Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 097.djvu/256

244 which we are reading him, to the scenes of our home counties: so that there is truth as well as prettiness in Mr. W. C. Bennett's Sonnet to the Lady about whom we write:

A deceased critic, who had the reputation of being crabbed and scolding in every review he penned, except when Miss Mitford was his theme, once met the stigma, or compliment, whichever he might think it, by saying, "And in her case how could 1 be otherwise than kind? she speaks to the heart and to the understanding, and deals in national beings and landscapes, such as a plain man may hope to see without going to another world. She is the only painter of true English nature that I know of: the rest are splendid daubers—all light and shade, darkness and sunshine; Mary Mitford gives the land and the people, and for that I honour her." It was something to win a sweeping panegyric like this from such a censor. Miss Mitford, indeed, enjoys the privilege of favouritism in all quarters: broad England loves her as one of its true aborigines—loves her hearty interest in its mannerisms, her appreciation of its excellences, her cheery, blythe, hopeful spirit, in which, ever beaming with sisterly good-will, her every fellow-countryman recognises tokens of personal sympathy—This cheerful temperament imparts a special charm to the autumn of her days; for though it is right that the man at manhood should put away childish things, it is not right that he should include in his renunciation the chilk-like spirit, the faith and buoyancy and promise of life's spring. Happy that soil of the heart which yields this after-math! blessed that existence whose dimpled six years and furrowed sixty are bound each to each by natural piety! If Sparta so honoured Age, in its universal, and therefore its commonly forbidding aspects—how should we delight to honour those white hairs which have a crown of glory all their own, brightened not dulled, brightening not fading, with years that bring the philosophic mind.

Of Miss Mitford's early literary ventures in "high art," we have not