hungrily go on squawking for more until he stumbled into the
grave. Alas! he was too long in dying; she was worn out by
then, the little heart beating not so fast, and the bright
little brain growing dim and very tired.

Now all the ambitious stuff she wrote to keep the cormorant
and, incidentally, to immortalize herself, has fallen
deservedly into oblivion. But we--some of us--do not forget
and never want to forget Mary Russell Mitford. Her letters
remain--the little friendly letters which came from her pen
like balls of silvery down from a sun-ripened plant, and were
wafted far and wide over the land to those she loved. There
is a wonderful charm in them; they are so spontaneous, so
natural, so perfectly reflect her humour and vivacity, her
overflowing sweetness, her beautiful spirit. And one book too
remains--the series of sketches about the poor little hamlet,
in which she lived so long and laboured so hard to support
herself and her parents, the turtledove mated with a
cormorant. Driven to produce work and hard up for a subject,
in a happy moment she took up this humble one lying at her own
door and allowed her self to write naturally even as in her
most intimate letters. This is the reason of the vitality of
Our Tillage; it was simple, natural, and reflected the author
herself, her tender human heart, her impulsive nature, her
bright playful humorous spirit. There is no thought, no mind
stuff in it, and it is a classic! It is about the country,
and she has so little observation that it might have been
written in a town, out of a book, away from nature's sights
and sounds. Her rustic characters are not comparable to those
of a score or perhaps two or three score of other writers who