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It has been observed by an intelligent and graceful foreign writer—who has been styled the Addison of his own country's literature[1]—that whereas in some lands the large cities absorb the wealth and fashion of the nation, and are the only fixed abodes of elegant and cultured society, while the country is inhabited almost entirely by boorish peasantry, in England, on the contrary, the metropolis is a mere gathering place, or general rendezvous of the polite classes, where they devote a small portion of the year to a hurry of gaiety and dissipation, and having indulged this kind of carnival, return again to the apparently more congenial habits of rural life.[2] Hence Geoffrey Crayon's warning to the stranger who would correctly appreciate English character, not to confine his observations to London, but to examine our rural life, The traveller, be says, "must go forth into the country; he must sojourn in villages and hamlets; he must visit castles, villas, farm-houses, cottages; he must wander through parks and gardens, along hedges and green lanes; he must loiter about country churches, attend wakes and fairs, and other rural festivals; and cope with the people in all their conditions, and all their habits and humours." As for him who travels not, and is dependent on books for his acquaintance with the village life and rural characteristics of England, few records can compete with those of Miss Mitford, in quaint adaptation to the spirit of the subject, in graphic sketches from nature at first hand, in cordial sympathy with the diversified topics under review, and in a quiet, home-bred humour, itself racy of the soil. Like Geoffrey Crayon himself, she may be chargeable with occasionally idealising and over-beautifying her favourite scenery and her pet protegés; but every hearty English soul must acknowledge her skill in the difficult art of description.
The "difficult" art of description? Is that a tenable phrase? Does not, on the contrary, every free Briton who writes letters—and a prodigious per centage of the population must own that soft impeachment, in these days when Rowland Hill and the schoolmaster are both abroad, and have met, and mutually embraced— does not every retailer of pot-hooks fancy himself, herself, or (duly to accommodate the scale to tender years) itself, a powerful hand at describing, be the object described what it may, from the Crystal Palace to the penny wax-works? Is it allowable to call that difficult which, by hypothesis, all can do; and which, by postulate, all can do well?
To describe external objects, one by one, says Christopher North, is no doubt easy; and accordingly it is often done very well. But—as he
- ↑ "…. The genius of Washington Irving—the Goldsmith, nay, even the Addison of America."— Lord Mahon's "History of England," vol. v., p. 101.
- ↑ "The Sketch Book." Miss Mitford has modelled her style, perhaps too closely, on that of this agreeable Miscellany, and its still more entertaining companion, "Bracebridge Hall."
