Mossy was the name of her dog. Throughout her life Mary Mitford was much attached to dogs, and she was generally accompanied in her rambles by some special favourite. Sometimes it was a beautiful greyhound—one of her father’s coursers that had been given to her. She concludes one of her letters by remarking: “I have nothing more to tell you, except that I have taken a new pet—the most sagacious donkey that ever lived. She lets nobody ride her—follows me everywhere, even indoors when she can—and is really a wonderful animal. Her favourite caress is to have her ears stroked. Shakespeare has noticed this in the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ when Titania tells Bottom that she will give him musk-roses and ‘stroke thy fair, large ears, my gentle joy.’” In this same letter Mary speaks of some of the singers she had heard recently in London. “I hope you like Braham’s singing,” she says, “though I know among your scientific musicians it is a crime of _lèse majesté_ to say so; but he is the only singer I ever heard in my life who conveyed to my very unmusical ears any idea of the expression of which music is susceptible; no one else joins any sense to the sound. They may talk of music as ‘married to immortal verse’; but if it were not for Braham they would have been divorced long ago.... Moore’s singing has, indeed, great feeling; but then his singing is not much beyond a modulated sigh—though the most powerful sigh in the world.” And speaking of the actors of the period, she says: “Of all that I have seen nothing has afforded me half so much delight as Miss O’Neil. She broke my heart, and charmed me beyond expression by showing me that I had a heart to break, a fact I always before rather doubted, having been till I saw her as impenetrable to tragedy as Punch and his wife or any other wooden-hearted biped. But she is irresistible.... The manner in which she identifies herself with the character exceeds all that I had before conceived possible of theatrical illusion. You never admire—you only weep.”