upright daughter's views of life. Adoring her
father as she did, she must have soon accustomed herself to take his
fine speeches for fine actions, to accept his self-complacency in the
place of a conscience. She was a woman of warm impressions, with a
strong sense of right. But it was not within her daily experience, poor
soul, that people who did not make grand professions were ready to do
their duty all the same; nor did she always depend upon the uprightness,
the courage, the self-denial of those who made no protestations. At that
time loud talking was still the fashion, and loud living was considered
romantic. They both exist among us, but they are less admired, and
there is a different language spoken now to that of Dr. Mitford and his
school. * This must account for some of Miss Mitford's judgments of what
she calls a 'cynical' generation, to which she did little justice.

*People nowadays are more ready to laugh than to admire when
they hear the lions bray; for mewing and bleating, the
taste, I fear, is on the increase.

II.

There is one penalty people pay for being authors, which is that from
cultivating vivid impressions and mental pictures they are apt to take
fancies too seriously and to mistake them for reality. In story-telling
this is well enough, and it interferes with nobody; but in real history,
and in one's own history most of all, this faculty is apt to raise
up bogies and nightmares along one's path; and while one is fighting
imaginary demons, the good things and true are passed by unnoticed, the
best realities of life are sometimes overlooked....

But after all, Mary Russell Mitford, who spent most of her time
gathering figs off thistles and making the best of her difficult
circumstances, suffered less than many people do from the influence of
imaginary things.

She was twenty-three years old when her first book of poems was
published; so we read in her letters, in which she entreats her father
not to curtail ANY of the verses addressed to him; there is no
reason, she says, except his EXTREME MODESTY why the verses should be
suppressed,--she speaks not only with the fondness of a daughter but
with the sensibility of a poet. Our young authoress is modest, although
in print; she compares herself to Crabbe (as Jane Austen might have
done), and feels 'what she supposes a farthing candle would experience
when the sun rises in all its glory.' Then comes the Publisher's
bill for 59