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 treat of such subjects. The dialogue, when she makes them talk, is unnatural, and her invention so poor that when she puts in a little romance of her own making one regrets it. And so one might go on picking it all to pieces like a dandelion blossom. Nevertheless it endures, outliving scores of in a way better books on the same themes, because her own delightful personality manifests itself and shines in all these little pictures. This short passage describing how she took Lizzie, the little village child she loved, to gather cowslips in the meadows, will serve as an illustration. They who know these feelings (and who is so happy as not to have known some of them) will understand why Alfieri became powerless, and Froissart dull; and why even needlework, the most effective sedative, that grand soother and composer of women's distress, fails to comfort me today. I will go out into the air this cool, pleasant afternoon, and try what that will do.... I will go to the meadows, the beautiful meadows and I will have my materials of happiness, Lizzie and May, and a basket for flowers, and we will make a cowslip ball. "Did you ever see a cowslip ball, Lizzie?" "No." "Come away then; make haste! run, Lizzie!"