rd that man with
wondering pity who can lead a dogless life."

Her fondness for rural life, one may well imagine, was almost
unparalleled. I have often been with her among the wooded lanes of her
pretty country, listening for the nightingales, and on such occasions
she would discourse so eloquently of the sights and sounds about us,
that her talk seemed to me "far above singing." She had fallen in love
with nature when a little child, and had studied the landscape till she
knew familiarly every flower and leaf which grows on English soil. She
delighted in rural vagabonds of every sort, especially in gypsies; and
as they flourished in her part of the country, she knew all their ways,
and had charming stories to tell of their pranks and thievings. She
called them "the commoners of nature"; and once I remember she pointed
out to me on the road a villanous-looking youth on whom she smiled as we
passed, as if he had been Virtue itself in footpad disguise. She knew
all the literature of rural life, and her memory was stored with
delightful eulogies of forests and meadows. When she repeated or read
aloud the poetry she loved, her accents were

"Like flowers' voices, if they could but speak."

She _understood_ how to enjoy rural occupations and rural existence,
and she had no patience with her friend Charles Lamb, who preferred the
town. Walter Savage Landor addressed these lines to her a few months
before she died, and they seem to me very perfect and lovely in their
application:--

"The hay is carried; and the hours
Snatch, as they pass, the linden flow'rs;
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 breasts her worth.
Needless the task ... but should she see
One hearty wish from you and me,
A moment's pain it may ass