Another book, which is much the fashion, is Mr. Sergeant Talfourd's "Life of Charles Lamb." It consists almost wholly of his letters, which are entertaining, although not elegant enough to give me much pleasure. It is very odd that I should not mind the perfectly low-life of the "Pickwick Papers," because the closest copies of things that are, and yet dislike the want of elegance in Charles Lamb's letters, which are merely his own fancies; but I think you will understand the feeling. If I had time and room I could tell you fifty pretty stories of our young queen. Ever most affectionately yours, M. R. MITFORD.

TO MISS BARRETT, Torquay.

Three-mile Cross, July- ་ 1837. MY BELOVED FRIEND,-I am in great anxiety again. My dearest father has had in the past week two several attacks of English cholera. They have reduced him exceedingly, more than you can fancy, and I am now sitting on the ground outside his door, with my paper on my knee, watching to hear whether he sleeps. Oh my dearest love, at how high a price do we buy the joy of one great undivided affection, such as binds us heart to heart! For the last two years I have not had a week without anxiety and alarm, so that fear seems now to be a part of my very self; and I love him so much the more tenderly for this clinging fear, and for his entire reliance upon me! You, with so many to love, and so many to love you, can hardly imagine what it is to be so totally the whole world to each other as we are. And oh! when sickness comes, when one attack of a different kind follows another, so that the insecurity of our treasure is pressed upon our attention every hour-oh! how tremblingly, throbbingly sensible do we become to the consciousness of that insecurity! I hardly now dare leave him for half an hour. I have not left him for a drive, or to drink tea with a friend, for years. But I must not worry you with my depression. Heaven bless you! Ever yours, M. R. M.

To the REV. WILLIAM HARNESS, Heathcote Street.

Three-mile Cross, Oct. 1, 1838.

MY DEAR FRIEND,-I have been very unwell during the greater part of this summer, for two months never past the

outer door, and now that I am pretty well again we are in great trouble. Our landlady, who is a most singular compound of miser and shrew, refuses to put this poor cottage, where we have lived for seventeen years without having one shilling laid out by the owner, into the decent repair without which a great part of it will fall upon our heads, so that we are compelled to move.

Luckily, a comfortable roomy farmhouse, about half a mile off, is vacant, the farmer who rents the land living at another farm; and we may have this at thirty pounds a year, he, the farmer, paying the rates, taxes, etc., and we having a meadow of three acres into the bargain. But the garden is a potatoground, and I am heart-broken at leaving my flowers, and frightened to death at the expense of moving and making a garden; for we having the materials, my father insists upon transporting them to our new abode; and certainly it will be less expensive to make the garden there than to do all that must be done to this poor cabin, which I love dearly in spite of all its deficiencies and faults. Still it will be a great expense, and I shall never like the new house as I do the old.

I must tell you a pretty thing that has happened close by. The journeyman of our neighbor the shoemaker has caught my love of flowers, and having borrowed of his brother the blacksmith a little bit of waste ground by the forge, behind some poplars which draw all the nourishment from the earth, so that they could not raise cabbages there, planted it with seedling dahlias (about two hundred), which he used to water night and morning all the summer with a can, which he carried backward and forward from the pond at the top of the street. Well, he has got the best seedling of the year, the very best. It happened to be in bloom in time for the last Reading show; gained, of course, the cottagers' prize, and he will get something between £5 and £10 for the root, besides the honor. I never, I think, saw such a happy face in my life as his at the flower-show. He never stirred from his flower. All the gardeners far and near (for it was a grand dahlia-show open to all England, and we had twelve prizes for strangers, and they came from beyond London) clustered about him; and John Brown and his dahlia were the lions of the day. I think I enjoyed it as much as he did; his love

of flowers was so genuine, and his success so entirely deserved.

A dear friend of mine, who is appointed superintendent of the queen's dressers, gives a very interesting account of her. She says she is a girl of great power, sedate and serious far beyond her years, and fully equal to all that she will be required to do. Of the queen of the Belgians she speaks with enthusiasm. She says that in any rank of life she would be one of the kindest, gayest, most obliging, and easily-pleased persons that ever lived, one for whom it would he a privilege and a happiness to do any thing. She also speaks most favorably of her husband. He told the housekeeper at Windsor that he never went to Claremont without a recur rence of the same feelings as when he first returned there after his irreparable loss. Ever most faithfully yours,

M. R. MITFORD.

TO MISS BARRETT, Gloucester Place.

Three-mile Cross, Dec. 2, 1837. MY DEAR LOVE,-My book has been hindered by my ill health, by my many visitors, and lately by workmen. You can hardly imagine the demands upon my time: my father, eight or ten letters to read and answer in a day, almost as many notes, often more sets of visitors, the care of my small household, the necessity of seeing every thing done, and generally of doing that which my dear father (who, if he take a key in hand, leaves it in the door or in the drawer) is sure to leave undone.

All this, and care, and fear, and anxiety beyond measure; responsibility without power; make it wonderful that I should in a twelvemonth (being, besides, slow and barren without conception) have written" Otto," "Country Stories," the "Tableaux," and a story (longer than all the "Tableaux") lost in the road to Edinburgh, or at Edinburgh-at all events lost; a loss, first and last, of above seventy pounds. All this makes it more wonderful that I should have done so much, than that I should have not done more. Even if I have not the nausea, the other fearful suffering is sure to come on every morning, sometimes at four or five o'clock, and last till noon. Think how that incapacitates! and think what it is to feel that more ought to be done, and yet that I can not do it!

To feel incapacity as a sin! Latterly, the din and the bustle of workmen have wholly hindered all composition. I have had to move, or to see moved, all our goods (as the country people say) from one room to another, and back again, and again away; and this is likely to last for some weeks. We shall gain great comfort, and at comparatively small expense, though still far more than we can afford. But that expense was inevitable, for the house was falling in, and the cost will be less than that of moving would have been; but still far, far more than we can afford or ought to spend; and this frets and worries me past expression. I believe there is not a laborer's wife in the parish who thinks so much of spending a shilling as I do.

By the accidental delay of a letter sent to be franked by the brother of my correspondent, the offer of a large roomy house in Wales, completely furnished, with two gardens and a large rich meadow, at a rent merely nominal, did not arrive till all was settled about this place. To this offer was added that of cows, ponies, a rick of old hay, key of cellar and storeroom, and every thoughtful attention that you can devise, and the assurance (I believe a most sincere one) that the acceptance of this proposal would make my kind friend a happy one; that it would turn a dissatisfied and melancholy life into one of cheerfulness and comfort. It would have been difficult to have resisted this offer, coming from a person in affluence and without children, to whom I felt that our society would have been an equivalent, and for whom I have myself the affection which renders obligations light; but my father-it would have been a great risk for him. Seventy-seven is too old for transplanting. I could not have moved him from his old friends and amusements without feeling that it was risking his happiness, and if any thing had happened to him, and I had even fancied that the change of place had had to do with it, I should have been miserable. As to myself, I should most certainly have gone; the beautiful country, the fine climate, the getting rid of a horde of idle acquaintances, and the cheapness, above all, would certainly have carried me away. As it is, I have only the gratification (a very true one) produced by the having been the object of so much kindness. She, too, is one of my gains by literature; her husband and herself came to Reading this

spring to make my acquaintance, returned again for some weeks, after a short visit to London, and now it is certainly a friendship for life.

By the way, we have just had Mr. Lucas here, who painted that fine portrait of my father. He has been painting the queen dowager and her sister, and has given so much satisfaction that they have ordered two copies of each picture. The portrait of Queen Adelaide is, he says, very interesting, in her weeds. He speaks highly of her, and says that her portraits have never done her justice-that her forehead is fine-and that there is in her eyes an intensity of expression which has never been caught by any one. Her handwriting (which he showed me) is admirable—bold, and firm, and free. Ever yours, M. R. M.

CHAPTER XIV.

LETTERS FOR 1838.

TO MISS BARRETT, Gloucester Place.

Three-mile Cross, Feb. 1, 1838. MY DEAR LOVE,-I have got to think your obscurity of style, my love, merely the far-reaching and far-seeing of a spirit more elevated than ours, and look at the passages till I see light breaking through, as we see the sun shining upon some bright point (Oxford, for instance) in some noble landscape. I have just been reading Racine's "Letters," and Boileau's. How much one should like both, if it were not for their slavish, servile devotion to the king (and I think it was real), and to that odious woman Madame de Maintenon. Also Racine was a bigot, but sincere. My liking for Madame de Sevigné, is, I suppose, owing to my very ignoble love of gossip, which, if it be but honest and natural, I always like, whether on paper or de vive voix. And French, being the very language of chit-chat and prittle-prattle, is one reason why I like so much the mémoires and letters of that gossiping nation. Certainly Molière is their greatest Do you know Foote's farces? They have more of Molière than any other English writer, to say nothing of a neatness of dialogue the most perfect imaginable—as perfect

man.