e quiet,
peaceable people who would not think of visiting us, even if we had a
knocker to knock at. Our residence is a cottage' (she is writing to
her correspondent, Sir William Elford), 'no, not a cottage, it does not
deserve the name--a messuage or tenement such as a little farmer who had
made 1400 pounds might retire to when he left off business to live on
his means. It consists of a series of closets, the largest of which may
be about eight feet square, which they call parlours and kitchens
and pantries, some of them minus a corner, which has been unnaturally
filched for a chimney, others deficient in half a side, which has been
truncated by a shelving roof. Behind is a garden about the size of a
good drawing-room, with an arbour, which is a complete sentry-box of
privet. On one side a public-house, on the other a village shop, and
right opposite a cobbler's stall. Notwithstanding all this "the cabin,"
as Boabdil says, "is convenient." It is within reach of my dear old
walks, the banks where I find my violets, the meadows full of cowslips,
and the woods where the woodsorrel blows.... Papa has already had the
satisfaction of setting the neighbourhood to rights and committing a
disorderly person who was the pest of "The Cross" to Bridewell....
Mamma has furbished up an old dairy; I have lost my only key and stuffed
the garden with flowers....' So writes the contented young woman.

How much more delightful is all this than any commonplace stagey effect
of lattice and gable; and with what pleasant unconscious art the writer
of this letter describes what is NOT there and brings in her banks of
violets to perfume the dull rooms. The postscript to this letter is Miss
Mitford all over. 'Pray excuse my blots and interlineations. They have
been caused by my attention being distracted by a nightingale in full
song who is pouring a world of music through my window.'

'Do you not like to meet with good company in your friends' hearts?'
Miss Mitford says somewhere,--to no one better than to herself does this
apply. Her heart was full of gracious things, and the best of company
was ever hers, 'La fleur de la hotte,' as Madame de Sevigne says.

We walked into the small square hall where Dr. Mitford's bed was
established after his illness, whilst visitors and all the rest of the
household came and went through the kitchen door. In the parlour,
once kept for his private use, now sat a party of homely friends from
Reading, resting a