“A misty world it was, and a watery; and I ... began to sigh and shiver and quake, as much from dread of an overturn as from damp and chilliness, whilst my careful driver and his sagacious steed went on groping their way through the woody lanes that lead to the Loddon. Nothing but the fear of confessing my fear, that feeling which makes so many cowards brave, prevented me from begging to turn back again. On, however, we went, the fog becoming every moment heavier as we approached that beautiful and brimming river. My companion, nevertheless, continued to assure me that the day would clear—nay, that it was already clearing; and I soon found that he was right. As we left the river we seemed to leave the fog ... [and] it was curious to observe how object after object glanced out of the vapour. First of all the huge oak at the corner of Farmer Locke’s field, which juts out into the lane like a crag into the sea ... its head lost in the clouds; then Farmer Hewitt’s great barn—the house, ricks and stables still invisible; then a gate and half a cow, her head being projected over it in strong relief, whilst the hinder part of her body remained in the haze; then more and more distinctly hedgerows, cottages, trees and fields, until, as we reached the top of Barkham Hill, the glorious sun broke forth, and the lovely picture [of the valley] lay before our eyes in its soft and calm beauty.” This account of Mary and her father’s expedition in a fog caught the fancy of two authoresses. One—Miss Sedgwick—writes to Mary from the other side of the Atlantic: “Tell me anything of your noble father (long may he live!) whom I have loved ever since you took that ride with him in a one-horse chaise of a misty morning. Do you remember?” The other—Mrs. Hemans—writes: “I hope ... that you were not the worse for that fog, the very description of which almost took my hair out of curl whilst reading it!” CHAPTER XXV A NEW PLAYWRIGHT Mary Russell Mitford’s love of the drama was awakened in childhood, and at her school in Hans Place it was much developed. “After my return home,” she writes, “came days of eager and solitary poring over the mighty treasures of the printed drama, that finest form of poetry which can never be lost. At school I had been made acquainted, like other schoolgirls, with Racine. Little did Madame de Maintenon, proud queen of the left hand, think when the gentle poet died of a courtly frown, that she and St. Cyr would be best remembered by ‘Athalie!’”