country.  Her cheerful voice at the head of the stairs, telling her little maid to show me the way to her sitting-room, sounded very musically, and I often observed in later interviews how like a melody her tones always appeared in conversation.  Once when she read a lyrical poem, not her own, to a group of friends assembled at her later residence, in Swallowfield, of which number it was my good-fortune to be one, the verses came from her lips like an exquisite chant.  Her laugh had a ringing sweetness in it, rippling out sometimes like a beautiful chime of silver bells; and when she told a comic story, which she often did with infinite tact and grace, she joined in with the jollity at the end, her eyes twinkling with delight at the pleasure her narrative was always sure to bring.  Her enjoyment of a joke was something delicious, and when she heard a good thing for the first time her exultant mirth was unbounded.  As she sat in her easy-chair, listening to a Yankee story which interested her, her “Dear me! dear me! dear me!” (three times repeated always)

  “Rang like a golden jewel down a golden stair.”

The sunny summer-day was falling full on her honeysuckles, lilies, and roses, when I first saw her face in the snug cottage at Three-Mile Cross.  As we sat together at the open casement, looking down on the flowers that sent up their perfumes to her latticed window like fragrant tributes from a fountain of distilled sweet waters, she pointed out, among the neighboring farm-houses and villas, the residences of her friends, in all of whom she seemed to have the most affectionate interest.  I noticed, as the village children went by her window, they all stopped to bow and curtsy.  One curly-headed urchin made bold to take off his well-worn cap and wait to be recognized as “little Johnny,”—­“no great scholar,” said the kind-hearted old lady to me, “but a sad rogue among our flock of geese.  Only yesterday, the young marauder was detected by my maid with a plump gosling stuffed half-way into his pocket!” While she was thus discoursing of Johnny’s peccadilloes, the little fellow looked up with a knowing expression, and very soon caught in his cap a gingerbread dog, which the old lady threw to him from the window.  “I wish he loved his book as well as he relishes sweet cake,” sighed she, as the boy kicked up his heels and disappeared down the lane.

Full of anecdote, her conversation that afternoon ran on in a perpetual flow of good-humor, until it was time for me to be on my way toward the University City.  From that time till she died, our friendship continued, and, during other visits to England, I saw her frequently, driving about the country with her in her pony-chaise, and spending many happy hours under her cottage-roof.  She was always the same cheerful spirit, enlivening our intercourse with shrewd and pertinent observations and reminiscences, some of which it may not be out of place to reproduce here.  Country life, its scenery and manners, she was never