ry Chorley, he has taken up enthusiastically. Thirty years ago, when I was a young woman, Sir William Elford, an old friend of my father's (they were great whist-players, and used to meet at Graham's Club, in St. James's Street), took a fancy to me as a girl of promising talents, and being himself even then elderly (he died four or five years ago at the age of ninety),* and an excellent letter-writer (there was something of Horace Walpole's mixture of humor and courtliness about his style), he coaxed me into a correspondence, which although it languished latterly, he living out of the world, and I having too much writing on my hands already, had yet been of no small use to me, as giving me a command of my pen, and the habit of arranging and expressing my thoughts. He always said that none of my writings were so pleasant as those letters; and Miss Elford, upon looking them over this winter, urged me to print them. I named the thing to Mr. Kenyon, and he advises it beyond all measure. Do you? I thought at first of appearing as editor only, calling it "Letters from the Valley" (you remember Mrs. Grant's "Letters from the Mountains," and what a run they had), or "Letters from a Young Lady to an Elderly Gentleman." Ever most faithfully yours, To MISS BARRETT, Torquay. M. R. M. Three-mile Cross, March 3, 1840. I had a kind message from Captain Marryat once, when somebody whom he knew was coming here, but have never seen him. Without being one of his indiscriminate admirers, I like parts of his books (some of which I have read to my father), and have been told that they have done good in the profession-suggestions thrown out in them having been taken up and acted upon by the Lords of the Admiralty; and, although a Tory, he takes part with the common sailors. Did I tell you that, the day I wrote in the midst of a quantity of people, a niece of the late Mr. Trollope called, and a nephew of Mrs. Trollope's-both twins, she having a twin sister and he a twin brother. Odd, is it not? Did you know Dr. Parry? I did; and it is really sad how every lion, who behaves as if he thought himself a lion, shrinks into a very tame menagerie wild beast when one *He died in 1837. comes before him face to face. I suspect that Sir Walter was about the only one that thoroughly stood the test, and poor Mrs. Hemans, because both were honest lovers of society, with no exclusive veneration for their own books, and therefore came within the exceptive clause in my first sentence. Heaven bless you, my dearest! I am better, but have had two or three returns of sickness. These winds! Yours ever, M. R. M. TO MISS JEPHSON, Castle Martyr, Ireland. Three-mile Cross, July 25, 1840. -The land comprising our garden is to be sold, and will probably be purchased by some sordid person upon the speculation of making us pay an inordinate rent for the luxury. To me individually it would be a great release to be quit of the trouble and expense of the garden; but how to supply its place, both as an amusement and exercise to my dear father, I can not tell. However, it is to be sold, and will probably be purchased and taken from us, for it is out of the question to think of our paying any increase of rent. The lot, about an acre, is to be sold on the first of next month, so that this cause of alarm will soon be settled one way or another. We had an interesting person here yesterday, Mary Duff, one of the Maries to whom Lord Byron was so devotedly attached. She is still a most lovely woman, not very tall, and full enough to prevent the haggard look which comes upon women who grow thin at fifty; of a bright clear complexion, with dark hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes, and hazel eyes, beautiful features, a most sweet and intelligent expressionwith such a smile both of the eyes and the lips-an accent slightly Scottish, and a manner full of grace and charm. My father being better, we made last week an excursion to Windsor. I had not been out before for ten months, nor had I even drunk tea from home, so completely have I been absorbed by the care of my father. Blessed be God, he bore the journey well! We found the private garden and terrace open at Windsor, and I walked all over that beautiful scene, not going into the apartments, which, in all their splendors, are less interesting to me than that magnificent mixture of matchless architecture and unrivaled situation. Nothing can exceed the blending of those great walls with tree and flower, as seen in the castle and the slopes. The day was exquisite, and the very air heavy with the rich perfume of the seringas and acacias. How I should have liked you to have been at my side! My father enjoyed it too; and I could not have believed that mere external circumstances could have given me so much gratification. I am almost a prisoner in our little home and three miles round, and owe, doubtless, to that circumscription the great pleasure which that rare thing, an excursion, gives me; so even-handed is fortune in dispensing her favors! They who eat pine-apple every day lose all consciousness of the flavor; we who taste it but once a year feel the fragrance of the aroma, the delicious sweetness and pungency of the fruit. I have taken a great fancy to Mr. James's writings, and to Mr. James himself. I never saw him, and have only heard of him through Lady Madalina Palmer and Lady Sidmouth. When I have time (not, I fear, just yet) I will tell you about him. Heaven bless you, my very dear friend! Write to Ever yours, M. R. M. me. [A friend of the Mitfords bought the garden above mentioned for their benefit, and added to it a small farm-yard.] TO MISS JEPHSON, Castle Martyr, Ireland. Three-mile Cross, Sept. 2, 1840. You will be glad to hear, my ever-dear love, that my father is better, and that consequently we, K.,* Flush and myself, are also upon the mend; for most certainly it was his illness that overset all three. My present distress—and it is a most serious one-arises from the difficulty of uniting the two duties of giving to him the time which he needs for attendance and amusement, and of managing also to complete the book for Colburn, which is necessary for our subsistence. Nobody can conceive how much my dear father misses me, if only an hour absent. He could read, I think; but, somehow, to read to himself seems to give him no pleasure; and if any one else is so kind as to offer to read to him, that does not do. They don't know what he likes, and where to skip, and how to lighten heavy parts without losing the thread of * The abreviation by which she designated her maid Kerenhappuck. the story. By practice I can contrive to do this, even with books that I have never seen before. There's an instinct in it, I think. So that I have been obliged to resume my old habits, and to read to him and play cribbage with him during more hours of each day (every day except Sundays) than you could well believe. Ever yours, M. R. M.. CHAPTER XVI. LETTERS FOR 1841. To MISS BARRETT, Torquay. Three-mile Cross, Jan. 14, 1841. I WRITE, my beloved friend, by my dear father's bedside; for he is again very ill. Last Tuesday was the Quarter Sessions, and he would go, and he seemed so well that Mr. May thought it best to indulge him. Accordingly he went at nine A.M. to open the Court, sat all day next the chairman in Court, and afterward at dinner, returning at two o'clock, A.M., in the highest spirits-not tired at all, and setting forth the next day for a similar eighteen hours of business and pleasure. Again he came home delighted and unwearied. He had seen many old and dear friends, and had received (to use his own words) the attentions which do an old man's heart good; and these, joined to his original vigor of constitution and his high animal spirits, had enabled him to do that which to those who saw him at home infirm and feeble, requiring three persons to help him from his chair, and many minutes before he could even move-would seem as impossible as a fall of snow between the tropics, or the ripening pine-apples in Nova Zembla. All this he had done, but not with impunity. He has caught a severe cold; and having on Saturday taken nearly the same liberties at Reading, and not suffering me to send for Mr. May, until rendered bold by fear I did send last night-he is now seriously ill. I am watching by his bedside in deep anxiety; but as silence is my part to-night, and I have prayed (for when those we love-so love—are in danger, thought is prayer), I write to you, my beloved friend, as my best solace. Mr. May is hopeful; but the season, his age, my great and still increasing love, and the habit of anxiety which has grown from long tending, fill me with a fear that I can hardly describe. He is so restless too-so very, very restless-and every thing depends upon quiet, upon sleep, and upon perspiration; and yet, for the last twelve hours I am sure that he has not been two minutes in the same posture, and not twelve minutes without his getting out of bed, or up in bed, or something as bad. God grant that he may drop asleep! I read to him until I found that reading only increased the irritability. Well, I do hope and trust that he is rather quieter now; and I am quite sure that I shall myself be quieter in mind, if I can but fix my thoughts upon you. Heaven be with you all! Ever yours, TO MISS BARRETT, Torquay. M. R. M. Three-mile Cross, April 20, 1841. How startling coincidences are! Sometimes how painful! Just as I had sent to you the little jar of honey from Hymettus, brought from thence by Sir Robert Inglis, and sent to me by a dear old friend, Lady Sidmouth, two letters arrived from her at the same time, of which, that which bore the latest date, anticipated with delightful cheerfulness our speedy meeting; and, not five minutes after dispatching that trifling token of honor to the muse, I found, in reading the paper to my father, that poor Lady Sidmouth was dead! Imagine the shock! She was, you know, daughter of Lord Stowell, niece of Lord Eldon, and wife of Lord Sidmouth, all remarkable men in themselves, and connected with the most memorable personages of the last half-century. And fully worthy was she of such association. I have seldom known any one more thoroughly awake and alive to all that was best worth knowing. She had an enlightened curiosity, a love of natural history, of antiquities, of literature, of art; was herself full of talent, intelligence, and gayety, and had a quick and peculiar humor; the more surprising as her physical sufferings were great and constant. For many years she had suffered under a spine complaint-suffered to such an extent that, for very many years, instead of being (as she used to be) dragged between two strong supporters round my garden, she had been carried in |