And writing in August she says: “I do not think there is an authoress of name who has not sent me messages full of the kindest interest. It is one of the highest mercies by which this visitation has been softened that I can still give my thoughts and time and love and sympathy, not merely to dear friends, but to books and flowers and the common doings of this workaday world.” A lady friend on one occasion had remonstrated with Mary Mitford for what she considered a misplaced enthusiasm. “Ah, my dear friend!” she responds, “do not lecture me for loving and admiring! It is the last green branch in the old tree, the lingering touch of life and youth.” À propos of a tendency of hers to extoll at times some modern poem that had taken her fancy as being superior to the great poems of old, Mr. Fields quotes a saying of Pascal’s that “the heart has reasons that reason does not know.” “Miss Mitford,” he says, “was a charming exemplification of this wise saying.” During the autumn of 1854 Mary’s condition had been rapidly growing worse, though her letters show that her bright spirit was not broken by her continued sufferings and increased weakness, nor her mind in any way clouded. Her last letter to Mr. Fields was written on December 23rd, 1854, only eighteen days before she died. In it she says: “God bless you, my dear friend! May He send to both of you health and happiness and length of days and so much of this world’s goods as is needful to prevent anxiety and insure comfort. I have known many rich people in my time, and the result has convinced me that with great wealth some deep black shadow is as sure to walk as it is to follow the bright sunshine. So I never pray for more than the blessed enough for those whom I love best.” On January 1st, 1855, nine days only before her death, she wrote the following letter to a friend: “It has pleased Providence to preserve to me my calmness of mind and clearness of intellect, and also my powers of reading by day and by night, and which is still more my love of poetry and literature, my cheerfulness and my enjoyment of little things. This very day not only my common pensioners the dear robins, but a saucy troop of sparrows and a little shining bird of passage whose name I forget, have all been pecking at once at their tray of bread-crumbs outside the window. Poor, pretty things! How much delight there is in these common objects if people would learn to enjoy them; and I really think that the feeling for these simple pleasures is increasing with the increase of education.”