime, and then have often (generally) sat at his bedside almost till morning, sometimes reading, sometimes answering letters as he slept, expecting the terrible attacks of cramp, three or four of a night, during which he gets out of bed to walk the room, unable to get in again without my assistance. I have been left no time for composition - neither time nor heart - so that we have spent money without earning any.

"What I have to ask of you, then, is to authorize Mr. Blandy to withdraw sufficient money to set us clear with the world, with a few pounds to start with, and then I must prefer the greater duty to the less. I must so far neglect my dear

MISS AUSTEN AND MISS MITFORD.

father as to gain time for writing what may sup- contemporary poets whom few people, we
port us. The season is coming on when he will daresay, ever heard of, was put together in
be able to sit in the garden, and perhaps to see this time of rest.
a few friends of an afternoon, and then this in- imposition to be given to the world under
The book is a kind of an
cessant reading will be less necessary to him. such a title, it must be allowed, but it is full
At all events, the thing must be done, and shall. of the most tender, charming little bits of
It was a great weakness in me, a self-indulgence,
not to do so before, for the fault is entirely mine. autobiography aud a certain serene sabbati-
I believe, when these debts are paid, his own cal calm. She tells us how she goes out
spirits will lose that terrible depression, broken
only by excessive irritability, which has ren-
almost daily "to" the charming green lane
dered this winter a scene of misery to himself

and a trial to me.

---

66

have before made mention," attended by the grassy, turfy, shady lane of which I "Do not fancy, my dear friend, that I cast little maid, with her books and writing-case. her little dog Fanchon, and her favourite the slightest blame on my dear father. The de- There on "a certain green hillock, under jection and the violence belong to disease fully down-hanging elms, as much as any other symptom. If anybody be partly found, partly scraped out for ourwhere we have to blame, I am the person, for not having taken selves, a turfy seat and turfy table redolent care that he should have no anxiety-nothing of wild thyme, and a thousand fairy flowers, but age and infirmity. to bear. God forgive delicious in its coolness, its fragrance, and me for my want of energy! for suffering myself its repose," the genial, tender old woman to be wholly engrossed by the easier duty of reading to him! I will not do so again. Once placed herself, undisturbed, as it was meet a week he goes into Reading to the bench, and she should be, by any care or trouble, taking then he rallies, and nobody seeing him then the full enjoyment of the country so dear to could imagine what the trial is at home; and her, and of the summer skies and summer with nobody but myself, it has been some ex-air, and all the greenness that she loved; cuse for getting through the day and the night as best I could; but it shall be so no longer. "Heaven bless you! do not refuse me this most urgent prayer, and do not think worse of me than you can help."

with her favourite poets by her side, and to ply as a drudge, and which she loved the pen which she had no longer any need too, dearly, when she ceased to be its When the life of this man, who for own hand, is the most pleasant conclusion vassal. This last picture, drawn by her so many years has been the tyrant and in- that could be put to the much-troubled, tolerable burden of his daughter's ex- much-toiling life. New ties she was too istence, comes to an end, the reader is dis-old to form, and there was no child to love posed to turn away impatiently from her her as she had loved; but yet in a serene sorrow, and to feel a certain impulse of con- quiet, as of the evening, glad of the ease, tradiction when among her tears she assures and the stillness, and the dews; glad too, her friends that he must be happy, and that perhaps, that all was so near over, and never a man had more humble reason to night at hand, and sleep- the weary soul anticipate heaven. If a man may be so self-rests and muses and smiles upon the world ish, so cruel, so devoid of natural justice which has not given her much, and yet is or compassion, and yet be sure of adoring full of friends to her. After some fifteen love all his life and heaven at the end, what meaning is there in the distinction between right and wrong? we ask ourselves. To Mr. Harness, at least, there must have been a fierce and fine satisfaction in thus at last revealing to the world what manner of man he really was whom Mary Mitford made an idol of, and of whom she has left so many son between these two lives, nor are the We do not attempt to make any comparifond pictures that we, deceived, might have two minds to be compared. Miss Austen admired him too. When he was gone she was by much the greater artist, but the was very sad, as may be supposed: but sweetness of the atmosphere about her gradually recovered out of her sadness and humble contemporary was far above anytook comfort in her friends, and found at thing possible to the great novelist. În last after the long struggles of life, a peace-presence of the one we admire and wonder, ful evening, no longer worn with overwork, watching the perfect work that by means so or filled with petty anxieties. The book insignificant grows under her hands; while called 66 Recollections of a Literary Life," with the other we do little more which is not, so to speak, a book at all, but breathe the fresh air and the flowers, and only a collection of her favourite scraps of identify one little spot of actual soil not poetry, from Percy's ballads down to sundry | created, but described. Yet the two figures

years of this soft, cheerful solitude, she died, sixty-six years old, without further pang or grief, with kind people about her, and servants who loved her; but with everything that had been her very own gone before her into the other world.

than