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A long list of great names, belonging to intending contributors, appeared in the paper a day or two ago, and among them was Miss Mitford's. Are you wroth with me for not saying a word about going to see you? Arabel and I won't affirm it mathematically but we are, metaphysically, talking of paying our visit to you next Tuesday. Don't expect us, nevertheless. Yours affectionately, E.B. BARRETT.
Her heart was full of gracious things, and the best of company was ever hers, 'La fleur de la hotte, as Madame de Sevigne says. We walked into the small square hall where Dr. Mitford's bed was established after his illness, whilst visitors and all the rest of the household came and went through the kitchen door.
Grote, the great scholar whom we have had lately to mourn, also recognising the identity between the struggles of Athens and Sparta and the struggles of our modern world, and taking violently the contrary side to that of Mitford, being as great a democrat as Mitford was an aristocrat, wrote a reply, far above Mitford's history in power and learning, but being in its main characteristic almost identical, being above all things a book of vigorous political passion, written for persons who care for politics, and not, as almost all histories of antiquity are and must be, the book of a man who cares for scholarship more than for anything else, written mainly if not exclusively, for scholars.
How old Landor, who "gushed" from cradle to grave, would have massacred and rended in his wrath such talkers! Mary Mitford's "gush" was sincere at all events. But there is a "hall-mark," for those who can decipher it, "without which none is genuine."
I see it every day in my Jane' her maid, who is mesmerised for deafness, but not, I believe, with much success curatively. As a remedy, the success has been far greater in the Martineau case than in others. With Miss Mitford's maid, the sleep is, however, produced; and the girl professed, at the third séance, to be able to see behind her.
With the cult of her own family she has nothing more to do; and the funeral ceremonies performed upon her departure from the parental roof, the solemn sweeping-out of the house-rooms, the lighting of the death-fire before the gate, are significant of this religious separation. Mitford's.
An enthusiastic American critic who comes over to England emphasises the situation. Mr. Willis's 'superlative admiration' seems to give point to everything, and to all the enthusiasm. Miss Austen's Collins himself could not have been more appreciative, not even if Miss de Burgh had tried her hand at a MS.... Could he Mr. Willis choose, he would have tragedy once a year from Miss Mitford's pen.
We do not assert that John Mitford's reasoning took the precise form of these words, for many minds can think somewhat profoundly without being able to express themselves clearly; but some such thoughts undoubtedly coursed through John's mind, as he moved through that subterranean labyrinth, and finally emerged through a narrow crack, not so large as an ordinary door upon the inner margin of a stupendous cavern.
I suppose, when I am done, I shall find that I have forgotten much that was most influential, as I see already I have forgotten Thoreau, and Hazlitt, whose paper "On the Spirit of Obligations" was a turning-point in my life, and Penn, whose little book of aphorisms had a brief but strong effect on me, and Mitford's "Tales of Old Japan," wherein I learned for the first time the proper attitude of any rational man to his country's laws a secret found, and kept, in the Asiatic islands.
He sent her every book that would interest, every delicacy that would strengthen her. Neither the dust nor the ethics of the world of men quite belonged to Miss Mitford's genius. It is always a sort of relief to turn from her criticism of people, her praise of Louis Napoleon, her facts about Mr.
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