Her ‘Belford Regis’ should probably take rank as her best work; it has most power and most character; and is somewhat less uniformly soft and green than ‘Our Village’ is. The ‘Village,’ however, is, by association, my favorite. If read by snatches, it comes on the mind as the summer air and the sweet hum of rural sounds would float upon the senses through an open window in the country, and leaves with you for the whole day a tradition of fragrance and dew. She is in fact a sort of prose Crabbe in the sun, but with more grace and less strength; and also with a more steadfast look upon scenic nature--never going higher than the earth to look for the beautiful, but always finding it as surely as if she went higher. She is “matter-of-fact,” she says, which may be so, but then she idealizes matter of fact before she touches it, and thus her matter of fact is as beautiful as the matter of fantasy of other people. [Sidenote: Mrs. Browning’s estimate.] In my own mind--and Mr. Kenyon agrees with me--she herself is better and stronger than any of her books; and her letters and conversation show more grasp of intellect and general power than would be inferable from her finished compositions. In her works, however, through all the beauty there is a clear vein of sense, and a quickness of observation which takes the character of a refined shrewdness. Do you not think so? And is she not besides most intensely a woman, and an Englishwoman? ELIZABETH BARRETT: ‘Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to R. H. Horne.’ New York: James Miller, 1877. * * * * * [Sidenote: ‘Our Village.’] I think you will like ‘Our Village.’... Charles Lamb (the matchless ‘Elia’ of the _London Magazine_) says that nothing so fresh and characteristic has appeared for a long while. It is not over-modest to say this; but who would not be proud of the praise of such a _proser_? MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir Wm. Elford_, in the former’s ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange. * * * * * [Sidenote: Fear of unconscious plagiarism.] I am very indulgent towards such borrowings in general, knowing how extraordinary is the manner in which memory and invention are sometimes mixed up, especially where the first faculty is weak. With me it is singularly so, and for years I was tormented by constant fear that every line of tragedy less bad than the next was stolen from my letters. It was a miserable feeling. M. R. MITFORD: _Letter to Mr. D. Starkey_, in ‘Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: View of the moral purpose of fiction.]