Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 3 December 1842: 'My thoughts have lately been of Frederica Bremer?s "Neighbours" instead of my own?I mean of the very charming novel which Mrs Howitt has just "done into English" from the Swedish ? or German peradventure ? it being probably a translation from the German ? Read it my dearest friend, & agree with me that it is delightful. "Like Miss Austen" says Mrs Howitt - & "like Miss Austen" being the best introduction to you possible, "I echo her" ? altho? in my private & individual opinion & saving your presence, I do consider the book of a higher & sweeter tone than Miss Austen had voice and soul for. There is more poetry, more of the inner life, more of the ideal aspiration more of a Godward tendency in the book than we need seek for or than even you my beloved friend, can, I think, imagine in any book or books of Miss Austen considered in a moment of your most enthusiastic estimation. I am pleased, & touched .. charmed for the better, by the book. The serenity, the sweetness, the undertone of Christian music, affect me the more for coming to me in the midst of my lion & tiger hunting with La jeune France [ie her reading of lurid, recent French fiction]; & the impression will not pass, it appears to me, with the reading of the last page.'