This, being known, threw a suspicion over the really original paintings, which (added to their being wretchedly hung among all manner of cross-lights, the highly-finished small pictures high up, and the large ones close to the eye, together with the auctioneer coming from Reading, who was as ignorant as all people are who live in, or within five miles of that town) reduced the value from the £10,000 that was expected to under £2000. You may imagine what wood the man of the hammer is made of, when I tell you that, in selling a very fine head of Christ, by Guido-an undoubted and ascertained original-he never said one word of the picture or the master, but talked grandly and eloquently of the frame. I am very glad of this incredible ignorance, since it let poor Edmund Havill (a Reading artist) into an excellent bargain, and Mr. Hofland, I hope, into something still better. He has bought several pictures, particularly an exceedingly beautiful L. Caracci.

Now, good-night, my dear friend. I dare say I shall find something more to say by Monday.

Nov. 12.

I am just fresh from Farley Hill, where I have been spending part of two days. Thank you, Mrs. Dickinson is going on very well, and sends compliments to you. Mr. Dickinson was just fresh arrived from Slough-Dr. Herschell's. Do you know any thing of the worthy astronomer? I was interested by Mr. Dickinson's account of him and his goings on. He has at last been obliged to dismount his telescope and relinquish his observations; but, till within the last year, he and his sister sat up every night, he observing, and she writing as he dictated. The brother is eighty-two and the sister seventy, and they have pursued this course these twenty, thirty, forty years. Is not this a fine instance of female devotion-of the complete absorption of mind and body in the pursuits of the brother and friend whom she loved so well? I know as little of the stars as any other superficial woman, who looks on them with the eyes of fancy rather than science, and I have no great wish to know more, but I can not help almost envying Miss Herschell's beautiful self-devotion. It is the true glory of woman, and in an old woman still more interesting than in a young one. Poor Herschell himself

lost an eye some time ago; four or five glasses snapped, one after another, as he was making an observation on the sun, and a ray fell directly on his eye. That divine luminary does not choose to be pried into.

I must tell you a little story of Haydon, at which I could not help laughing. Leigh Hunt (not the notorious Mr. Henry Hunt, but the fop, poet, and politician of the "Examiner") is a great keeper of birthdays. He was celebrating that of Haydn, the great composer-giving a dinner, crowning his bust with laurels, berhyming the poor dead German, and conducting an apotheosis in full form. Somebody told Mr. Haydon that they were celebrating his birthday. So off he trotted to Hampstead, and bolted in to the company-made a very fine, animated speech-thanked them most sincerely for the honor they had done him and the arts in his person. But they had made a little mistake in the day. His birthday, etc., etc., etc.

Now this bonhomie is a little ridiculous, but a thousand times preferable to the wicked wit of which the poor artist was the dupe. Did you ever hear this story? It was told me by a great admirer of Mr. Haydon's and friend of Leigh Hunt's. He is rather a dangerous friend, I think. He chooses his favorites to laugh at-a very good reason for his being so gracious to me! Good-night, once more, my dear friend. You know I always write to you at the go-to-bed time, just as fires and candles are going out. Good-night! Ever most affectionately yours, M. R. MITFORD.

TO SIR WILLIAM ELFORD, Bickham, Plymouth.

Bertram House, Dec. 4, 1819.

I thought you would laugh at the Haydon story. I am pretty sure that the painting will be finished this spring, because the grand difficulty, the head of Christ, is at length overcome. The present head is the seventh he has painted! One of them was taken from himself! which seems to me quite as good a trait as the birthday; for, though his countenance is very intellectual, and full of spirit and ardenсу, it is, I think, one of the very last human faces that any body but the owner would think of copying for Jesus Christ. Pray don't tell this story of the head, which Mr. Hofland told me, and which might set our two fiery artists in a flame.

You, whose poetical faith is, I believe, rather Pope-ish, would have liked to see a portrait of Pope which Mrs. Hofland says they have just had in the house—“ taken very young-an undoubted original, by Jarvis; a sweeter expression, a more intelligent countenance can not be conceived; no unholy or selfish feeling had yet ruffled the soft serenity of the brow, which even Dr. Morris, of Aberystwith, would allow to be wide enough and high enough for a poet." Should not you have discovered this not to be my writing, even if I had omitted the inverted commas, by the continuity of the style-the absence of that perpetual hopping motion which distinguishes mine? Most affectionately yours, M. R. MITFORD.

TO SIR WILLIAM ELFORD, Bickham, Plymouth.

Bertram House, Dec. 28, 1819. Your kind and delightful letter, my dear friend, was quite a treat. Only think of my never having before seen Clarkson's "History of the Abolition of the Slave-trade "-that most interesting book on the most interesting subject— where I met with your name mentioned in a manner even to raise my opinion of my kind correspondent, and feel prouder than ever of being called his friend. I never knew before that you had taken an active part in the abolition, still less did I imagine that the admirable idea of the section of a slave ship had originated with you. You must have seen Clarkson's book. Setting all the interest of the subject aside, is not the work powerfully written? There are none of the outward marks of fine writing, but there must be the spirit. It laid hold of my mind like a romance; I could not put it downcould not get it out of my thoughts and my memory.

By the way, I never hear you talk of Hazlitt. Did you never read any of his works? Never read "The Round Table?" the "Characters of Shakspeare's Plays?" the "Lectures on English Poetry ?" or the "Lectures on the English Comic Writers ?" The Quarterly Reviewers give him a bad character, but that merely regards politics, and politics ought not to weigh in works of general literature. I am sure you would like them; they are so exquisitely entertaining, so original, so free from every sort of critical shackle; the style is so delightfully piquant, so sparkling, so glittering, so tasteful, so condensed; the images and illustrations come in such

rich and graceful profusion that one seems like Aladdin in ` the magic garden, where the leaves were emeralds, the flowers sapphires, and the fruit topazes and rubies. Do read some of the lectures. You will not agree with half Mr. Hazlitt's opinions, neither do I, but you will be very much entertained. Every now and then two or three pages together are really like a series of epigrams, particularly in the "Lectures on the Living Poets." There is a character of your friend Mr. Wordsworth which will enchant you.

Mamma is come back from Winchester, and joins papa in kindest regards. Most affectionately yours,

M. R. MITFORD.

CHAPTER XIV.

CONTAINING LETTERS TO MARCH, 1820, THE LAST WHICH WERE WRITTEN FROM BERTRAM HOUSE.

To SIR WILLIAM ELFORD, Bickham, Plymouth.

Bertram House, Jan. 24, 1820. Ir hails and rains, and blows and thaws, so that I can not walk. It is so dark that I can not see to work. I got tipsy with green tea last night, and could not sleep, so that I have a headache, and am stupid, and can't understand what I read. All these are valid reasons for writing to you, my dear friend, more especially when re-enforced with the fear of not hearing till I have written; are they not? So write I shall, and plunge at once into my letter as one does into a cold bath. Here goes.

Have you read "Ivanhoe?" Do you like it? What a silly question! What two silly questions! You must have read, and you must have liked that most gorgeous and magnificent tale of chivalry. I know nothing so rich, so splendid, so profuse, so like old painted glass or a Gothic chapel full of shrines, and banners, and knightly monuments. The soul, too, which is sometimes wanting, is there in its full glory of passion and tenderness. Rebecca is such a woman as Fletcher used to draw-an Aspasia, a Bellario. There are faults, to be sure, in plenty, if one had a mind to hunt after them; that horrible old woman (an old crone is a necessity to Mr. Scott-he is literally hag-ridden)-that vapid heroine (the

only comfort is that he leaves his readers with a consoling assurance that the hero likes the sweet Jewess best)—the melodramatic air, by which one feels almost as if the book were written for the accommodation of the artists of the Coburg and Surrey Theatres, with a tournament in act the first, a burning castle in act the second, a trial by combat in act the third—nothing for a dramatist to do but to cut out the speeches, and there is a grand spectacle ready made. Then neither Richard nor Robin Hood quite comes up to one's notions of the lion-hearted king whose name the Saracen women used to still their screaming children, or the bold outlaw whom the fine ballads in Percy's "Reliques" and Ben Jonson's still finer pastoral (did you ever read that beautiful unfinished drama "The Lord Shepherd ?") have made one of the chartered denizens of one's fancy. But there is no finding fault with a book which puts one so much in mind of Froissart. "Ivanhoe " is more like him than any thing which has been written these three centuries.

I have just finished Mr. Hallam's "View of Europe during the Middle Ages;" a very masterly work in its way, which confirms exactly Mr. Scott's view of manners, particularly the terrible vices of the higher orders and clergy, and puts one in mind of Froissart in a different way from "Ivanhoe," by making one long every moment for his picturesque minuteness instead of the large views and sweeping generalities of the author. I don't like philosophical historians, who make wise remarks and write fine dissertations; do you? Live forever the Burnets and Clarendons! Delightful tellers of what they saw! One page of such narrative is worth whole volumes of disquisition. I am now reading "Petrarque et Laure"-the last of Madame de Genlis's last words; I believe she has already taken leave of the public three times in form. I don't like Madame de Genlis; I don't like Petrarch, whose concetti do not appear to me redeemed by any truth of feeling, either in love or poetry; and I don't believe in-'spite of all the prosers and poetizers, L'Abbé de Sade and Lord Woodhouselee included, who rave about Laura— I don't believe in her. I have no notion that there ever was such a person. I hold her to be, not a mistress, but a muse. With all these mislikings to my author and her hero and heroine, I still read on, seduced by Madame de Genlis's enchant