times elderly), conceited, affected, foppish, vulgar. Mr. Kingsley is not only a high-bred gentleman, but has the most charming admixture of softness and gentleness, with spirit, manliness, and frankness-a frankness quite transparentand a cordiality and courtesy that would win any heart. He did win his own sweet wife entirely by this charm of character. She was a girl of family, fortune, fashion, and beauty; he a young curate, without distinction of any sortwithout even literary distinction, for he had not then published. He loved her-she loved him; and, without any unseemly elopement, they lived down and loved down a pretty strong family opposition, and were married. Since that, Sir John Cope gave him the living of Eversley; and he has won a very high fame, and the love of all his parish and all his neighborhood. He is quite young; and though, I suppose, he does not generally intend to go fox-hunting, yet it sometimes happens that his horse carries him into the midst of the chase, when he is always in at the death, eager and delighted as a boy. I can not tell you how much I like him. Miss Bremer was at his house, just before we became acquainted, and he was much pleased with her. She staid too short a time, or we should have met. He is now engaged upon a work (in "Fraser") treating of Alexandria in the fifth century—a sort of story like Lockhart's "Valerius or Mr. Ware's "Palmyra "--but he is greatest as a poet. I know nothing more touching than that song in "Alton Locke."

I am charmed with my new cottage. The scenery is delightful, and the neighbors most kind and pleasant. Perhaps, when the days get long and the weather fine you will come and see me-won't you? I do hope to get to town in time to see you this year. You know that my last visit was regulated by the arrival of Mrs. Browning. Your attached and affectionate, M. R. MITFORD.

1851.

To MRS. JENNINGS, Portland Place.

Swallowfield, June, 1851.

Thank you most heartily, dearest Mrs. Jennings, for your most kind invitation. But, besides general weakness and de

bility, which would render the pleasant fatigue of London quite impossible just now, I am so lame that I could no more walk over the Exhibition than I could fly. I do hope to get better of an incapacity which is very painful, but certainly it will take time. Every body speaks in the same way of that great sight—which is so much more than a sight—and yet I regret more the missing kind and valued friends.

CHAPTER XXI.

LETTERS FOR 1852.

To MISS GOLDSMID.

Swallowfield, April 12, 1852.

THANK YOU most heartily, dear Miss Goldsmid, for Mr. Robertson's admirable lectures. I shall put them in the hands of my friend, Mr. Fields, of Boston, whom I am expecting every day, and who will, I am pretty sure, spread them through America. I agree generally with Mr. Robertson, differing, of course, in some particulars, as all people who think and like and admire for themselves must do and ought to do. But those lectures are the very things that ought to be heard and read; and they will be. I am not one of those who think this age without taste for poetry. Its very richness in graceful verse makes it difficult to attain a reputation-as Rogers did, for instance: but the taste exists in many unsuspected quarters. I have had proofs of this by my own book, if I may venture with you—I think I may— to be so egotistical as to mention it.. Ever since it has been published I have had, day by day, letters upon letters, packets upon packets, books upon books, from all parts of the country-remote villages in Wales and Scotland and Ireland -not merely from enthusiastic girls and young poets at Oxford and Cambridge, but from people the most unexpected— grave old merchants, half ashamed-self-educated men, who toil all day and read and write half the night-and professional men in our great towns, who find relief from their mind-weariness in the soothing delights of poetry. I should be afraid to tell you how many strangers have written to me during the last three months; and I hail it, not merely as a

mark of personal kindness to myself, but as a pregnant proof of the interest taken in the main subject of the work. Adieu, dear Miss Goldsmid. Ever most gratefully and affectionately yours, M. R. MITFORD.

To MRS. JENNINGS.

Swallowfield, June 1, 1852.

Do, please, send me "The Laird of Caithness," and any ballads you think good. I can securely trust your taste. I presume my version of "Bonnie Dundee " to be correct, since it is taken from Scott's own text, in his quite-forgotten or rather never-known play, "The Doom of Devorgoil,” one of those weak dramas which it seems really incredible that such a poet and such a novelist should have written. The most incredible of all is, that, besides its absolute want of merit, this ballad is introduced as having been written thirty years; and a prior of some monastery is also introduced, as having, about the same period, been driven from his priory by the Reformation, thus making contemporaries of John Knox and Claverhouse!

Another ballad that I have been long in search of is “We'll gae nae mair a roving," by James the Fifth of Scotland, called by Scott the best comic ballad in any language. "The Gaberlunzie Man," by the same royal author, is in Percy; but the other I can nowhere find, although I have half a dozen different collections myself, and sent for Chambers's "Comic Ballads of Scotland," making sure to find it there.

The Kossuth trait is capital. I hold the man to be a mere adventurer, and one of the worst sort, blowing up strife amongst the nations. Have you any sympathy with Louis. Napoleon? I have. Two or three of my friends, who have been in Paris since the autumn-Mrs. Browning for one-say that “the French people have been with him from the first to the last;" and the ability and courage of the man are worthy of his name. In another thing, too, every letter from France is unanimous-that war with England would be most popular with army and with people, whilst we are as unprepared for such a contingency as any thing well can be. Well, I hope the primroses will come first, and you with them.

Yes, I delight in Longfellow, especially "The Golden Le

gend," which is full of salt and savor-rich, racy, graphic,— breathing the air of the middle ages, of Gothic architecture, grand cathedrals, quaint German towns. There is an openair sermon upon bells that one can fancy to have been preached at Paul's Cross before the Reformation; and a scene in the Scriptorium, or rather a soliloquy of an old monk, employed on illuminating a manuscript, that one can really hear and see, it is so true. Always faithfully and affectionately yours, M. R. MITFORD.

To MRS. HOARE,* Monkstown, Ireland.

Swallowfield, June, 1852. DEAR MADAM,-Almost every post for the last two or three weeks has brought me two or three letters from persons hitherto unknown to me, and one or two books, many of them of considerable merit. Very few, however, have given me so much pleasure as your amusing and characteristic little work and your kind letter. Poor Mrs. James Gray interested me much. I have been hoping that my book, which has brought English reprints of Holcroft's Memoirs, and of several other works that I see announced, might have produced a collected edition of her poems; but I suppose the state of Ireland is not favorable to such an enterprise. If you could without much trouble procure for me copies of the poems you mention I should be glad. A few years back there was a great influx of Irish poetry, most of which I possess, but it is now scarce. A friend of mine once ran off with a sixpenny volume of "Poetry of the Nation," and has not since been able to find it, either in her husband's fine library in town or at their seat in the country; and this little book I have been unable to replace. Have you read "The Autobiography of a Working Man?" It is as graphic as Defoe, and with a fine illustration of Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night,"

* Mrs. Hoare, the lady to whom the following letters are addressed, had from childhood been an ardent admirer of Miss Mitford's writings, but was unacquainted with her till the publication of the "Recollections of a Literary Life." That book contained a brief notice of Mrs. James Gray, of whose life and writings Mrs. Hoare knew much of which Miss Mitford was a ignorant. She therefore ventured to write to her on that subject, and the result was a correspondence which continued till within a short period of Miss Mitford's death.

† A volume of Irish stories.

in the account the author gives of the piety of his own family, belonging to the South Highlands. Ever, dear madam, very faithfully yours, M. R. MITFORD.

Was there any thing sudden in poor Mrs. James Gray's death? I thought so from the announcement in the "Dublin University Magazine."

To MRS. HOARE, Monkstown, Ireland.

Swallowfield, Summer, 1852. DEAREST MRS. HOARE,-Mr. Macaulay I have not the honor to know; but I agree with you in thinking him at the very head of English literature,―certainly our greatest prose writer (although perhaps John Ruskin may be more eloquent) -almost our greatest poet. He is quite as delightful a companion as he is a writer. I am, for my sins, so fidgety respecting style, that I have the bad habit of expecting a book which pretends to be written in our language to be English; therefore I can not read Miss Strickland, or the Howitts, or Thomas Carlyle, or Emerson, or the serious part of Dickens, although liking very heartily the fun of "Pickwick." Some day or other you will yourself become more fastidious; and then you will find excuses for my want of indulgence.

Their wild violets are not sweet. I suspect they call the pansy the violet, since Mr. Bryant somewhere talks of the yellow violet, a phenomenon not known with us. Have you the white wild hyacinth? It makes a charming variety amongst its blue sisters, and is amongst the purest of white flowers, all so pure. A bank close to my little field is rich in both. Have you the frittillaries? They are beautiful in our water meadows, looking like painted glass. Indeed, a young friend of mine in putting up a memorial window after his grandfather's death, suggested to the artist the use of this beautiful local flower, an idea with which he was charmed. Have you the rarer English orchises-the bee, the fly, the spider, the butterfly, the dead-leaf, the lily of the valley orchis, and the man orchis? They grow on chalky soils amongst beech woods.

As a general rule I may say that through life I have met with singular kindness and sympathy; and I firmly believe that any one pursuing a straightforward course, and not courting the notice of those who are called the upper class