other for twenty-without flowering, looks like it, does it not? These two are the only ones I know. The lower petal of the true flower is much more opaque, with a large oval golden spot, like ivory inlaid with gold and surrounded with alabaster.

Do you read "Blackwood ?" If you do, you will be pleased with Mr. Eagle's account of Mr. Poole's great picDid you

ture.

Make my kindest love to the dear Crowthers. know my friend Lady Morton, the young widow of the old lord chamberlain? She is again a widow, and wants me to spend the autumn and winter with her in Essex. I feel that I can not; and yet I must, unless too ill for the effort.

Yours ever,

M. R. M.

CHAPTER XX. ·

LETTERS FOR 1846-51.

To MISS JEPHSON, Castle Martyr, Ireland.

Three-mile Cross, Spring, 1846. DID you hear that.my beloved friend Elizabeth Barrett is married? Love really is the wizard the poets have called him; a fact which I always doubted till now. But never was such a miraculous proof of his power as her traveling across France by diligence, by railway, by Rhone boat-anyhow, in fact; and having arrived in Pisa so much improved in health that Mrs. Jameson, who traveled with them, says she is "not merely improved but transformed." I do not know Mr. Browning; but this fact is enough to make me his friend. He is a poet also; but I believe that his acquirements are more remarkable than his poetry, although that has been held to be of high promise.

Mr. May tells me that I shall do better by-and-by-that the cold weather brought the rheumatism—and that the warm weather will carry it away. Every one has suffered from this most ungenial winter, and even now we can hardly call it spring.

If you write to any one in London, recommend their going to see a magnificent portrait of Charles the First when Prince VOL. II.-N

Charles, taken during his romantic expedition into Spain, and supposed to be the last picture which Velasquez painted. It is full of health and life, and although there be something in the full eyelid that gives a shade of pensiveness to the face, yet there is so much spirit and youthfulness that it is quite free from the sadness of the Vandyke and Dobson portraits. Did I tell you that I had found a mention of this very picture in the notes to Hayley's poem on painting? He (Hayley) was, you know, a great Spanish scholar. All together I think it the very finest picture I have ever seen. Ever most faithfully yours,

M. R. M.

To MISS JEPHSON, Castle Martyr, Ireland.

Three-mile Cross, Spring, 1846. Thank you heartily for your dear letter, dear Emily, and the pretty knitted square for the pincushion. I do not need any thing to be reminded of you, but if I did that would do it. Can you send me a bit of the plait that the queen does? I remember, thirty years ago, that I made plait for three or four nets and bonnets, and liked the work much, inasmuch as it required no. attention, and I could go on even while I was reading. I hate all the Berlin wool misdoings, which require counting, and seem to me calculated to keep down the intellect while they employ the fingers; but work (like tatting, for instance) which goes on without requiring any thought is sometimes pleasant.

I am still so lame as to be obliged to get a pony chaise, under pain of not being able to put foot to the ground if I persisted in taking long walks; and Knot only drives the pony, but feeds him and takes care of the harness, while a respectable man next door takes charge of the garden. So that I may perhaps escape the danger of being whirled to the Queen's Bench by my new equipage, although compelled to the most minute attention to economy by this new and inevitable expense. Without it I could hardly crawl to church.

I am convinced that all education should be based upon religion; but it seems to me that religious instruction is rather aided than impeded by being accompanied by other means of cultivating the intellect and the affections. Rich people do not confine all education to religious instruction;

and I don't think that poor ones should be restricted to that only. For instance, there is a school in Reading, one of the old-fashioned endowments, where children were clothed, fed, and taught, and where they used to take in turn the housework, the cooking, the laundry; to do plain work; to make and cut out their own linen and clothes; and, in short, to be trained into excellent servants. Well! since the town has become so Puseyite that the different churches are open almost all day for different services, these children are taken in procession to the different churches four times every day —four times—interrupting all their avocations, and entirely putting a stop to their needlework.

Does not it strike you that this must tend either to weary the children or to make them hypocrites? I think so; and a very clever clergyman with whom I was talking of it this very day at Sir John Conroy's said that there could be no doubt in his mind but that when they left the school to go out to service they would leave it less religious than in the old days, when they went twice on a Sunday to church, and on Wednesday and Friday evenings to a lecture. One thing certain is, that they have quite lost their old repute for good training as servants; and that it is difficult now to find them places, because (as the mistress herself told me) nearly all their time is passed in going to church or dressing to prepare for it. I believe the intention to be good; but I doubt its efficacy as I doubt all excess. Yours ever,

M. R. M.

TO MISS JEPHSON, Castle Martyr, Ireland.

Three-mile Cross, July, 1846.

MY DEAR EMILY,-I am sincerely rejoiced to hear that you have not suffered so much as I feared from the hot weather. It disagreed exceedingly with me; but, nevertheless, I contrived to walk through it, although the dust and the unmitigated glare were most painful and trying. My roses were blighted, my annuals dried off, and my geraniums have flagged and fallen under the glare in a most miserable manner. The peas, too, lasted only four or five days; and, in short, all vegetation has suffered. The rhododendrons at Whiteknights and at Bearwood I never saw so fine, and my strawberries have prospered; but the currants are blighted, and they say there are in this county no apples at all.

I have been shocked past expression by the death of poor Haydon. He had sent me a ticket for a private view of his pictures only a month or two back; and we had been friends and correspondents for above thirty years. Poor fellow! He was a most brilliant person, and deserved a better fate, although he never quite kept the promise of his earlier works -never, indeed, brought out any thing so really fine as the "Judgment of Solomon," which my friend Sir William Elford purchased for six hundred pounds; and which first brought him into notice. Sir Robert Peel's conduct on this occasion has been very noble.

Have you read the "Life and Letters of John Foster ?" I think them even finer than Dr. Arnold's; and you know what that is saying. I always thought the “ Essays amongst the finest ever written; but the "Life and Letters" make me think the man himself even nobler than his works? Did you know him? He lived for the better part of his life near Bristol. How wonderful that a small sect like the Baptists should have, at one time and in one narrow locality, two such giants as John Foster and Robert Hall!

Miss Gladstone used to write to me occasionally; and I have heard much of her from some mutual friends now dead. She ceased to write upon her conversion; and dear Dr. Baines told me that it was of no use for me to write to her in her nunnery (she is a professed nun, is she not?), for that all communication with the world was discouraged in those institutions. He disliked them much.

Yours affectionately,

M. R. M.

1847.

Fragment of a Letter to MISS JEPHSON. [No date.] For my part I hate conversions. There is enough for salvation in the gospels, under whatever form of Christianity we may worship; and to convert from one form to another is always to unsettle-to root up old associations—and often to loosen the larger and more vital articles of faith. Dryden has somewhere a fine thought-I forget the words-but the meaning is this: "The soul is like a bird at roost; dislodge it from its twig and it flutters from branch to branch, unable

to settle once again in peace and quietness." I have known many such. A daughter of one of my dearest friends was brought up a Protestant like her two sisters-the father being Protestant, the mother (a French woman) Roman Catholic. Since the father's death the eldest daughter has joined her mother's communion, the youngest remains a bigoted Protestant, and this middle girl goes to no church and professes no faith whatsoever.

To the REV. ALEXANDER DYCE, Gray's Inn.

Three-mile Cross, July, 1847.

I can not thank you enough, my dear Mr. Dyce, for all your kindness to me, and to the dear little girl whose album your beautiful verses will tend so much to enrich.

"The Beggar Girl "* is so exactly in the garb in which I first read her some five-and-forty years ago in Hans Place, that I can't help thinking it must be the same copy, and anticipate the same delight from the perusal that I had in those young days. I remember that I liked it not only for the character and the liveliness, but for the abundant story -incident toppling upon incident; all sufficiently natural and probable, after a fashion which the novelists of these times seem to have lost; for nowadays they generously give us one or two great impossibilities, and fill up their outline with declamation and sentiment generally false.

Accept once again my earnest thanks for your kindness; above all, for your goodness in coming to see me with our dear friend Mr. Harness. Pray, come again. Ever, my dear Mr. Dyce, very faithfully yours, M. R. MITFORD.

1848.

To MRS. BROWNING, Florence, Italy.

Taplow, July 30, 1848.

I have taken so much of your advice, my very dear love, as Mr. May thought right-that is to say, the part that regarded change of air and change of scene. He said that the sea, in my particular case, would be rather bad than good,

* A novel by Mrs. Bennett, once extremely popular, which Mr. Dyce, after some difficulty, had procured for her.