Nor even there could any tell
    The country’s purer charms so well
    As Mary Mitford. 
                       Verse! go forth
    And breathe o’er gentle breasts 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.”

And Harriet Martineau pays her respects to my friend in this wise:  “Miss Mitford’s descriptions of scenery, brutes, and human beings have such singular merit, that she may be regarded as the founder of a new style; and if the freshness wore off with time, there was much more than a compensation in the fine spirit of resignation and cheerfulness which breathed through everything she wrote, and endeared her as a suffering friend to thousands who formerly regarded her only as a most entertaining stranger.”

What lovely drives about England I have enjoyed with Miss Mitford as my companion and guide!  We used to arrange with her trusty Sam for a day now and then in the open air.  He would have everything in readiness at the appointed hour, and be at his post with that careful, kind-hearted little maid, the “hemmer of flounces,” all prepared to give the old lady a fair start on her day’s expedition.  Both those excellent servants delighted to make their mistress happy, and she greatly rejoiced in their devotion and care.  Perhaps we had made our plans to visit Upton Court, a charming old house where Pope’s Arabella Fermor had passed many years of her married life.  On the way thither we would talk over “The Rape of the Lock” and the heroine, Belinda, who was no other than Arabella herself.  Arriving on the lawn in front of the decaying mansion, we would stop in the shade of a gigantic oak, and gossip about the times of Queen Elizabeth, for it was then the old house was built, no doubt.

Once I remember Miss Mitford carried me on a pilgrimage to a grand old village church with a tower half covered with ivy.  We came to it through laurel hedges, and passed on the way a magnificent cedar of Lebanon.  It was a superb pile, rich in painted glass windows and carved oak ornaments.  Here Miss Mitford ordered the man to stop, and, turning to me with great enthusiasm, said, “This is Shiplake Church, where Alfred Tennyson was married!” Then we rode on a little farther, and she called my attention to some of the finest wych-elms I had ever seen.

Another day we drove along the valley of the Loddon, and she pointed out the Duke of Wellington’s seat of Strathfieldsaye.  As our pony trotted leisurely over the charming road, she told many amusing stories of the Duke’s economical habits, and she rated him soundly for his money-saving propensities.  The furniture in the house she said was a disgrace to the great man, and she described a certain old carpet that had done service so many years in the establishment that no one could tell what the original colors were.