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