Mary writes to her father on the occasion with the same self-sacrificing love, but, it seems to us, with more judgment. She suggests that they should let Bertram House, sell books, furniture, everything possible to clear their debts, and then retire to some cottage in the country or to humble lodgings in London. Then she goes on to say: “Where is the place in which, whilst we are all spared to each other, we should not be happy?... Tell me if you approve my scheme, and tell me, I implore you, my most beloved father, the full extent of your embarrassments. This is no time for false delicacy on either side, I dread no evil but suspense.... Whatever those embarrassments may be, of one thing I am certain that the world does not contain so proud, so happy, or so fond a daughter. I would not exchange my father, even though we toiled together for our daily bread, for any man on earth, though he could pour the gold of Peru into my lap.” Miss Mitford’s biographers have justly censured her father’s evil courses, some considering him as altogether worthless; but surely there must have been many redeeming qualities in one who called forth such love from such a daughter? For the time being the crisis described was averted; but in 1814 Dr. Mitford was again in great difficulties, caused by his speculations in two enterprises that proved failures—one in coal, the other in a new method for lighting and heating houses, invented by the Marquis de Chavannes, a French refugee. In this latter scheme the doctor actually invested £5000, and when the crash came he lost more money in carrying on a protracted law suit in the French courts in the vain hope of forcing the penniless nobleman to restore his lost property. Mary, writing of her father’s money losses in later life, says: “He attempted to increase his own resources by the aid of cards (he was unluckily one of the finest whist players in England) or by that other terrible gambling, which ... even when called by its milder term of _speculation_ is that terrible thing gambling still.” Early in the year 1814 Mary Mitford received a proof of the warm approval accorded to her poems in America, which gave her heartfelt pleasure. Mrs. Mitford, writing of the event to her husband, says:— “With your letter and the newspaper this morning arrived a small parcel for our darling, directed to Miss Mary Russell Mitford.... This little packet contained,—what do you think? No less than _Narrative Poems on the Female Character in the various Relations of Life_, by Mary Russell Mitford. Printed at New York, and published by Eastburn, Kirk & Co., No. 86 Broadway. The volume is a small pocket size, well printed and elegantly bound, and the following is a copy of the letter which accompanied it across the Atlantic:—” NEW YORK, _October 23, 1813_. MADAM,