anthem.

The whole choir advanced to the grave, in hoods and surplices, singing all the way; then Sheridan, as chief mourner; then the body, (alas! whose body!) with ten noblemen and gentlemen, pall-bearers; then the rest of the friends and mourners; hardly a dry eye-the very players, bred to the trade of counterfeiting, shed genuine tears." The friendship formed with Mrs. Garrick in the life-time of her husband remained unbroken during their long subsequent career. Miss More was for several years her constant guest. She was with her in her first season of bereavement, and, in her correspondence, gives several touching anecdotes of her conduct during the early period of her affliction.

At the time of Garrick's death, Miss More had a second play which had partly undergone his revision, ready for the stage. It was entitled "The Fatal Falsehood," and was brought out the same year with some success, though inferior to that which had attended "Percy.". Miss Young played in it with much effect. The prologue was written by the author; the epilogue, by Sheridan, a fine piece of wit in an amusing picture of lady authorship, delivered in the character of an envious poetaster.

The remainder of the year 1779 was mostly passed by Miss More with Mrs. Garrick at Hampton in close retirement, but, she writes, "I am never dull, because I am not reduced to the fatigue of entertaining dunces, or of being obliged to listen to them. We dress like a couple of scaramouches, dispute like a couple of jesuits, eat like a couple of aldermen, walk like a couple

of porters, and read as much as any two doctors of either university." One day came "the gentlemen of the Museum to fetch poor Mr. Garrick's legacy of the old plays and curious black-letter books, though they were not things to be read, and are only valuable to antiquaries for their age and scarcity; yet I could not see them carried off without a pang." The words which we have marked in italics are noticeable, showing the neglect into which the early English literature about the time of Shakespeare had fallen. These are the very plays from which Charles Lamb gathered his choice volume of Dramatic Specimens. Had Miss More fully entered into their spirit, her own tragedies might have been improved by the acquaintance, with a better chance than they are having of being read by her posterity. The old intercourse was still and for several years after kept up with the literary society of London which met at Sir Joshua's, Mrs. Vesey's, Mrs. Boscawen's, aged Mrs. Delany's and the rest; but we hear less and less of fashionable gaieties at the theatre or elsewhere. A growing seriousness was at work in the mind of the fair author, which was leading her to new schemes of moral improvement. In the mean time, she summed up her observations rather than experiences of the worldly life of the day in two sprightly poems, first printed together in 1780, and published with additions in 1786. In one of these, entitled "The Bas Bleu; or, Conversation," she celebrated the intellectual social intercourse which animated the parties of Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Vesey, and sighed for the departed days when the winged words

Here rigid Cato, awful sage ! Bold censor of a thoughtless age, Once dealt his pointed moral round, And not unheeded fell the sound; The muse his honored memory weeps, For Cato now with Roscius sleeps !" "Cato," Miss Seward thought was an odd "whig-title" for the tory John"I could fancy him," she writes to her friend, Court Dewes," saying to the fair author, 'You had better have called me the first Whig, Madam, the father of the tribe, who got kicked out of Heaven for his republican principles.""

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Florio; a Tale for Fine Gentlemen and Ladies," was appropriately dedicated to Horace Walpole, not, we can hardly imagine, without a tinge of covert satire, though the terms in which she propitiates the wit are highly flattering. The story is well told in octosyllabic verse, bearing a general resemblance in its moral to Dryden's "Cymon and Iphigeneia," though the circumstances are quite different,-in the one case a youth being rescued from clownishness and neglect, in the other from foppery and licentiousness. In both, the motive power is a charming woman. Florio, the spoilt child of fortune; passing his life in fashionable frivolities, a smatterer in literature, a free-thinker, or rather no-thinker in religion, is brought to a knowledge of

country Celia, for whom at first he has a great contempt; but he carries back with him to London a spark of love and nature's fire in his breast, and by the light which this kindles, all the meritricious attractions of the metropolis which had formerly fascinated him grow pale and worthless. He hurries back to the country and the poem concludes with the triumph of virtue in a marriage with the pious Celia. The sketch of Florio in his days of worldli ness is much the best of the poem.

Miss More's acquaintance with Horace Walpole began in the literary soireés at Mrs. Vesey's and was per petuated in visits to Strawberry Hill, and a correspondence which was con tinued through the life of its noble owner. There is a great deal of compliment in the letters on both sides; Walpole was always fond of ladies' society, and gratefully reciprocated the attentions of a lady who might have been his satirist. Miss More, on the other hand, was attracted to him by his kind attentions to Mrs. Vesey in her failing health, "my dear, infirm, broken-spirited, Mrs. Vesey," as she calls her in one of her letters.

The home life of the five sisters at Bristol was, in the meanwhile undergoing a change. Hannah, enriched by her literary pursuits, bought a small country residence near Bristol, which had acquired the name of "Cowslip Green," and spent more of her time in rural occupations. In 1789 her sisters having acquired sufficient property by their labors retired from the charge of the school to pass their time between a town residence which, with the aid of

Hannah, they had erected for themselves at Bath and the retreat at Cowslip Green. They now began to employ themselves in what became the serious occupation of their lives, the establishment of schools for the education of the neglected poor in their neighborhood. The first of these was started at Chedder, in the vicinity of Bristol. In setting this on foot, Miss More had to encounter a redoubtable giant of the old tory breed, in a person whom she describes as "the chief despot of the village, very rich and very brutal;" but she was not to be deterred by any such lions in the way, "so," says she, "I ventured to the den of this monster, in a country as savage as himself, near Bridgewater." She was met by an argument which was very common in those days in England, and which she had often practically to refute, that "religion was the worst thing for the poor, for it made them lazy and useless." It was in vain that she represented to these country landowners that men would become more industrious as they were better principled, and that she had no selfish ends in her undertakings. It was, however, by appealing to their selfish interests that she was at last permitted to proceed. "I made," says she, "eleven of these agreeable visits; and as I improved in the art of canvassing, had better sucMiss Wilberforce would have been shocked, had she seen the petty tyrants whose insolence I stroked and tamed, the ugly children I praised, the pointers and spaniels I caressed, the cider I commended, and the wine I swallowed. After these irresistible flatteries, I inquired of each if he could

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recommend me to a house; and said that I had a little plan which I hoped would secure their orchards from being robbed, their rabbits from being shot, their game from being stolen, and which might lower the poor-rates." The squirearchy upon this relented and soon the benevolent Miss More had nearly three hundred children in the school learning the elements of a religious education. While this work was going on in the country, Miss More was appealing to the world in her writings, which were now assuming a direct reformatory tone with an earnest . inculcation of religious principle as the governing motive of life. Her first assault was directed against fashionable follies and vices which she had hitherto tickled in verse. She now resumed the argument in prose with a heavier emphasis. Her "Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society," first printed anonymously in 1798, as a sequel or aid to a royal proclamation which had just been issued against irreligion and immorality, was a bombshell thrown into the ranks, not of the grossly wicked, but of those who were considered good sort of people, whom she desired to bring to a higher standard of justice and morality. It was a vigorous protest against luxury and extravagance, pointing out the selfishness and consequent hard-heartedness of indulgence, with a special effort to correct the evils arising from the ill observance of Sunday, and the prevalent passion for play. In the course of her remarks, the author speaks of a singular custom which then prevailed, "the petty mischief of what is called card money,” in

the exaction of a part of their wages from servants to pay for the playing cards furnished to the guests! She denounces this as "a worm which is feeding on the vitals of domestic virtue." She argues too the old social question of "the daily and hourly lie of Not at Home," for which she would provide some suitable phrase for the necessary denial to a visitor, in prefer. ence to the education of the servant in the art of lying. She makes an appeal also for “hair-dressers," as a peculiarly oppressed class of Sunday laborers.

Not long after, in 1791, this production was followed by an elaborate prose composition of a similar character, "An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World," in which the general neglect of Christianity by leading men of the time was compared with its open avowal by the Sidneys, Hales and Clarendons of a former age; the benevolence of the day was tested in its motives; Christian education shown to be neglected, and a revival of its vital spirit declared to be a necessity of the period. A copy of the work reached Horace Walpole, who speaks of it in a letter to Miss Berry: "Good Hannah More is laboring to amend our religion, and has just published a book called 'An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World.' It is prettily written, but her enthusiasm increases; and when she comes to town, I shall tell her that if she preaches to people of fashion, she will be a bishop in partibus infidelium."

In pursuing her labors in the instruction and amelioration of the condition of the poor, Miss More began the issue of a series of popular tracts, written in

a plain attractive style, suited to the comprehension of the peasant class for which they were intended. They were written with such marked ability that they soon took a wider range and were largely circulated throughout Great Britain and America. It is sufficient to allude to such narratives among them as "The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain," and such allegories as "Parley the Porter," to remind the reader of their scope and spirit. The former has passages worthy of De Foe; the latter might have been written by Bunyan. The theory of the author's religious teaching of the poor, was in general very simple. In one of her letters published in the "Whalley Correspondence," referring more particularly to the conduct of her charity schools, she says, "My grand principle is, to infuse into the minds of the young people as much Scriptural knowledge as possible. Setting them to get by heart such portions of the Bible as shall take in the general scheme of doctrine and practice, then bringing that knowledge out, by easy, simple and intelligible conversation, and then grafting it into their minds as a prin ciple of action, and making all they learn practical and of personal application, seems the best method. I am extremely limited in my ideas of instructing the poor. I would confine it entirely to the Bible, Liturgy and Catechism, which, indeed, includes the whole of my notion of instruction. To teach them to read, without giving them principles, seems dangerous; and I do not teach them to write, even in my weekly schools. Almost all I do is done by conversation, by a simple