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I suppose, when I am done, I shall find that I have forgotten much that was most influential, as I see already I have forgotten Thoreau, and Hazlitt, whose paper "On the Spirit of Obligations" was a turning-point in my life, and Penn, whose little book of aphorisms had a brief but strong effect on me, and Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, wherein I learned for the first time the proper attitude of any rational man to his country's laws a secret found, and kept, in the Asiatic islands.
Letters from this period are scarce, though it is clear from Miss Mitford's correspondence that a continuous interchange of letters was kept up between the two friends, and her acquaintanceship with Horne was now ripening into a close literary intimacy.
He did not say "shave," for they had no razors, and by that time the beards of most of the party were as long as Mitford's; but their locks had been trimmed by means of a clasp-knife super-sharpened, whereas Mitford's were in wildest disorder.
Most people's lives are divided into first, second and third volumes; and as we read Miss Mitford's history it forms no exception to the rule.
'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.
Miss Mitford's exquisite work had given them a distaste for the 'jewelled turf, the 'silver streams, and 'smiling valleys' which constituted the rustic stock-in-trade of the average novelist; and they eagerly welcomed a book that treated with accuracy and observation of the real country.
It is said, or supposed, that when a spoke in Fortune's wheel is at the lowest, there must needs be a rise. Mitford's experience at this time would seem to give ground for belief in the saying; for the word "desolation" had scarcely passed his lips, when distant voices of men were heard, causing his heart to bound violently. Next moment a boat glided in front of the cave's mouth.
Mitford's heart almost stood still, for he became aware that he had made his way to the very cavern, in which the ill-fated Lapwing had met her doom, and around him were masses of wreckage that had been washed up and thrown on the rocks at the inner end of the cave where he stood.
Somerville demanding a seat in Parliament, or Miss Herschel elbowing her way to the hustings! Whose domestic record is more lovely in its pure womanliness than Hannah More's, or Miss Mitford's, or Mrs. Browning's? who wears deathless laurels more modestly than Rosa Bonheur?
These elementary works, with some others of an immediately practical cast Tidd's Practice, Stephen's Pleading, Greenleaf's Evidence, Leigh's Nisi Prius, Mitford's Equity Pleading well conned, make up the best part of office reading. Of course the Acts of Assembly should be gone over and over again. I do not say that this is all.
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