Read it through once

“The good town of Belford,” she later remarks, “swarmed of course with single ladies ... and was the paradise of ill-jointured widows and portionless old maids. They met on the tableland of gentility, passing their mornings in calls at each other’s houses, and their evenings in small tea-parties, seasoned with a rubber or a pool, and garnished with the little quiet gossiping (call it not scandal, gentle reader!) which their habits required.... The part of the town in which they chiefly congregated, the lady’s _quartier_, was one hilly corner of the parish of St. Nicholas, a sort of highland district, all made up of short rows, and pigmy places, and half-finished crescents, entirely uncontaminated by the vulgarity of shops,” chosen, it is suggested, “perhaps because it was cheap, perhaps because it was genteel—perhaps from a mixture of both causes.” A kindly satire this, and interesting because it points so conclusively to a certain backwater near the Forbury, and under the shadow of the church of St. Laurence, which will be easily recognized by many who remember how it retained its character as a settlement for prim old ladies, of the kind described by Miss Mitford, until within quite recent times.