, bursts into the book, and begins to talk or to
write a letter; early sights and sounds return to us, we have NOW, and
we have THEN, in a pleasant harmony. To those of a certain literary
generation who read Miss Mitford's memoirs, how many such familiar
presences and names must appear and reappear. Not least among them
that of her biographer, Mr. Harness himself, who was so valued by his
friends. Mrs. Kemble, Mrs. Sartoris, Charles Allston Collins, always
talked of him with a great respect and tenderness. I used to think they
had a special voice with which to speak his name. He was never among
our intimate friends, but how familiar to my recollection are the
two figures, that of Mr. Harness and Miss Harness, his sister and
housekeeper, coming together along the busy Kensington roadway. The
brother and sister were like characters out of some book, with their
kind faces, their simple spiritual ways; in touch with so much that was
interesting and romantic, and in heart with so much that suffered. I
remember him with grey hair and a smile. He was not tall; he walked
rather lame; Miss Harness too was little, looking up at all the rest of
the world with a kind round face and sparkling eyes fringed with thick
lashes. Mary Mitford was indeed happy in her friends, as happy as she
was unfortunate in her nearer relations.

With much that is sad, there is a great deal of beauty and enjoyment in
Miss Mitford's life. For her the absence of material happiness was made
up for by the presence of warm-hearted sensibility, of enthusiasm, by
her devotion to her parents. Her long endurance and filial piety are
very remarkable, her loving heart carried her safely to the end, and she
found comfort in her unreasoning life's devotion. She had none of the
restlessness which is so apt to spoil much that might be harmonious;
all the charm of a certain unity and simplicity of motive is hers, 'the
single eye,' of which Charles Kingsley wrote so sweetly. She loved
her home, her trees, her surrounding lanes and commons. She loved her
friends. Her books and flowers are real and important events in her
life, soothing and distracting her from the contemplation of its
constant anxieties. 'I may truly say,' she once writes to Miss Barrett,
'that ever since I was a very young girl, I have never (although for
some years living apparently in affluence) been without pecuniary
care,--the care that pressed upon my thoughts the last thing at night,
and woke in t