Read it through once

But, apart from this “idleness of reading,” Miss Mitford was busily gathering material for her articles in the _Lady’s Magazine_, roaming the countryside for colour. “I have already been cowslipping” she wrote. “Are you fond of field flowers? They are my passion—even more, I think, than greyhounds or books. This country is eminently flowery. Besides all the variously-tinted primroses and violets in singular profusion, we have all sorts of orchises and arums; the delicate wood anemone; the still more delicate wood-sorrel, with its lovely purple veins meandering over the white drooping flower; the field-tulip, with its rich chequer-work of lilac and crimson, and the sun shining through the leaves as through old painted glass; the ghostly field star of Bethlehem—that rare and ghost-like flower; wild lilies of the valley; and the other day I found a field completely surrounded by wild periwinkles. They ran along the hedge for nearly a quarter of a mile; to say nothing of the sculptural beauty of the white water-lily and the golden clusters of the golden ranunculus. Yes, this is really a country of flowers, and so beautiful just now that there is no making up one’s mind to leave it.”