Transcriber’s Note Footnotes have all been renumbered from 1 to 20. Page 76 — bougeoises changed to bourgeoises. Page 332 — biassed changed to biased. The Advertisements “By Same Author”, have been placed at the back of the project. MARY RUSSELL MITFORD [Illustration: _From a Portrait by A. Burt_ _taken in 1836._] MARY RUSSELL MITFORD AND HER SURROUNDINGS BY CONSTANCE HILL WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ELLEN G. HILL AND REPRODUCTIONS OF PORTRAITS “There are few names which fall with a pleasanter sound upon the ears of those who adopt authors as friends than the name of Mary Russell Mitford.” LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMXX _The centre design in the binding represents a French gold enamelled watch which belonged to Mrs. Mitford and was inherited by her daughter. The original is in the possession of the Misses Lovejoy._ WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND PREFACE The more we study the life and character of Mary Russell Mitford the more we become attached to her, for we come under the influence of a nature that seems to radiate peace and good-will upon all who surround her. “The pleasant compelled enjoyment of her tales,” writes Harriet Martineau, “is ascribable no doubt to the flow of good spirits and kindliness that lighted up and warmed everything that her mind produced.” And if we seek for a further reason, surely it is to be found, as another writer observes, “in their strong rural flavour. They breathe the air of the hay-fields and the scent of the hawthorn boughs. There is nothing artificial about them, nothing of the conventional pastoral. They are native and to the manner born.” Here is an example that occurs in a letter to a friend, written long before her printed works appeared. Speaking of a walk in the Berkshire meadows on a spring morning, she says: “Oh, how beautiful they were to-day, with all their train of callow goslings, and frisking lambs, and laughing children chasing the butterflies that floated like animated flowers in the air!... How full of fragrance and of melody! It is when walking in such scenes, listening to the mingled notes of a thousand birds and inhaling the mingled perfume of a thousand flowers that I feel the real joy of existence.” Many writers have imitated Miss Mitford’s style since the “tales” of _Our Village_ first took the reading world by surprise nearly a hundred years ago; but none of those writers, in my opinion, possess her potent charm, nor do they possess her wonderful power of making her readers see nature, as it were, through her eyes and grasp the beauty and poetry of rural life.