came to try her bright nature, but along with it all, that
innocent and enduring hopefulness which never really deserted her. Her
elastic spirit she owed to her father, that incorrigible old Skimpole.
'I am generally happy everywhere,' she writes in her youth--and then
later on: 'It is a great pleasure to me to love and to admire, this is a
faculty which has survived many frosts and storms.' It is true that
she adds a query somewhere else, 'Did you ever remark how superior old
gaiety is to new?' she asks.

Her handsome father, her plain and long-enduring mother, are both
unconsciously described in her correspondence. 'The Doctor's manners
were easy, natural, cordial, and apparently extremely frank,' says Mr.
Harness, 'but he nevertheless met the world on its own terms, and was
prepared to allow himself any insincerity which seemed expedient. He was
not only recklessly extravagant, but addicted to high play. His wife's
large fortune, his daughter's, his own patrimony, all passed through his
hands in an incredibly short space of time, but his wife and daughter
were never heard to complain of his conduct, nor appeared to admire him
less.'

The story of Miss Mitford's 20,000 pounds is unique among the adventures
of authoresses. Dr. Mitford, having spent all his wife's fortune, and
having brought his family from a comfortable home, with flowers and a
Turkey carpet, to a small lodging near Blackfriars Bridge, determined to
present his daughter with an expensive lottery ticket on the occasion
of her tenth birthday. She had a fancy for No. 2224, of which the added
numbers came to 10. This number actually came out the first prize of
20,000 pounds, which money started the family once more in comparative
affluence. Dr. Mitford immediately built a new square house, which he
calls Bertram House, on the site of a pretty old farmhouse which he
causes to be pulled down. He also orders a dessert-service painted with
the Mitford arms; Mrs. Mitford is supplied with a carriage, and she
subscribes to a circulating library.

A list still exists of the books taken out by her for her daughter's
use; some fifty-five volumes a month, chiefly trash: 'Vicenza,' 'A
Sailor's Friendship and Soldier's Love,' 'Clarentina,' 'Robert and
Adela,' 'The Count de Valmont,' 'The Three Spaniards,' 'De Clifford' (in
four volumes) and so on.

The next two or three years were brilliant enough; for the family
must have lived at the rate of three or four thousa