* * * * *

After leaving Three-Mile Cross for Swallowfield, her health, never of late years robust, seemed failing.  In one of her letters to me she gives this pleasant picture of her home:—­

“Ill as I am, my spirits are as good as ever; and just at this moment I am most comfortably seated under the acacia-tree at the corner of the house,—­the beautiful acacia literally loaded with its snowy chains.  The flowering-trees this summer, the lilacs, laburnums, and rhododendrons, have been one mass of blossoms, but none are so graceful as this waving acacia.  On one side is a syringa, smelling and looking like an orange-tree,—­a jar of roses on the table before me,—­fresh gathered roses,—­the pride of my gardener’s heart.  Little Fanchon is at my feet, too idle to eat the biscuits with which I am trying to tempt her,—­biscuits from Boston, sent to me by kind Mrs. S., and which Fanchon ought to like; but you know her laziness of old, and she improves in it every day.”

It was about this period that Walter Savage Landor sent to her these exquisite lines:—­

  “The hay is carried; and the Hours
  Snatch, as they pass, the linden-flowers;
  And children leap to pluck a spray
  Bent earthward, and then run away. 
  Park-keeper! catch me those grave thieves,
  About whose frocks the fragrant leaves,
  Sticking and fluttering here and there,
  No false nor faltering witness bear.

  “I never view such scenes as these
  In grassy meadow girt with trees,
  But comes a thought of her who now
  Sits with serenely patient brow
  Amid deep sufferings:  none hath told
  More pleasant tales to young and old. 
  Fondest was she of Father Thames,
  But rambled to Hellenic streams;
  Nor even there could any tell
  The country’s purer charms so well
  As Mary Mitford.

  “Verse! go forth
  And breathe o’er gentle hearts her worth. 
  Needless the task:  but should she see
  One hearty wish from you and me,
  A moment’s pain it may assuage,—­
  A rose-leaf on the couch of Age.”

In the early days of the year 1855 she sent, in her own handwriting, kind greetings to her old friends only a few hours before she died.  Sweetness of temper and brightness of mind, her never-failing characteristics, accompanied her to the last; and she passed on in her usual cheerful and affectionate mood, her sympathies uncontracted by age, narrow fortune, and pain.

THE PROFESSOR’S STORY.

CHAPTER XVII.

OLD SOPHY CALLS ON THE REVEREND DOCTOR.