It was on the 31st March, 1836, that _Pickwick_ first made its appearance, electrifying the reading world. It came out in monthly numbers, price one shilling. Of the first number, it seems, 400 copies were printed, but by the time it had reached the fifteenth number no less than 40,000 were issued! Miss Mitford writes to her friend Miss Jephson in June, 1837:— “So you never heard of the _Pickwick Papers_? Well!... It is fun. London life—but without anything unpleasant; a lady might read it all _aloud_; and it is so graphic, so individual and so true that you could curtsy to all the people as you met them in the street.... All the boys and girls talk his fun—the boys in the streets; and yet they who are of the highest taste like it the most. Sir Benjamin Brodie takes it to read in his carriage between patient and patient, and Lord Denman studies _Pickwick_ on the bench whilst the jury are deliberating. “Do take some means to borrow the _Pickwick Papers_. It seems like not having heard of Hogarth, whom he resembles greatly, except that he takes a far more cheerful view, a Shakespearian view, of humanity. It is rather fragmentary except the trial, which is as complete and perfect as any bit of comic writing in the English language. You must read the _Pickwick Papers_.” [Illustration] CHAPTER XXXVI A BRAVE HEART Two new works by Mary Russell Mitford had been recently published—_Belford Regis_ and _Country Stories_. Belford Regis, as the reader may remember, was her pseudonym for the good town of Reading. She writes in June, 1835, to Sir William Elford: “I thank you very much, my ever dear and kind friend, for your kind letter, and I rejoice that you like my book. It has been most favourably received and is, I find, reckoned my best; although when one considers that _Our Village_ has passed through fourteen large editions in England and nearly as many in America, one can hardly expect an increase of popularity and has only to hope for an equal success for any future production.” There was a still further proof of the popularity of _Our Village_ at this time, as Miss Mitford learnt from a friend travelling in Spain that he had come across a copy of the work translated into Spanish. _Country Stories_ appeared two years later. She dedicated the work to her valued friend, the Rev. William Harness, “whose old hereditary friendship,” she writes, “has been the pride and pleasure of her happiest hours, her consolation in the sorrows and her support in the difficulties of life.” It was to him that she opened her heart on religious matters more than to anyone else, and it is interesting to learn from their correspondence her opinions upon such matters as the question of Church Reform, then beginning to be discussed. After receiving a volume of Sermons by the Rev. William Harness, she writes:—