e time before, while on a visit to her cottage. Every virtue
under heaven she attributed to that canine individual; and I was obliged
to allow in my return letters that since our planet began to spin,
nothing comparable to Fanchon had ever run on four legs. I had
also known Flush, the ancestor of Fanchon, intimately, and had been
accustomed to hear wonderful things of that dog, but Fanchon had graces
and genius unique. Miss Mitford would have joined with Hamerton, when he
says, 'I humbly thank Divine Providence for having invented dogs, and I
regard that man with wondering pity who can lead a dogless life.'

Another of Miss Mitford's great friends was John Ruskin,* and one can
well imagine how much they must have had in common. Of Miss Mitford's
writings Ruskin says, 'They have the playfulness and purity of the
"Vicar of Wakefield" without the naughtiness of its occasional wit, or
the dust of the world's great road on the other side of the hedge.... '

*It is Mr. Harness who says, writing of Ruskin and Miss Mitford, 'His
kindness cheered her closing days. He sent her every book that would
interest, every delicacy that would strengthen her.'

Neither the dust nor the ethics of the world of men quite belonged to
Miss Mitford's genius. It is always a sort of relief to turn from her
criticism of people, her praise of Louis Napoleon, her facts about Mr.
Dickens, whom she describes as a dull companion, or about my father,
whom she looked upon as an utter heartless worldling, to the natural
spontaneous sweet flow of nature in which she lived and moved
instinctively.

Mr. James Payn gives, perhaps, the most charming of all the descriptions
of the author of 'Our Village.' He has many letters from her to quote
from. 'The paper is all odds and ends,' he says, 'and not a scrap of
it but is covered and crossed. The very flaps of the envelopes and the
outsides of them have their message.'

Mr. Payn went to see her at Swallowfield, and describes the small
apartment lined with books from floor to ceiling and fragrant with
flowers. 'Its tenant rose from her arm-chair with difficulty, but with a
sunny smile and a charming manner bade me welcome. My father had been
an old friend of hers, and she spoke of my home and belongings as only a
woman can speak of such things, then we plunged into medea res, into men
and books. She seemed to me to have known everybody worth knowing from
the Duke of Wellington to the last new verse-maker. And s