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NATURE NOTES. 
SOME CHRISTMAS BOOKS. 
Messrs. Macmillan send out as a Christmas book a new edition of an old 
favourite — Miss Mitford’s Our Village, beautifully illustrated by Hugh Thomson. 
We have more than once noticed reprints of portions of this work, which seems 
to have obtained in recent years a new popularity ; and we have now before us 
the three-volume edition, in the elegant binding of sixty years ago, which we read 
and delighted in many years since. Indeed, if we have a criticisrn to niake on 
Messrs. Macmillan’s beautiful volume, it is on the absence of some iridication that 
it is not a complete work. The introduction by Mrs. Richmond Ritchie adds a 
charm to the book, and if Our Village cannot be ranked as high as Cranford, the 
pioneer of the elegant series of books which has since appeared under that name, 
it is more Selbornian in tone, and in its quiet, simple, true descriptions of country 
delights and associations. It is pleasant to find that Miss IMitford knew her Selborne ; 
