in the fourteenth century. Extracts from it were favorites with American schoolboys fifty years ago, particularly Rienzi's address to the Romans, beginning:

I come not here to talk. Ye know too well
The story of our thraldom.

One of the finest passages is the following:

The mountain tops, where with the crashing pines
The north wind revels! Go where the ocean pours
O'er horrid rocks, or sports in eddying pools,

Go where the eagle and the seasnake dwell,
Midst mighty elements where nature is,
And man is not, and ye may see afar
Impalpable as a rainbow on the clouds,
The glorious vision Liberty.

This is poetry of a high order.

Besides her poems and plays she wrote a gossiping and chatty series of essays entitled "Our Village," which appeared in the London Magazine, the periodical that had the honor of first publishing the essays of Elia.

Miss Mitford's essays have a lightness of touch, a spontaneous humor, and occasional bits of pathos that make them very charming and insures her a place in English literature. Mrs. Browning, who long before her marriage was a

correspondent of Miss Mitford, says of "Our Village": "If read by snatches it comes on the mind as the summer air and the sweet hum of rural sounds floating upon the senses through an open window in the country, leaving with you for the whole day a tradition of fragrance and dew."

Mary Russell Mitford was born in Hampshire, England, December 16, 1786, the daughter of Dr. George Mitford, a gambler and spendthrift, who, after squandering his wife's fortune, also spent his daughter's and then lived on her earnings for the remainder of his long and useless life.

The sensational passage in Miss Mitford's life relates to her fortune. When ten years of age her father took her into a lottery officelotteries at that time being under the government control as a means of raising revenue-and with the gambler's superstition asked the child to choose a number. With much persistence she asked for a certain number and would have no other. After much searching it was found and given to the little girl. When the drawing came off that number drew the twenty thousand pounds prize. That seems to be all the good it ever did her. By the time she was grown up the fortune was gone, and thenceforth she was compelled to earn her living by her pen.

In his "Reminiscences the late James Payn says of her:

Nothing ever destroyed her faith in those she loved. She spoke of her father as if there had never been such a father (and this, in a sense, was true, for he had spent his wife's fortune and the lottery fortune as well), and when he died she deemed it an irreparable loss. To my mind he seemed like a Mr. Turveydrop, but he really had been a most accomplished and agreeable person, though with nothing sublime about him except his selfishness.

From 1820 until 1855 Miss Mitford lived in the quiet English village she has made famous, a cheerful and sunny life, full of good works and good words. We do not hear that she ever had any love affairs or was inclined to marry. Her conversation was delightful and quite equaled the best of her writings. She was ever helpful to young authors, and died in 1855 beloved by all who knew her.

THE EDINBURGH REVIEW.

THE July number in 1902 of the Edinburgh Review rounded out and completed the first century of that famous periodical. It was a notable event, for no Review in the world has had a more eventful history, or has exercised so wide an influence on men and manners, on politics and literature, as the Edinburgh Review.

Modern English literary criticism began with it. There had been great English critics before that time, like Dryden and Johnson, and there had been magazines and reviews in which books were praised or lampooned, as the publisher felt inclined, though not at all in accordance with the merits or demerits of the book, but nothing like independent or impartial criticism in the current periodicals had yet been known.

The story of the founding of the Review has often been told. In the spring of 1802 a group of young men happened to be together in one of the upper flats of a house in Edinburgh.

They were Sydney Smith, Francis Horner, Henry Brougham, and Francis Jeffrey. They were well educated, poor, ambitious, and had their own way to make in life.

Smith had taken holy orders, had been a tutor, and was looking for a curacy. Jeffrey was a struggling advocate at the Scotch bar, Brougham had just been called to the English bar, and Horner was looking forward to a seat in parliament and the life of a statesman. They were all liberal and progressive in their political opinions, and it is doubtful if there were at that time any other four young men in the kingdom of Britain of greater promise or who achieved greater distinction in after life. Smith became one of the dignitaries of the Church, Brougham rose to be Lord High Chancellor of England, Jeffrey was raised to the Scottish bench, and Horner had a most distinguished career in parliament, though he died prematurely in the very prime of his life.

Sydney Smith suggested the Review, and although they could not raise one hundred pounds among them, the suggestion was hailed with acclaim. Smith was appointed editor and commissioned to find a publisher.

The young reviewers set to work and in October, 1802, the first number of the " Blue