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44 of those ladies whose names and works were coupled with hers. It was this classification, however, that annoyed our poetess more than aught else in the review.

Towards the end of November Miss Mitford was enabled to report that her friend was somewhat better, but I fear, she added, "we dare not expect more than a few months of lingering life." But the vital spark did not flutter out, and the improvement in the invalid's condition, if slow, was, with some fluctuations, continuous. "I did not think," she wrote some few months later, "to be better any more, but I have quite rallied now, except as to strength, and they say that on essential points I shall not suffer permanently—and this is a comfort to poor papa." To another correspondent Miss Barrett wrote, as an excuse for not following up some literary labour:—

Writing on the 17th of May 1841, to Richard H. Horne, the author of Orion and Cosmo de' Medici, with whom she had already been a correspondent for some time past, she says:—

I shall be more at ease when I have thanked you, dear Mr. Horne, for your assurance of sympathy, which, in its feeling and considerate