In a sunny corner of Hampshire there lies the tiny historic town of Alresford on the gentle slopes of a hill, at whose feet flows the little river Arle which gives its name to the place. “A town so small that but for an ancient market very slenderly attended, nobody would have dreamt of calling it anything but a village.” And yet, oddly enough, in this same place great dignity was united with rustic simplicity, for the living of “Old” Alresford was one of the richest in England, and was held by the Bishop of Exeter in conjunction with his very poor see. The Post Office was formerly installed in a very small room with nothing but a letter-box in the window; still, it had its importance, being at the head of many others scattered over the country-side. Alresford was the birthplace of one who loved nature as few have loved her, and whose writings “breathe the air of the hay-fields and the scent of the hawthorn boughs,” and seem to waft to us “the sweet breezes that blow over ripened, cornfields or daisied meadows.” The name of Mary Russell Mitford—the author of _Our Village_—is dear to thousands of readers, both English and American, for she has enabled them to see nature with her eyes and to enter into the very spirit of rural life. Alresford is built on the plan of the letter T, at the top of which stands the old church; Broad Street being the perpendicular stem, traversed by East Street and West Street, which form the cross-bar. Supposing that we are coming up from the valley below where we have left behind us the winding river with its old mill, we enter the lower end of Broad Street—that picturesque street with its raised footpaths on either side bordered by trees, and its low, irregular houses, dominated at the upper end by the grey tower of the old church. That dignified looking house on the right-hand side, with its hooded doorway and its tall windows, belonged to Dr. Mitford. Here it was that the doctor started a practice soon after his marriage with Miss Russell, the only child and heiress of the late Dr. Russell, Rector of Ashe, and here, on the 16th December, 1787, Mary, also an only child, was born. [Illustration: THE HOUSE IN BROAD STREET] “A pleasant house in truth it was,” she writes. “The breakfast-room ... was a lofty and spacious apartment literally lined with books, which, with its Turkey carpet, its glowing fire, its sofas and its easy-chairs, seemed, what indeed it was, a very nest of English comfort. The windows opened on a large old-fashioned garden, full of old-fashioned flowers—stocks, roses, honeysuckles and pinks; and that again led into a grassy orchard, abounding with fruit trees....