it; you avail yourself of happy accidents of atmosphere; if anything
be ugly you strike it out, or if anything be wanting, you put it in.
But still the picture is a likeness.'

So wrote Miss Mitford, but with all due respect for her and for Sir
William Elford, the great landscape painter, I cannot help thinking
that what is admirable in her book, are not her actual descriptions
and pictures of intelligent villagers and greyhounds, but the more
imaginative things; the sense of space and nature and progress which
she knows how to convey; the sweet and emotional chord she strikes
with so true a touch. Take at hazard her description of the sunset.
How simple and yet how finely felt it is. Her genuine delight
reaches us and carries us along; it is not any embellishing of
effects, or exaggeration of facts, but the reality of a true and
very present feeling. . . 'The narrow line of clouds which a few
minutes ago lay like long vapouring streaks along the horizon, now
lighted with a golden splendour, that the eye can scarcely endure;
those still softer clouds which floated above, wreathing and curling
into a thousand fantastic forms as thin and changeful as summer
smoke, defined and deepened into grandeur, and hedged with
ineffable, insufferable light. Another minute and the brilliant orb
totally disappears and the sky above grows, every moment, more
varied and more beautiful, as the dazzling golden lines are mixed
with glowing red and gorgeous purple, dappled with small dark
specks, and mingled with such a blue as the egg of the hedge-
sparrow. . . . To look up at that glorious sky, and then to see
that magnificent picture reflected in the clear and lovely Loddon
water, is a pleasure never to be described, and never to be
forgotten. My heart swells, and my eyes fill as I write of it, and
think of the immeasurable majesty of nature and the unspeakable