Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/51

48 Miss Mitford's house is, with the exception of certainly not more than two or three, as small and humble as the smallest and humblest in our village of S——; and such is the difference, in some respects, in the modes of expense in this country from ours; she beeps two men-servants (one a gardener), two or three maid-serants, and two horses. In this very humble home, which she illustrates as much by her unsparing filial devotion as by her genius, she receives on equal terms the best in the land. Her literary reputation might have gained for her this elevation, but she started on vantage ground, being allied by blood to the Duke of Bedford's family. We passed a delightful evening, parting with the hope of meeting again, and with a most comfortable feeling that the ideal was converted into the real. So much for our misgvings. Faith is a safer principle than some people hold it to be.

We finished our journey by the great western railway. It is little short of desecration to cut up this garden country, where all rough ways were already made smooth, all crooked ones straight, with railroads. They seem to have been devised for our uncultivated lands and gigantic distances.

LONDON

London, 14th.— we are, with a house to ourselves, in modest, comfortable, clean lodgings (but