In reading the Life of Miss Mitford, which the Rev. Mr. L’Estrange has compiled from her letters, it is interesting to mark the development of her character by her misfortunes. The indolent, novel-devouring young lady of Bertram House, with her school-girlish conceit, is a far less lovable person than the self-sacrificing woman who toiled uncomplainingly for a spend-thrift father in the cottage at Three Mile Cross. As was said of her, on the occasion of her accident, by one of her correspondents, she was “like mignonette, the sweeter the more it is bruised.” Her criticism was singularly capricious. For instance, she calmly pronounced ‘Henry Esmond’ commonplace; the adjective recoils upon her own work. Commonplace the latter is, but in the same pleasant sense in which sweet fresh air, and primroses, and cowslips, and the meadow-sweet she loved, are commonplace. * * * * * [Sidenote: Precocity.] In common with many only children, especially where the mother is of a grave and home-loving nature, I learned to read at a very early age. Before I was three years old my father would perch me on the breakfast-table to exhibit my one accomplishment to some admiring guest, who admired all the more, because, a small, puny child, looking far younger than I really was, nicely dressed, as only children generally are, and gifted with an affluence of curls, I might have passed for the twin sister of my own great doll. On the table was I perched to read some Foxite newspaper, ‘_Courier_,’ or ‘_Morning Chronicle_,’ the Whiggish oracles of the day, and as my delight in the high-seasoned politics of sixty years ago was naturally less than that of my hearers, this display of precocious acquirement was commonly rewarded, not by cakes or sugar-plums, too plentiful in my case to be very greatly cared for, but by a sort of payment in kind. I read leading articles to please the company; and my dear mother recited ‘The Children in the Wood’ to please me. This was my reward; and I looked for my favorite ballad after every performance just as the piping bull-finch that hung in the window looked for his lump of sugar after going through ‘God Save the King.’ [Sidenote: Early home.]