There was something (though not so much as has been represented) of the masculine element about Miss Martineau; a contemporary Miss M. was delightfully feminine. Mary Russell Mitford, born at Alresford, the town of Wither, on 16th December 1786, was the daughter of a doctor and a rascal, who, when she was a child, had the incredible meanness to squander twenty thousand pounds which she won in a lottery, and later the constant courage to live on her earnings. She published poems as early as 1810; then wrote plays which were acted with some success; and later, gravitating to the _London Magazine_, wrote for it essays only second to those of Elia--the delightful papers collectively called _Our Village_, and not completed till long after the death of the _London_ in 1832. The scenery of these is derived from the banks of the Loddon, for the neighbourhood of Reading was in various places her home, and she died at Swallowfield on 10th January 1855. Latterly she had a civil-list pension; but, on the whole, she supported herself and her parents by writing. Not much, if anything, of her work is likely to survive except _Our_ _Village_; but this is charming, and seems, from the published _Life_ of her and the numerous references in contemporary biography, to express very happily the character and genius of its author--curiously sunny, healthy, and cheerful, not in the least namby-pamby, and coinciding with a faculty of artistic presentation of observed results, not very imaginative but wonderfully pleasing. To these authors and books, others of more or less "single-speech" fame might be added: the vivid and accurate Persian tale of _Hajji Baba_ by James Morier, the _Anastatius_ of Thomas Hope, excellently written and once very much admired, the fashionable _Granby_ and _Tremaine_ of Lister, the famous _Frankenstein_ of Mrs. Shelley, are examples. But even these, and much more other things not so good as they, compose in regard to the scheme of such a book as this the _numerus_, the crowd, which, out of no disrespect, but for obvious and imperative reasons, must be not so much neglected as omitted. All classes of literature contribute to this, but, with the exception of mere compilations and books in science or art which are outgrown, none so much as prose fiction. The safest of life (except poetry) of all literary kinds when it is first rate, it is the most certain of death when it is not; and it pays for the popularity which it often receives to-day by the oblivion of an unending morrow. CHAPTER IV THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERIODICALS