Woodcock lane was a chosen resort where Mary, her servant “the hemmer of flowers,” little Henry and the dogs would proceed to a certain green hillock “redolent of wild thyme and a thousand fairy flowers, delicious in its coolness, its fragrance and its repose.” Here whilst Mary sat on the turf with pen in hand and paper on knee jotting down her thoughts, she would still keep an eye on the child who was gathering flowers hard by. “Do not gather them all, Henry,” she would say, “because some one who has not so many pretty flowers at home as we have may come this way and would like to gather some.” Miss Mitford’s many visitors from far and near had all a kindly word for the little lad—Mr. Fields especially was much interested in him. In the month of January, 1847, when the first volume of _Modern Painters_ was just published, Mary Mitford wrote to a friend: “Have you read an English Graduate’s _Letters on Art_? The author, Mr. Ruskin, was here last week and is certainly the most charming person I have ever known.” In her _Recollections of a Literary Life_ Miss Mitford speaks with admiration of his “boldness” in demolishing old idols and setting up new! “Often,” she remarks, “he was right, though sometimes wrong, but always striking, always eloquent, always true to his own convictions.... Many passages of _Modern Painters_ are really poems in their tenderness, their sentiment and their grandeur. “But the greatest triumph of Mr. Ruskin,” she remarks, “is that long series of cloud pictures, unparalleled, I suppose, in any language, whether painted or written.” Here follows a long quotation of which we would give two passages. “It is a strange thing,” writes the author, “how little, in general, people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which Nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him, and teaching him than in any other of his works; and it is just the part in which we least attend to her.... The noblest scenes of the earth can be seen and known but by few; it is not intended that man should live always in the midst of them; he injures them by his presence, he ceases to feel them if he be always with them; but the sky is for all; bright as it is, it is not ‘too bright nor good for human nature’s daily food.’ It is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort, and exalting of the heart, for the soothing it and purifying it from its dross and dust.”