the faces on the Royal Academy walls, but those por which escaped from the great painters, Titian, Rubens,1 brandt; and that is the way that yours will be conside not only by posterity, but by that near part of posterity, the next generation, the Englishmen of twenty years hence. Paint plenty of portraits and plenty of humorous pictures. It is your peculiar talent, and do tell me what this one is about. I am so stupid that I have not been able to guess.

CHAPTER II.

LETTERS FOR 1824.

To SIR WILLIAM ELFORD, Bickham, Plymouth.

Three-mile Cross, Jan. 18, 1824. MY DEAR FRIEND,—I should have written to ask after you all had I not been for nearly six months very much and very painfully engrossed. My dear mother has had an attack of that terrible complaint, the spasmodic asthma, which continued for several months. The spasms came on every night at twelve or one o'clock, and continued for three or four hours with such violence that I have feared, night after night, that she would die in my arms. At last, the very great skill of a medical gentleman in this neighborhood relieved her; though the remedies were so severe that for months she continued as weak as an infant, and the very first day that she thought herself well enough to venture to church she took cold, and the tremendous disorder reappeared, if possible with greater violence and greater obstinacy. At last, I thank God! she is again convalescent; and as we have her now fast prisoner by the fireside, and do not mean to let her peep out till the sun shines on both sides of the hedges, I humbly trust that this invaluable parent and friend may yet be spared to me. But you must imagine how much we have all suffered. My dear father's anxiety, great as it was, did not, however, incapacitate him from being the kindest and most excellent of nurses. He was a thousand times more useful than I; for the working of this perpetual fear on my mind was really debilitating, almost paralyzing, in its effect. We are now happy amidst all our cares and poverty, and

son.

feel as if a hundredweight of lead had been taken from our heads by her recovery. God grant that it may be permanent! You may imagine that this has been no slight interruption to my business. Nevertheless, I am hoping to get out a little volume of very playful prose ("You will like it, I promise you," as Mr. Haydon said to me, a week ago, about his picture of "Silenus and Nymphs ") some time this seaIt would have been out before now if I had been able to go to London and arrange matters with my friend and bookseller, George Whittaker. This young and dashing friend of mine (papa's godson, by-the-by) is this year sheriff of London, and is, I hear, so immersed in his official dignities as to have his head pretty much turned topsy-turvy, or rather, in French phraseology, to have lost that useful appendage; so I should not wonder now, if it did not come out till I am able to get to town and act for myself in the business, and I have not yet courage to leave mamma. It will be called at least, I mean it so to be-" Our Village;" will consist of essays and characters and stories, chiefly of country life, in the manner of the "Sketch Book," but without sentimentality or pathos-two things which I abhor—and will be published with or without my name, as it shall please my worshipful bibliopole. At all events, the author has no wish to be incognita; so I tell it you as a secret to be told.

I wish you had seen my friends Mr. Macready and his sister, for she is traveling with him. You would have been pleased with both; and Miss M. would have had one point of sympathy with you in her exceeding passion for my letters. (N.B.-I have not written her a line since September.) They are very fascinating people, of the most polished and delightful manners, and with no fault but the jealousy and unreasonableness which seem to me the natural growth of the green-room. I can tell you just exactly what Mr. Macready would have said of me and of "Julian." He would have spoken of me as a meritorious and amiable person, of the play as a first-rate performance, and of the treatment as "infamous!" 66 66 scandalous!" unheard of!". - would have heaped every phrase of polite abuse which the language contains on the C. G. managers; and then would have concluded as follows:-"But it is Miss Mitford's own fault-entirely her own fault. She is, with all her talent, the weakest

and most feeble-minded woman that ever lived. If she had put matters into my hands-if she had withdrawn "The Foscari"-if she had threatened the managers with a lawsuit—if she had published her case—if she had suffered me to manage for her; she should have been the queen of the theatre. Now, you will see her the slave of Charles Kemble. She is the weakest woman that ever trod the earth."

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This is exactly what he would have said; the way in which he talks of me to every one, and most of all to myself. "Is Mr. Macready a great actor?" you ask. I think that I should answer, He might have been a VERY GREAT one." Whether he be now I doubt. A very clever actor he certainly is; but he has vitiated his taste by his love of strong effects, and been spoiled in town and country; and I don't know that I do call him a very great actor. Kean is certainly more intense; but I doubt very much if there be really a great actor now alive, except Liston. At least, I am sure I never saw one who came up to my conception of any of Shakspeare's characters. I have a physical pleasure in the sound of Mr. Macready's voice, whether talking, reading, or acting (except when he rants). It seems to me very exquisite music, with something instrumental and vibrating in the sound, like certain notes of the violoncello. He is grace itself; and he has a great deal of real sensibility, mixed with some trickery. But having seen him in “ Virginius,” the best of his parts, you are aware of his merits.

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By the way, that play seems to me a very fine one (does it to you?) though the curtain ought certainly to have dropped at the end of the fourth act.

You are very good and kind and flattering in what you say of publishing my letters; but, if there were no other reason against that measure, think how freely I have spoken of contemporary authors, and remember that I am a writer of plays, and that the slightest enmity may be vented on me fatally. Besides, I would not for the world hurt people's feelings.

When you see "Our Village" (which, if my sheriff be not. bestraught, I hope may happen soon), you will see that my notions of prose style are nicer than these galloping letters would give you to understand. No; our correspondence

must wait for half a century* (like the hoards in Horace Walpole's box), and then be edited by your great-grand.son. .... I could not help indulging myself with writing to you, though I ought to have been otherwise busy; but I will make up for it. God bless you, my dear friend !

Always most affectionately yours, M. R. MITFORD.

To B. R. HAYDON, 51 Sovereign Terrace, Connaught Place. Three-mile Cross, Monday night, Feb. 9, 1824. MY DEAR SIR,-I have to congratulate you most heartily on your escape from two such disagreeable oddities as your late landlord and landlady, and to wish you all prosperity in your new abode. I do not wish you happiness, for you have it. With such a wife and such a boy, and such a consciousness of those blessings, I do really think you the happiest man in the world.

I found in the "New Monthly," in one of Mr. Hazlitt's delightful Table Talks, the terrible story of Mr. Wordsworth's letter to you, which spoils his poetry to me; for there was about his poetry something personal. We clung to him as to Cowper; and now-it will not bear talking of. The article on "Jeremy Bentham" is also, I think, by Mr. Hazlitt. I wonder if he ever heard a story told to me by your countryman Mr. Northmore, a great Devonshire reformer, one of the bad epic poets and very pleasant men in which that county abounds. He said that Jeremy Bentham being on a visit at a show house in those parts, at a time when he was little known, except as a jurist, through the translations of M. Dumont certainly before the publication of the Church of Englandism, or any such enormities-Mrs. Hannah More, being at a watering-place in the neighborhood, was minded to see him, and availed herself of the house being one which was shown on stated days, to pay a visit to the philosopher.

He was in the library when the news arrived; and, the lady being already in the antechamber and no possible mode of escape presenting itself, he sent one servant to detain her a few minutes, and employed another to build him up with books in a corner of the room. When the folios and quartos rose above his head, the curious lady was admitted. Must it not have been a droll scene? The philosopher playing at * That half-century is well-nigh over.

bo-peep in his intrenchment, and the pious maiden, who had previously ascertained that he was in the room, peering after him in all the agony of baffled curiosity!

Your Frank must be a charming little fellow. Give my love to him and his dear mother. How well I can fancy you darting about in your half-furnished house, doing half every body's work with your own rapid hands! No wonder that when the bustle was over you should feel a little languid, like a young lady after a ball. All happiness be with you and yours! Ever very sincerely,

TO SIR WILLIAM ELFORD.

M. R. MITFORD.

Three-mile Cross, March 5, 1824. MY DEAR FRIEND,-In spite of your prognostics, I think you will like "Our Village." It will be out in three weeks or a month; and it will be an obligation if you will cause it to be asked for at circulating libraries, etc. It is not one connected story, but a series of sketches of country manners, scenery, and character, with some story intermixed, and connected by unity of locality and of purpose. It is exceedingly playful and lively, and I think you will like it. Charles Lamb (the matchless "Elia" of the "London Magazine") says that nothing so fresh and characteristic has appeared for a long while. It is not over modest to say this; but who would not be proud of the praise of such a proser? And as you, in common with all sensible people, like light reading, I say again that you will like it.

Pray have you read the American novels? I mean the series by Mr. Cooper-"The Spy," etc. If you have not, send for them, and let me hear the result. In my mind they are as good as any thing Sir Walter Scott ever wrote. He has opened fresh ground, too (if one may say so of the sea). No one but Smollett has ever attempted to delineate the naval character; and then he is so coarse and hard. Now this has the same truth and power, with a deep, grand feeling. I must not overpraise it, for fear of producing the reaction which such injudicious enthusiasm is calculated to induce; but I must request you to read it. Only read it. Imagine the author's boldness in taking Paul Jones for a hero, and his power in making one care for him! I envy the Americans