Miss Mitford is one of those who have made the discovery that there is always a "California" under our feet, if we look for it. She detected, by her own independent sagacity, and before the truth was so generally known and so generally acted upon as it is at present, that what most interests in books is precisely that which is nearest to us in real life. She did not find it necessary to go to the Alps or the Pyrenees for her landscape, nor to Spain or Constantinople for her men and women; she looked down the lane that led from her own cottage-door; she saw the children in it, and the loaded hay-cart; she saw Arabia with all her tents in that gipsy encampment where the same kettle seems to swing for ever between the same three poles--nomadic race, eternally wandering and never progressing. She looked out of her own window, and within it her own home--always cheerful, or always deserving to be such, from the cheerful spirit of its owner; and she found in all these things, near and dear to her, sufficient subjects for her pencil. And very faithfully she paints the village scene--with, at least, as much fidelity to truth as a graceful womanly spirit could summon up resolution enough to practise. A light something too golden falls uniformly over the picture. A work professing to be the _Recollections of a Literary Life_, and that literary life Miss Mitford's, could not fail to attract us. The subject is one of the most interesting an author could select; for, in addition to whatever charm it may acquire from personal narrative, the recollections in which it deals are in themselves thoughts, in themselves literature. They must always have this twofold interest--whatever they gain from the reminiscent, and whatever they possess themselves of sterling value. The subject is excellent, and we are persuaded that Miss Mitford is capable of doing ample justice to it; all we have to regret here is that she has not thrown herself completely and unreservedly into her subject; she never seems, indeed, quite to have determined what should be the distinct scope and purpose of her work. This apparent indecision or hesitation on her part is, we suspect, the sole cause of any disappointment which some of its readers may possibly feel.