A plain substantial cross marks the spot in the old churchyard at Swallowfield, where, according to her own wish, Mary Mitford lies sleeping.  It is proposed to erect a memorial in the old parish church to her memory, and her admirers in England have determined, if a sufficient sum can be raised, to build what shall be known as “The Mitford Aisle,” to afford accommodation for the poor people who are not able to pay for seats.  Several of Miss Mitford’s American friends will join in this beautiful object, and a tablet will be put up in the old church commemorating the fact that England and America united in the tribute.

LETTERS, 1848-1849.

    Three-mile Cross, December 4, 1848.

Dear Mr. Fields:  My silence has been caused by severe illness.  For more than a twelvemonth my health has been so impaired as to leave me a very poor creature, almost incapable of any exertion at all times, and frequently suffering severe pain besides.  So that I have to entreat the friends who are good enough to care for me never to be displeased if a long time elapses between my letters.  My correspondents being so numerous, and I myself so utterly alone, without any one even to fold or seal a letter, that the very physical part of the task sometimes becomes more fatiguing than I can bear.  I am not, generally speaking, confined to my room, or even to the house; but the loss of power is so great that after the short drive or shorter walk which my very skilful medical adviser orders, I am too often compelled to retire immediately to bed, and I have not once been well enough to go out of an evening during the year 1848.  Before its expiration I shall have completed my sixty-first year; but it is not age that has so prostrated me, but the hard work and increasing anxiety of thirty years of authorship, during which my poor labors were all that my dear father and mother had to look to, besides which for the greater part of that time I was constantly called upon to attend to the sick-bed, first of one aged parent and then of another.  Few women could stand this, and I have only to be intensely thankful that the power of exertion did not fail until the necessity of such exertion was removed.  Now my poor life is (beyond mere friendly feeling) of value to no one.  I have, too, many alleviations,—­in the general kindness of the neighborhood, the particular goodness of many admirable friends, the affectionate attention of a most attached and intelligent old servant, and above all in my continued interest in books and delight in reading.  I love poetry and people as well at sixty as I did at sixteen, and can never be sufficiently grateful to God for having permitted me to retain the two joy-giving faculties of admiration and sympathy, by which we are enabled to escape from the consciousness of our own infirmities into the great works of all ages and the joys and sorrows of our immediate friends.  Among the books which I have been reading