“It is a very able and conciliatory plea for the Church. My opinion (if an insignificant woman may presume to give one) is that certain reforms ought to be; that very gross cases of pluralities should be abolished ... that some few of the clergy are too rich, and that a great many are too poor. But although not holding all her doctrines, I heartily agree with you that, as an establishment, the Church ought to remain; for to say nothing of the frightful precedent of sweeping away property, which would not stop there, the country would be overrun with fanatics.... But the Church must be (as many of her members are) wisely tolerant. Bishops must not wage war with theatres, nor rectors with a Sunday evening game of cricket.” Happily reforms in such matters were soon to be brought forward by Charles Kingsley and many others. Charles Kingsley, when he was made Rector of Eversley, was a neighbour of Miss Mitford’s and became in time her fast friend. During the year 1842 Dr. Mitford’s health rapidly declined and his devoted daughter was nearly worn out by her constant attendance upon him. He had a strange notion which he held pertinaciously that all outdoor exercise was bad for her, while, in fact, her short strolls in her garden or in the neighbouring fields was the only change that could keep her from breaking down. When after some hours spent in weary watching she had seen her father fall asleep, she would steal out of the house with Dash for a companion for a scamper round the meadows. “How grateful I am,” she writes at this time, “to that great gracious Providence who makes the most intense enjoyment the cheapest and the commonest.” Dr. Mitford died on the 11th day of December. He was buried by his wife in Shinfield Church, being followed by an imposing procession of neighbours and friends. We cannot help thinking that this was more to show sympathy and respect for Miss Mitford than from special respect to him. That she loved her father dearly in spite of all his faults is very certain, and that she was not blind to these faults is also certain. But she looked upon them at all times very much in the same way as she did when a young girl on hearing of his money losses. “Poor Papa!” she would exclaim, “I am so sorry for him, I wish he would deal with honest people.” A beautiful expression of a dying mother to her children has been handed down in our family, “Cover each other’s faults,” she said, “with a mantle of love.” Miss Mitford did this and perhaps sometimes unwisely, but her life was the happier for it. She never knew the misery of condemning the conduct of her father. “But her father was not the only person whom Miss Mitford egregiously overestimated, and unconsciously flattered,” writes Mrs. Tindal. “She looked upon her friends through rose-coloured spectacles, she exaggerated their good gifts and multiplied their graces; she hoped and believed great things of them.”