Read it through once

In response to the invitation contained in this letter Miss Sedgwick did call at the cottage when, some years later, she paid a visit to this country. It was a visit ostensibly undertaken to see the sights and meet the lions—particularly the literary lions. The record of the trip was embodied in two small volumes published in 1841 by Moxon, in London, and entitled _Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home_. Miss Sedgwick possessed a telling style, picturesque to a degree, and there can be no shadow of doubt that her “kindred at home” were delighted to have her spicy epistles, but they shocked Miss Mitford. “If you have a mind,” the latter wrote to a friend, “to read the coarsest Americanism ever put forth, read the _Literary Gazette_ of this last week. I remember, my dear love, how much and how justly you were shocked at Miss Sedgwick’s way of speaking of poor Miss Landon’s death; but when you remember that her brother and nephew had spent twice ten days at our poor cottage—that she had been received as their kinswoman, and therefore as a friend, you may judge how unexpected this coarse detail has been. The _Athenæum_ will give you no notion of the original passage nor the book itself—for John Kenyon, meeting with it at Moxon’s, cancelled the passage—but too late for the journals, except the _Athenæum_. Of course its chief annoyance to me is the finding the aunt of a dear friend so excessively vulgar. Do get the _Literary Gazette_—for really it must be seen to be believed.”