poetess) the exclamation: "Good heavens! a Sancho Panza in petticoats! " In her manners, this much maligned lady was easy, amiable and interesting, as in her writings,—teste Jerdan,—natural, intellectual and delightful. The lineaments of her outward woman are preserved to us in her portrait by Haydon, prefixed to her Dramatic Works, 1854; another by S, Freeman, in her Recollections; a third, in La Belle Assemblée, for June, 1823, after a painting by Miss Drummond; another in the New Monthly Magazine, for October, 1831; a charming stippled head, engraved by Thomson, from a drawing by F. R. Say, giving a favourable idea of the kindliness of her humour, and the keenness of her powers of observation; and lastly, the engraving from the well-known portrait, painted by her friend, John Lucas,—the preference shown to which, over that painted by Haydon, awoke ill-feeling in the mind of the jealous artist, and an estrangement for a time between him and the fair authoress. This latter portrait,—that by Lucas, I mean,—was presented by Miss Mitford to her friend, Mr. James S. Fields, the eminent publisher of Boston, U.S.A., from whose pen we have Yesterdays with Authors (1872, 8vo), where the letters of Miss Mitford, from 1848 to 1854, occupy pages 263-350 of the volume.
There may be some who will thank me for recording a very charming book, in which an acute and kindly foreign observer has given us his own impressions of English country life, with especial reference to its institutions, social and educational. This is entitled La Vie de Village en Angleterre; ou Souvenirs d'un Exilé (Paris, 1862, 8vo), and, though published without the name of the author, may be stated to have been written by M. Charles de Remusat.
Mary Russell Mitford was buried at Swallowfield, in a spot chosen by herself, where now a simple granite cross marks the resting-place of one of the most simple, graphic, and unaffected of our female writers.
XIII.— DON TELESFORO DE TRUEBA Y COZIO.
"Who amongst our readers,"—I may ask with a genial and unusually well-informed writer in The Hour[1] newspaper,—"has ever heard so much as the name of Don Telesforo de Trueba y Cozio, whom he will ever find in the act of dancing, and admiring his own shadow the while through his spectacles? We remember him well, and in this very posture, and can testify to the excellence of the likeness. He was one of the pleasantest and most amiable of men, and when we read of the doings of Spanish patriots of the present day, we are forced, in spite of ourselves, to put the most favourable construction on their most outrageous vagaries, from our recollection of the fine qualities and accomplishments of the author of the Exquisites."
Maginn avowed that he had little to say about this dapper, self-satisfied gentleman, and I must confess that I have not much more. My readers may regard him as a fly in amber, and wonder, so completely are his
- ↑ November 12, 1873.
