balloons' was much applauded. She returned to her home in 18O2.
'Plain in figure and in face, she was never common-looking,' says
Mr. Harness. He gives a pretty description of her as 'no ordinary
child, her sweet smiles, her animated conversation, her keen
enjoyment of life, and her gentle voice won the love and admiration
of her friends, whether young or old.' Mr. Harness has chiefly told
Miss Mitford's story in her own words by quotations from her
letters, and, as one reads, one can almost follow her moods as they
succeed each other, and these moods are her real history. The
assiduity of childhood, the bright enthusiasm and gaiety of her
early days, the growing anxiety of her later life, the maturer
judgments, the occasional despairing terrors which 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