Writing to Mrs. Barrett Browning (then in Italy) in March, 1850, she says: “My _Country Stories_ are just coming out, to my great contentment, in the ‘Parlour Library’ for a shilling, or perhaps ninepence—that being the price of Miss Austen’s novels. I delight in this, and have no sympathy with your bemoanings over American editions. Think of the American editions of my prose. _Our Village_ has been reprinted in twenty or thirty places, and _Belford Regis_ in almost as many; and I like it. So do _you_, say what you may.” And writing to the same friend a year later, when Miss Mitford’s health was improving, she says: “You will wonder to hear that I have again taken pen in hand. It reminds me of Benedick’s speech—‘When I said I should die a bachelor I never thought to live to be married,’ but it is our friend Henry Chorley’s fault.” And writing to Mr. Fields on the same subject, she says: “After eight years’ absolute cessation of composition, Henry Chorley, of the Athenæum, coaxed me last summer into writing for a lady’s journal which he is editing for Messrs. Bradbury & Evans, certain Readings of Poetry, old and new, which will, I suppose, form two or three separate volumes when collected.... One pleasure will be the doing what justice I can to certain American poets—Mr. Whittier, for instance, whose ‘Massachusetts to Virginia’ is amongst the finest things ever written ... and I foresee that day by day our literature will become more mingled with rich, bright novelties from America, not reflections of European brightness but gems all coloured with your own skies and woods and waters.... “I shall cause my book to be immediately forwarded to you, but I don’t think it will be ready for a twelvemonth. There is a good deal in it of my own prose, and it takes a wider range than usual of poetry, including much that has never appeared in any of the specimen books.” This work ultimately bore the title of _Recollections of a Literary Life_. It forms delightful reading, for the author has blended with her own recollections of the poets or of the places they have immortalized many interesting experiences of her own life given in her best style of writing. It is a truly remarkable work when we consider how much its author was suffering from impaired health during the period of its composition. The years 1849-50 were years of sudden changes and convulsions in the political world of the Continent, and a whiff of the general excitement penetrated even to little Three Mile Cross! Mary Mitford writes to an American friend: “We have here one of the Silvio Pellico exiles—Count Carpinetta—whose story is quite a romance. He is just returned from Turin, where he was received with enthusiasm, might have been returned as Deputy for two places, and did recover some of his property confiscated years ago by the Austrians. It does one’s heart good to see a piece of poetical justice transferred to real life.”