that of Prince Metternich or of any other great folks whatever; and
that was the son in daily and almost hourly communion and conversation
with whom she lived. I also had begun life as a "Liberal," and was
such in the days when Mr. Gladstone was a high Tory. But my mind had
long been travelling in an inverse direction to his. And far too large
a number of my contemporaries distinguished and undistinguished have
been moving in the same direction for it to be at all necessary to
say that most assuredly my slowly maturing convictions were neither
generated nor fostered by any "graciousness" or other influence of
dukes or duchesses or great people of any sort.

That my mother's political ideas were in no degree "an affair of the
heart," I will not say, and by no means regret not being able to say.
But I cannot but assert that it is a great mistake to say that they
were uninfluenced by "reasoning from causes," or that the movement
of her mind in this respect was in any degree whatever due to the
caresses which my brother imagines to have caused it.

She was not a great or careful preserver of papers and letters, or
I might have been able to print here very many communications from
persons in whom the world feels an interest. Among her early and very
dear friends was Mary Mitford.

I have a very vivid remembrance of the appearance of Mary Russell
Mitford as I used to see her on the occasions of my visits to Reading,
where my grandfather's second wife and then widow was residing. She
was not corpulent, but her figure gave one the idea of almost cubical
solidity. She had a round and red full moon sort of face, from the
ample forehead above which the hair was all dragged back and stowed
away under a small and close-fitting cap, which surrounding her face
increased the effect of full-blown rotundity. But the grey eye and
even the little snub nose were full of drollery and humour, and the
lines about the generally somewhat closely shut mouth indicated
unmistakable intellectual power. There is a singular resemblance
between her handwriting and that of my mother. Very numerous letters
must have passed between them. But of all these I have been able to
find but four.

On the 3rd of April, 1832, she writes from the "Three Mile Cross," so
familiar to many readers, as follows:--

* * * * *

"My dear Mrs. Trollope,--I thank you most sincerely for your very
delightful book, as well as for its great ki