at 'Waverley' is written by Sir Walter Scott, but
'Guy Mannering,' she thinks, is by another hand: her mind is full of a
genuine romantic devotion to books and belles lettres, and she is also
rejoicing, even more, in the spring-time of 1816. Dr. Mitford may be
impecunious and their affairs may be threadbare, but the lovely seasons
come out ever in fresh beauty and abundance. The coppices are carpeted
with primroses, with pansies and wild strawberry blossom,--the woods are
spangled with the delicate flowers of the woodsorrel and wood anemone,
the meadows enamelled with cowslips.... Certainly few human beings
were ever created more fit for this present world, and more capable of
admiring and enjoying its beauties, than Miss Mitford, who only desired
to be beautiful herself, she somewhere says, to be perfectly contented.

III.

Most people's lives are divided into first, second and third volumes;
and as we read Miss Mitford's history it forms no exception to the
rule. The early enthusiastic volume is there, with its hopes and wild
judgments, its quaint old-fashioned dress and phraseology; then comes
the second volume, full of actual work and serious responsibility,
with those childish parents to provide for, whose lives, though so
protracted, never seem to reach beyond their nurseries. Miss Mitford's
third volume is retrospective; her growing infirmities are courageously
endured, there is the certainty of success well earned and well
deserved; we realise her legitimate hold upon the outer world of readers
and writers, besides the reputation which she won upon the stage by her
tragedies.

The literary ladies of the early part of the century in some ways had a
very good time of it. A copy of verses, a small volume of travels, a few
tea-parties, a harp in one corner of the room, and a hat and feathers
worn rather on one side, seemed to be all that was wanted to establish
a claim to fashion and inspiration. They had footstools to rest their
satin shoes upon, they had admirers and panegyrists to their heart's
content, and above all they possessed that peculiar complacency in which
(with a few notable exceptions) our age is singularly deficient. We are
earnest, we are audacious, we are original, but we are not complacent.
THEY were dolls perhaps, and lived in dolls' houses; WE are ghosts
without houses at all; we come and go wrapped in sheets of newspaper,
holding flickering lights in our hands, paraffin lamps, by the light