A kindly critic in the _Athenæum_ of April 1890, immediately after her death, described her conversation as having a charm that was indescribable and perhaps unique. This was probably so. In her, judgment and good sense were as solid as her shafts of wit were keen. She never was the victim, happily for her, of the unreasoning adulation, which so cruelly affected the last years of the life of the most humorous as well as the wittiest Irishman whom it has ever been my good fortune to meet. I knew Father Healy when his life was spent among his friends. I knew him also when he was the idol of a flattering throng, who knew not what they worshipped. Often have I seen him crushed into silence by the persistence of admirers who would never let him utter three words on any subject without beginning to laugh before he could get out with the fourth. Mary Boyle, perhaps because she frequented the society of only those who were friends, was not expected to drop pearls whenever she spoke. In her letters it is possible that an equal charm might be found. But it would require some patience in seeking; for her handwriting had undoubted peculiarities. “We had a committee on your letter, dear Mary,” once wrote an intimate friend. “We placed it on a table and sat round it, and by dint of looking at it from every point of view we really made out a good deal.” Notwithstanding the difficulty, however, some of those who, like Charles Dickens, Lord Tennyson, and Browning, loved to correspond with her, kept up an exchange of letters which ended only with death. If my aunt had lived to finish these chapters, the title she desired to apply to them might have been appropriate. As it is, they can scarcely be considered an autobiography. There are lacking, too, references to several houses[2] where she was a frequent guest, and to many circles of friends whose gatherings she helped to make merry. I miss, especially, allusions to Ireland, and above all to that happy shore, “washed by the farthest” lake, where to my knowledge she spent many days of unalloyed enjoyment. Her close friendship with Lady Marian Alford, the “your Marian” of Lord Tennyson’s verses, is not mentioned.[3] But of the society which Lady Marian loved to gather around her Mary Boyle was a welcome member. It was at Ashridge that some years before the present Bishop of Ely put on Lawn there flashed forth one of those keen answers with which she often delighted her hearers. They were discussing some important point of High Church—Low Church—Moderate Church. As luncheon was announced a prudent critic of the discussion said, “Well, after all, it is very true that _via media securum iter_.” “You don’t know what that means, Mary?” “Oh, yes, I do! that is what Lord Alwynne says, ‘caution is the way to secure a mitre.’” Footnote 2: _See_ Supplementary Chapter. Footnote 3: _See_ Supplementary Chapter.