Read it through once

With all the success which now seemed to crowd upon our author, the year was not without its anxieties for, shortly after her mother’s recovery, her father was taken suddenly ill and, as was his wont on such occasions, required a great deal of attention. He made a fairly speedy recovery, however, and in July we read of him and Mrs. Mitford taking exercise in a “pretty little pony-chaise” the acquisition of which the daughter proudly records—it was a sign, however slight, of amended fortunes. Late in the year, Dr. Mitford had a relapse and became seriously ill, and even when convalescent was left so weak that he was a source of considerable anxiety to his wife and daughter. This illness must have convinced Miss Mitford that it would be futile to count upon her father as a bread-winner, and that conviction seems to have spurred her to work even harder than before. The _Cromwell and Charles_ play still simmered in her mind, while there were a “thousand and one articles for annuals” to be written, together with the working-up of a new tragedy to be called _Inez de Castro_. Not satisfied with all that, she wrote in the July to William Harness, asking whether he could influence Campbell, then editing the _New Monthly Magazine_, to engage for a series—“Letters from the Country,” or something of that sort—“altogether different, of course, from _Our Village_ in the scenery and the _dramatis personae_, but still something that might admit of description and character, and occasional story, without the formality of a fresh introduction to every article. If you liked my little volume well enough to recommend me conscientiously, and are enough in that prescient editor’s good graces to secure such an admission, I should like the thing exceedingly.”