means shocked at your dislike of Republicanism.  I was always a very aristocratic Whig, and since these reforming days am well-nigh become a staunch Tory, for pretty nearly the same reason that converted you—­a dislike to mobs in action....  Refinement follows wealth, but not often closely, as witness the parvenu people even in dear England....  I heard of your plunge into the Backwoods first from Mr. Owen himself, with whom I foregathered three years ago in London, and of whom you have given so very true and graphic a picture.  What extraordinary mildness and plausibility that man possesses!  I never before saw an instance of actual wildness—­madness of theory accompanied by such suavity and soberness of manner.  Did you see my friend, Miss Sedgwick?  Her letters show a large and amiable mind, and a little niece of nine years old, who generally writes in them, has a style very unusual in so young a girl, and yet most youthful and natural too....  Can you tell me if Mr. Flint be the author of George Mason, or the Young Backwoodsman?  I think that he is; and whether the name of a young satirical writer be Sams or Sands?  Your answering these questions will stead me much, and I am sure that you will answer them if you can.

“Now to your kind questions.  I am getting ready a fifth and last volume of Our Village as fast as I can, though with pain and difficulty, having hurt my left hand so much by a fall from an open carriage that it affects the right, and makes writing very uncomfortable to me.  And I am in a most perplexed state about my opera, not knowing whether it will be produced this season or not, in consequence of Captain Polhill and his singers having parted.  This would not have happened had my coadjutor the composer kept to his time.  And I have still hopes that when the opera be [shall, omitted probably] taken in (the music is even now not finished), a sense of interest will bring the parties together again.  I hope that it may, for it will not only be a tremendous hit for all of us, but it will take me to London and give me the pleasure of a peep at you, a happiness to which I look forward very anxiously.  I know Mr. Tom, and like him of all things, as everybody who knows him must, and I hear that his sisters are charming.  God bless you, my dear friend.  My father joins me in every good wish, and

“I am ever most affectionately yours,

“M.R.  MITFORD.”

* * * * *

A few weeks later she writes a very long letter almost entirely filled with a discussion of the desirability or non-desirability of writing in this, that, and the other “annual” or magazine.  Most of those she alludes to are dead, and there is no interest in preserving her mainly unfavourable remarks concerning them and their editors and publishers.  One sentence, however, is so singularly and amusingly suggestive of change in men and women and things, that I must give it.  After reviewing a great number of the leading monthlies she says “as for Fraser’s and Blackwood’s, they are hardly such as a lady likes to write for”!