Mitford's pen. 'WHAT an intoxicating life it is,' he cries; 'I met
Jane Porter and Miss Aikin and Tom Moore and a troop more beaux
esprits at dinner yesterday! I never shall be content elsewhere.'

Miss Mitford's own letters speak in a much more natural voice.

'I never could understand what people could find to like in my
letters,' Miss Mitford writes, 'unless it be that they have a ROOT
to them.' The root was in her own kind heart. Miss Mitford may
have been wanting a little in discrimination, but she was never
wanting in sympathy. She seems to have loved people for kindness's
sake indiscriminately as if they were creations of her own brain:
but to friendliness or to trouble of any sort she responds with
fullest measure. Who shall complain if some rosy veil coloured the
aspects of life for her?

'Among the many blessings I enjoy,--my dear father, my admirable
mother, my tried and excellent friends,--there is nothing for which
I ought to thank God so earnestly as for the constitutional buoyancy
of spirits, the aptness to hope, the will to be happy WHICH I
INHERIT FROM MY FATHER,' she writes. Was ever filial piety so
irritating as hers? It is difficult to bear, with any patience, her
praises of Dr. Mitford. His illusions were no less a part of his
nature than his daughter's, the one a self-centred absolutely
selfish existence, the other generous, humble, beautiful. She is
hardly ever really angry except when some reports get about
concerning her marriage. There was an announcement that she was
engaged to one of her own clan, and the news spread among her
friends. The romantic Mrs. Hofland had conjured up the suggestion,
to Miss Mitford's extreme annoyance. It is said Mrs. Hofland also