tair."

The sunny summer-day was falling full on her honeysuckles, lilies, and
roses, when I first saw her face in the snug cottage at Three-Mile
Cross. As we sat together at the open casement, looking down on the
flowers that sent up their perfumes to her latticed window like fragrant
tributes from a fountain of distilled sweet waters, she pointed out,
among the neighboring farm-houses and villas, the residences of her
friends, in all of whom she seemed to have the most affectionate
interest. I noticed, as the village children went by her window, they
all stopped to bow and curtsy. One curly-headed urchin made bold to take
off his well-worn cap and wait to be recognized as "little Johnny,"--"no
great scholar," said the kind-hearted old lady to me, "but a sad rogue
among our flock of geese. Only yesterday, the young marauder was
detected by my maid with a plump gosling stuffed half-way into his
pocket!" While she was thus discoursing of Johnny's peccadilloes, the
little fellow looked up with a knowing expression, and very soon caught
in his cap a gingerbread dog, which the old lady threw to him from the
window. "I wish he loved his book as well as he relishes sweet cake,"
sighed she, as the boy kicked up his heels and disappeared down the
lane.

Full of anecdote, her conversation that afternoon ran on in a perpetual
flow of good-humor, until it was time for me to be on my way toward the
University City. From that time till she died, our friendship continued,
and, during other visits to England, I saw her frequently, driving about
the country with her in her pony-chaise, and spending many happy hours
under her cottage-roof. She was always the same cheerful spirit,
enlivening our intercourse with shrewd and pertinent observations and
reminiscences, some of which it may not be out of place to reproduce
here. Country life, its scenery and manners, she was never tired of
depicting; but not infrequently she loved to talk of those celebrities
in literature and art whom she had known intimately, with a vivacity and
sweetness of temper never-failing and delightful. I well remember, one
autumn evening, when half a dozen friends were sitting in her library
after dinner, talking with her of Tom Taylor's Life of Haydon, then
lately published, how graphically she described to us the eccentric
painter, whose genius she was among the fore-most to recognize.
The flavor of her discourse I cannot reproduce; but I was too much
interested