Squire Westerns, in the inveterate drudgeries of the chainstitch workers, and the low and mindless indulgencies of the foxhunters of an age that has gone by, never to degrade the national character again; the true period of British excellence. This sickly extravagance is, however, rapidly working its own catastrophe. No man but a member of the Linnæan Society will be suffered to be twice foolish over a flower, without finding that his rapture is left to be its own reward. Cottages and clowns will be speedily consigned to the authorship of the "Dairyman's Daughter," and the Tract Societies; and woe be to the future Novelist who shall hope to win the living world's heart by the revival of their grandfather's and grandmother's tender absurdities.

Yet nature has beauties which might exercise the powers of mighty minds, and no true picture even of her most rustic and simple aspect can be wrought without exciting pleasure. The volume before us is a case in illustration.

Miss Mitford has been for some years a diligent author in very various styles of composition. At an early age she produced some ingenious poetry, attractive from the harmony of its lines, and the purity of its moral; within these few years a tragedy, a work of bolder ambition and rarer success; and as her latest, and we think beyond all comparison, her happiest performance, the present history of the manners and persons of "Our Village." In a brief preface, she pledges herself, " that her descriptions have been always written on the spot and at the moment, and in nearly every instance with the closest and most resolute fidelity to the place and the people." The preface concludes by stating, that the greater part of these papers have been already published in a periodical publication, we believe the London Magazine, a work that contains from time to time some very interesting and graceful contributions. The volume thus begins.

"Of all situations for a constant residence, that which appears to me most delightful is a little village far in the country; a small neighbourhood, not of fine mansions finely peopled, but of cottages and cottage-like houses, A little world of our own, close packed and insulated like ants in an anthill, or bees in a hive, or sheep in a fold, or nuns in a convent, or sailors in a ship, where we know every one, and are known to every one, interested in every one, and authorised to hope that every one feels an interest in us.

A village neighbourhood, such as this Berkshire hamlet in which I write, a long straggling, winding street, at the bottom of a fine eminence, with a road through it, always abounding in carts, horsemen, and carriages.

VOL. II. NO. IV.

L

Then follows a description of the cottages and their tenants. "The first house on the opposite side of the way is the blacksmith's; a gloomy dwelling, where the sun never seems to shine; dark and smoky within and without, like a forge. The blacksmith is a high officer in our little state, nothing less than a constable; but, alas! alas! when tumults arise, and the constable is called for, he will commonly be found in the thickest of the fray. Lucky would it be for his wife and her eight children if there were no public-house in the land: an inveterate inclination to enter those bewitching doors is Mr. Constable's only fault.

"Next to this official dwelling is a spruce brick tenement, red, high, and narrow, boasting one above another three sash-windows, the only sash-windows in the village, with a clematis on one side and a rose on the other, tall and narrow like itself. That slender mansion has a fine genteel look. The little parlour seems made for Hogarth's old maid and her stunted footboy; for tea and card-parties, it would just hold one table; for the rustle of faded silks, and the splendour of old china; for the delight of four by honours, and a little snug quiet scandal between the deals; for affected gentility and real starvation. This should have been its destiny; but fate has been unpropitious: it belongs to a plump, merry, bustling dame, with four fat, rosy, noisy children, the very essence of vulgarity and plenty.

"Then comes the village shop, like other village shops, multifarious as a bazaar; a repository for bread, shoes, tea, cheese, tape, ribands, and bacon; for every thing, in short, except the one particular thing which you happen to want at the moment, and will be sure not to find. The people are civil and thriving, and frugal withal; they have let the upper part of their house to two young women (one of them is a pretty blue-eyed girl) who teach little children their A B C, and make caps and gowns for their mamas,-parcel schoolmistress, parcel mantuamaker. I believe they find adorning the body a more profitable vocation than adorning the mind.

"Divided from the shop by a narrow yard, and opposite the shoemaker's, is a habitation of whose inmates I shall say nothing. A cottage-no-a miniature house, with many additions, little odds and ends of places, pantries, and what not; all angles, and of a charming in-andoutness; a little bricked court before one half, and a little flower-yard before the other; the walls, old and weather-stained, covered with hollyhocks, roses, honeysuckles, and a great apricot-tree; the casements full of geraniums; (ah, there is our superb white cat peeping out from amongst them!) the closets (our landlord has the assurance to call them rooms) full of contrivances and corner-cupboards; and the little garden behind full of common flowers, tulips, pinks, larkspurs, pionies, stocks, and carnations, with an arbour of privet, not unlike a sentrybox, where one lives in a delicious green light, and looks out on the gayest of all gay flower-beds. That house was built on purpose to show in what an exceedingly small compass comfort may be packed. Well, I will loiter there no longer.

"The next tenement is a place of importance, the Rose inn; a whitewashed building, retired from the road behind its fine swinging sign, with a little bow-window room coming out on one side, and forming, with our stable on the other, a sort of open square, which is the constant resort of carts, waggons, and return chaises. There are two carts there now, and mine host is serving them with beer in his eternal red waistcoat. He is a thriving man, and a portly, as his waistcoat attests, which has been twice let out within this twelvemonth. Our landlord has a stirring wife, a hopeful son, and a daughter, the belle of the village; not so pretty as the fair nymph of the shoe-shop, and far less elegant, but ten times as fine; all curlpapers in the morning, like a porcupine, all curls in the afternoon, like a poodle, with more flounces than curlpapers, and more lovers than curls. Miss Phoebe is fitter for town than country; and, to do her justice, she has a consciousness of that fitness, and turns her steps town-ward as often as she can. She is gone

to B to-day with her last and principal lover, a recruiting serjeant -a man as tall as Serjeant Kite, and as impudent. Some day or other he will carry off Miss Phoebe." P. 5.

"Next door lives a carpenter, "famed ten miles round, and worthy all his fame;" few cabinet-makers surpass him, with his excellent wife, and their little daughter Lizzy, the plaything and queen of the village, a child three years old according to the register, but six in size and strength and intellect, in power and in self-will. She manages every body in the place, her schoolmistress included; turns the wheeler's children out of their own little cart, and makes them draw her : seduces cakes and lollypops from the very shop window; makes the lazy carry her, the silent talk to her, the grave romp with her; does any thing she pleases; is absolutely irresistible. Her chief attraction lies in her exceeding power of loving, and her firm reliance on the love and indul-gence of others. How impossible it would be to disappoint the dear little girl when she runs to meet you, slides her pretty hand into yours, looks up gladly in your face, and says, "Come!" You must go: you cannot help it. Another part of the charm is her singular beauty. Together with a good deal of the character of Napoleon, she has something of his square, sturdy, upright form, with the finest limbs in the world, a complexion purely English, a round laughing face, sunburnt and rosy, large merry blue eyes, curling brown hair, and a wonderful play of countenance. She has the imperial attitudes too, and loves to stand with her hands behind her, or folded over her bosom ; and sometime, when she has a little touch of shyness, she clasps them together on the top of her head, pressing down her shining curls, and looking so exquisitely pretty! Yes, Lizzy is queen of the village! She has but one rival in her dominions, a certain white greyhound called May-flower, much her friend, who resembles her in beauty and strength, in playfulness, and almost in sagacity, and reigns over the animal world as she over the human." P. 9.

The chapter concludes with a brief and picturesque glance at the general scene.

Half-way down, just at the turn, the red cottage of the lieutenant, covered with vines, the very image of comfort and content; farther down, on the opposite side, the small white dwelling of the little mason; then the limes and the rope-walk: then the village street, peeping through the trees, whose clustering tops hide all but the chimneys and various roofs of the houses, and here and there some angle of a wall: farther on, the elegant town of B- with its fine old church towers and spires; the whole view shut in by a range of chalky hills; and over every part of the picture, trees so profusely scattered, that it appears like a woodland scene, with glades and villages intermixed. The trees are of all kinds and all hues, chiefly the finely-shaped elm, of so deep and bright a green, the tips of whose high outer branches drop down with such a crisp and garland-like richness, and the oak, whose stately form is just now so splendidly adorned by the sunny colouring of the young leaves. Turning again up the hill, we find ourselves on that peculiar charm of English scenery, a green common, divided by the road; the right side fringed by hedge-rows and trees, with cottages and farm-houses irregularly placed, and terminated by a double avenue of noble oaks; the left, prettier still, dappled by bright pools of water, and islands of cottages and cottage-gardens, and sinking gradually down to corn-fields and meadows, and an old farm-house, with pointed roofs and clustered chimneys, looking out from its blooming-orchard, and backed by woody hills. The common is itself the prettiest part of the prospect; half-covered with low furze, whose golden blossoms reflect so intensely the last beams of the setting sun, and alive with cows and sheep, and two sets of cricketers: one of young men, surrounded with spectators, some standing, some sitting, some stretched on the grass, all taking a delighted interest in the game; the other, a merry groupe of little boys, at humble distance, for whom even cricket is scarcely lively enough, shouting, leaping, and enjoying themselves to their hearts' conBut cricketers and country boys are too important persons in our village to be talked of merely as figures in the landscape. They deserve an individual introduction-an essay to themselves and they shall have it. No fear of forgetting the good-humoured faces that meet us in our walks every day." P. 14.

tent.

Having introduced our readers to the book and its personages, we shall merely give a few of the more descriptive extracts.

FROST.

"January 23.-At noon to-day I and my white greyhound, Mayflower, set out for a walk into a very beautiful world, a sort of silent fairy-land, a creation of that matchless magician the hoar-frost. There had been just snow enough to cover the earth and all its colours with one sheet of pure and uniform white, and just time enough since the snow had fallen to allow the hedges to be freed of their fleecy load, and clothed with a delicate coating of rime. The atmosphere was deliciously calm; soft, almost mild, in spite of the thermometer: no perceptible

air, but a stillness that might almost be felt; the sky, rather grey than blue, throwing out in bold relief the snow-covered roofs of our village, and the rimy trees that rise above them; and the sun shining dimly as through a veil, giving a pale fair light, like the moon, only brighter. There was a silence, too, that might become the moon, as we stood at our little gate looking up the quiet street; a sabbathlike pause of work and play, rare on a work-day: nothing was audible but the pleasant hum of frost, that low monotonous sound, which is perhaps the nearest approach that life and nature can make to silence. The very waggons as they come down the hill along the beaten track of crisp yellowish frost-dust, glide along like shadows; even May's bounding footsteps, at her height of glee and of speed, fall like snow upon snow." P. 27.

TWO VENERABLE SISTERS.

"Mrs. Theodosia was good, and kind, and hospitable, and social; Mrs. Frances was all that, and was besides shrewd, and clever, and literary, to a degree not very common in her day, though not approaching to the pitch of a blue-stocking lady of the present. Accident was partly the cause of this unusual love of letters. They had known Richardson; had been admitted amongst his flower-garden of young ladies; and still talked familiarly of Miss Highmore, Miss Fielding, Miss Collier, and Miss Mulso, they had never learned to call her Mrs. Chapone. Latterly the taste had been renewed and quickened, by their having the honour of a distant relationship to one of the most amiable and unfortunate of modern poets. So Mrs. Frances studied novels and poetry, in addition to her sister's sermons and cookerybooks; though (as she used to boast) without doing a stitch the less of knitting, or playing a pool the fewer in the course of the year. Their usual occupations were those of other useful old ladies; superintending the endowed girl's school of the town with a vigilance and a jealousy of abuses that might have done honour to Mr. Hume; taking an active part in the more private charities, donations of flannel petticoats, or the loan of baby-things; visiting in a quiet way; and going to church whenever the church door was open.

"Their abode was a dwelling ancient and respectable, like themselves, that looked as if it had never undergone the slightest variation, inside or out, since they had been born in it. The rooms were many, low and small; full of little windows with little panes, and chimneys stuck perversely in the corners. The furniture was exactly to correspond; little patches of carpets in the middle of the slippery, dry-rubbed floors; tables and chairs of mahogany, black with age, but exceedingly neat and bright; and Japan cabinets and old china, which Mr. Beckford might have envied-treasures which had either never gone out of fashion, or had come in again. The garden was beautiful and beautifully placed; a series of terraces descending to rich and finely timbered meadows, through which the slow magnificent Thames rolled under the fine chalky hills of the pretty village of C. It was bounded on one