rth's is next to seeing Mary Russell
Mitford herself as I first saw her, twenty-three years ago, in her
geranium-planted cottage at Three-Mile Cross. She sat to John Lucas for
the picture in her serene old age, and the likeness is faultless. She
had proposed to herself to leave the portrait, as it was her own
property, to me in her will; but as I happened to be in England during
the latter part of her life, she altered her determination, and gave it
to me from her own hands.

Sydney Smith said of a certain quarrelsome person, that his very face
was a breach of the peace. The face of that portrait opposite to us is a
very different one from Sydney's fighter. Everything that belongs to the
beauty of old age one will find recorded in that charming countenance.
Serene cheerfulness most abounds, and that is a quality as rare as it is
commendable. It will be observed that the dress of Miss Mitford in the
picture before us is quaint and somewhat antiquated even for the time
when it was painted, but a pleasant face is never out of fashion.

An observer of how old age is neglected in America said to me the other
day, "It seems an impertinence to be alive after sixty on this side of
the globe"; and I have often thought how much we lose by not cultivating
fine old-fashioned ladies and gentlemen. Our aged relatives and friends
seem to be tucked away, nowadays, into neglected corners, as though it
were the correct thing to give them a long preparation for still
narrower quarters. For my own part, comely and debonair old age is most
attractive; and when I see the "thick silver-white hair lying on a
serious and weather-worn face, like moonlight on a stout old tower," I
have a strong tendency to lift my hat, whether I know the person or not.

"No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in an autumnal face."

It was a fortunate hour for me when kind-hearted John Kenyon said, as I
was leaving his hospitable door in London one summer midnight in 1847,
"You must know my friend, Miss Mitford. She lives directly on the line
of your route to Oxford, and you must call with my card and make her
acquaintance." I had lately been talking with Wordsworth and Christopher
North and old Samuel Rogers, but my hunger at that time to stand face to
face with the distinguished persons in English literature was not
satisfied. So it was during my first "tourification" in England that I
came to know Miss Mitford. The day selected fo