married off Miss Edgeworth in the same manner.

Mary Mitford found her true romance in friendship, not in love. One
day Mr. Kenyon came to see her while she was staying in London, and
offered to show her the Zoological Gardens, and on the way he
proposed calling in Gloucester Place to take up a young lady, a
connection of his own, Miss Barrett by name. It was thus that Miss
Mitford first made the acquaintance of Mrs. Browning, whose
friendship was one of the happiest events of her whole life. A
happy romance indeed, with that added reality which must have given
it endurance. And indeed to make a new friend is like learning a
new language. I myself have a friend who says that we have each one
of us a chosen audience of our own to whom we turn instinctively,
and before whom we rehearse that which is in our minds; whose
opinion influences us, whose approval is our secret aim. All this
Mrs. Browning seems to have been to Miss Mitford.

'I sit and think of you and of the poems that you will write, and of
that strange rainbow crown called fame, until the vision is before
me. . . . My pride and my hopes seem altogether merged in you. At
my time of life and with so few to love, and with a tendency to body
forth images of gladness, you cannot think what joy it is to
anticipate. . . .' So wrote the elder woman to the younger with
romantic devotion. What Miss Mitford once said of herself was true,
hers was the instinct of the bee sucking honey from the hedge
flower. Whatever sweetness and happiness there was to find she
turned to with unerring directness.

It is to Miss Barrett that she sometimes complains. 'It will help
you to understand how impossible it is for me to earn money as I