Mr. H. promised, and faithfully replaced the Prince in his kind attentions to his old friend.  The poor old man grew ill at last, and died, Mr. H. defraying all the charges of his illness and of his funeral.  “I would willingly have paid them myself,” said he, “but I knew that would have offended and grieved the Prince.  I found that provision had been made at his banker’s to answer my drafts to a much larger amount than the actual debt.”

Miss Mitford used to say that she kept this anecdote for non-admirers of the Emperor.

One day she came limping into the room, with her dog Fanchon following in the same lame plight,—­she laughing heartily at their similarity of gait, and holding up a letter just in from the post.

“Here,” said she, “is an epistle from my dear old friend, Lady M.,” (Gibbon’s correspondent,) “who at the age of eighty-three is caught by new books, and is as enthusiastic as a girl.  She commissions me to inquire of you all about your new authoress, the writer of ’Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ who she is, and all you know of her.  So let me hear what you have to say about the lady.”

During a brief visit to her cottage not long before she died, the chase was started one evening to find, if possible, the origin of the line quoted by Byron,—­

“A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind.”

In vain we searched among the poets, and at last all the party gave up in despair.  I went up to London soon after, thinking no more of the lost line.  In a few days, however, came a brief note, as follows:—­

“Hurrah, dear friend!  I have found the line without any other person’s aid or suggestion!  Last night it occurred to me that it was in some prologue or epilogue; and my little book-room being very rich in the drama, I have looked through many hundreds of those bits of rhyme, and at last made a discovery, which, if it have no other good effect, will at least have ‘emptied my head of Corsica,’ as Johnson said to Boswell; for never was the great biographer more haunted by the thought of Paoli than I by that line.  It occurs in an epilogue by Garrick, on quitting the stage, June, 1776, when the performance was for the benefit of sick and aged actors.

“Not finding it quoted in Johnson convinced me that it would probably have been written after the publication of the Dictionary, and ultimately guided me to the right place.  It is singular that epilogues were just dismissed at the first representation of one of my plays, ‘Foscari,’ and prologues at another, ‘Rienzi.’

“Ever most affectionately yours,

“M.R.  MITFORD.

“P.S.  I am still a close prisoner in my room.  But when fine weather comes, I will get down in some way or other, and trust myself to that which never hurts anybody, the honest open air.  Spring, and even the approach of spring, sets me dreaming.  I see leafy hedges in my sleep, and flowery banks, and then I long to make the vision a reality.  I remember that my dog Flush, Fanchon’s father, who was a famous sporting-dog, used, at the approach of the covering season, to hunt in his sleep, doubtless by the same instinct that works in me.  So, as soon as the sun tells the same story with the primroses, I shall make a descent after some fashion, and, no doubt, aided by Sam’s stalwart arm, successfully.”