Our Village. By Mary Russell Mitford. (Macmillan and Co. 10s.
6d. net.)—Miss Mitford's delightful book has never been more attractively presented. First—no one will question the precedence—we have an introduction by Lady Ritchie. Here we have pictured for us not only the pathetic figure of Mary Mitford—was there ever such another daughter, one so ready, even eager, to sacrifice everything ?—but a lively representa- tion of the time in its literary aspect. It was indeed the golden age of the woman author. How slight an achievement made her famous. Mary Mitford's achievement, indeed, was not slight. Much of her work has been forgotten, her tragedies, for instance; but then how little of the drama is read except in school-books ! But Our Village is as fresh and full of life as when it was first written, and it has adequate appreciation here. The illustrations arSby Mr. Alfred Rawlings, sixteen of whose drawings are repro- duced in coloured plates, and by Mr. Hugh Thomson, who con- tributes a hundred sketches in black-and-white. Mr. Rawlings shows U3 the village, giving us also some landscapes ; Mr. Thomson presents the villagers. We have no intention of comparing them; they are not in pan i materia; both help us to understand the book. But Mr. Thomson's figures—village dames, old and young, game- keepers, publicans, labourers, sportsmen, and other varieties of human kind—incline us to doubt whether Lady Ritchie is right in saying that "what is admirable in her book are not her actual descriptions and pictures of intelligent villagers and greyhoundi, but the more imaginative things." We find the villagers very admirable.
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