I never say one word more than appears to me to be true. To be sure, there is an atmosphere of love--a sunshine of fancy--in which objects appear clearer and brighter; and from such I may sometimes paint; but that is not flattery prepense, is it, my dear friend? I never mean to flatter--no, never! But it is a great pleasure to me to love and admire, and it is a faculty which has survived many frosts and storms. MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_ in the former’s ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange. * * * * * [Sidenote: Visited by Americans.] I suppose she was one of the earliest English authors who was “interviewed” by the Americans. She was far from democratic, but always spoke of that nation with great respect. What impressed me much more was her admiration for Louis Napoleon; upon which point, as on many others, we soon agreed to differ. She even approved of the _coup d’état_, concerning which she writes to me, a little apologetically, “My enthusiasm is always ready laid, you know, like a housemaid’s fire”; which was very true. JAMES PAYN: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Enthusiasm.] Carlyle tells us, “Nothing so lifts a man from all his men imprisonments, were it but for moments, as true admiration”; and Miss Mitford admired to such an extent that she must have been lifted in this way nearly all her lifetime. Indeed she erred, if she erred at all, on this side, and over-praised and over-admired everything and everybody whom she regarded. When she spoke of Beranger, or Dumas, or Hazlitt, or Holmes, she exhausted every term of worship and panegyric. Louis Napoleon was one of her most potent crazes.... Although she had been prostrated by the hard work and increasing anxieties of forty years of authorship, when I saw her she was as fresh and independent as a skylark. She was a good hater as well as a good praiser, and she left nothing worth saving in an obnoxious reputation.... I have heard her go on in her fine way, giving preference to certain modern poems far above the works of the great masters of song. Pascal says that “the heart has reasons that reason does not know”; and Miss Mitford was a charming exemplification of this wise saying. JAMES T. FIELDS: ‘Yesterdays with Authors.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Devotion to her father.]