church in which Mary Powell prayed. I should have liked to quote another of Miss Manning's biographers, the Rev. Dr. Hutton, who tells us of old walls partly built into the farmhouse that now stands there, and of the old walnut trees in the farmyard, and in a field hard by the spring of which John Milton may have tasted, and the church on the hill, and the distant Chilterns.

Milton's cottage at Chalfont St. Giles's is happily still in a good state of preservation, although Chalfont and its neighbourhood have suffered a sea-change even since Dr. Hutton wrote, a decade ago. All that quiet corner of the world, for so long green and secluded,—a "deare secret greennesse"—has now had the light of the world let in upon it. Motor-cars whizz through that Quaker country; money-making Londoners hurry away from it of mornings, trudge home of evenings, bag in hand; the jerry-builder is in the land, and the dust of much traffic lies upon the rose and eglantine wherewith Milton's eyes were delighted. The works of our hands often mock us by their durability. Years and ages and centuries after the busy brain and the feeling heart are dust, the houses built with hands stand up to taunt our mortality. Yet the works of the mind remain. Though Forest Hill be only a party-wall, and Chalfont a suburb of London, the Forest Hill of Mary Powell, the Chalfont of Milton, yet live for us in Anne Manning's delightful pages.

Miss Manning did not wish her Life to be written, but we do get some glimpses of her real self from herself in a chance page here and there of her reminiscences.

Here is one such glimpse:—

"I must confess I have never been able to write comfortably when music was going on. I think I have always written to most purpose coming in fresh from a morning walk when the larks were singing and lambs bleating and distant cocks in farmyards crowing, and a distant dog barking to an echo which answered his voice, and when the hedges and banks were full of wild flowers with quaint and pretty names.

"Next to that, I have found the best time soon after early tea, when my companions were all in the garden, and likely to remain there till moonlight."

Not very much by way of a literary portrait, and yet one can fill it in for oneself, can place her in old-world Reigate, fast, alas! becoming over-built and over-populated like all the rest of the country over which falls the ever-lengthening London shadow. As one ponders upon Forest Hill for Mary Powell's sake—is not Shotover as dear a name as Shottery?—and Chalfont for Milton's sake, one thinks on Reigate surrounded by its hills for Anne Manning's sake, and keeps the place in one's heart.

Mary Powell, with its sequel, Deborah's Diary—Deborah was the young thing whom to bring into the world Mary Powell died—is one of the most fragrant books in English literature. One thinks of it side by side with John Evelyn's Mrs. Godolphin. Miss Manning had a beautiful style—a style given to her to reconstruct an idyll of old-world sweetness. Limpid as flowing water, with a thought of syllabubs and new-made hay in it, it is a perpetual delight. This mid-Victorian, dark-haired lady, with the aquiline nose and high colour, although she may not have looked it, possessed a charming style, in which tenderness, seriousness, gaiety, humour, poetry, appear in the happiest atmosphere of sweetness and light.

KATHARINE TYNAN.

April 1908

Bibliography

The following is a complete list of her published works:—

The Household of Sir Thomas More, 1851; Queen Phillippa's Golden Booke,
1851; The Colloquies of Edward Osborne, Citizen and Clothworker of
London, 1852; The Drawing-room Table Book, 1852; Cherry and Violet, a
Tale of the Great Plague, 1853; The Provocations of Madame Palissy,
1853; Chronicles of Merry England, 1854; Claude the Colporteur, 1854;
The Hill Side, 1854; Jack and the Tanner of Wymondham, 1854; Adventures
of Haroun al Raschid, 1855; Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell,
afterwards Mistress Milton, 1855; Old Chelsea Bun-House, 1855; Some
Account of Mrs. Clarinda Singlehart, 1855; A Sabbath at Home, 1855;
Tasso and Leonora, 1856; The Week of Darkness, 1856; Lives of Good
Servants, 1857; The Good Old Times, 1857; Helen and Olga, a Russian
Tale, 1857; The Year Nine: a Tale of the Tyrol, 1858; The Ladies of
Bever Hollow, 1858; Poplar House Academy, 1859; Deborah's Diary, 1859;
The Story of Italy, 1859; Village Belles, 1859; Town and Forest, 1860;
The Day of Small Things, 1860; Family Pictures, 1861; Chronicle of
Ethelfled, 1861; A Noble Purpose Nobly Won, 1862; Meadowleigh, 1863;
Bessy's Money, 1863; The Duchess of Tragetto, 1863; The Interrupted
Wedding: a Hungarian Tale, 1864; Belforest: a Tale, 1865; Selvaggio: a
Tale of Italian Country Life, 1865; The Masque at Ludlow, and other
Romanesques, 1866; The Lincolnshire Tragedy (Passages in the life of
Anne Askewe), 1866; Miss Biddy Frobisher: a Salt-water Story, 1866; The
Cottage History of England, 1867; Jacques Bonneval, 1868; Diana's
Crescent, 1868; The Spanish Barber, 1869; One Trip More, 1870; Margaret
More's Tagebuch, 1870; Compton Friars, 1872; The Lady of Limited
Income, 1872; Lord Harry Bellair, 1874; Monk's Norton, 1874; Heroes of
the Desert (Moffat, Livingstone, etc.), 1875; An Idyll of the Alps,
1876.

LIFE.—C. M. Yonge, Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign, 1897.

THE MAIDEN AND MARRIED LIFE

OF

MARY POWELL

AFTERWARDS MISTRESS MILTON

JOURNALL

Forest Hill, Oxon, May 1st, 1643.

. . . Seventeenth Birthdaye. A Gypsie Woman at the Gate woulde faine have tolde my Fortune; but Mother chased her away, saying she had doubtlesse harboured in some of the low Houses in Oxford, and mighte bring us the Plague. Coulde have cried for Vexation; she had promised to tell me the Colour of my Husband's Eyes; but Mother says she believes I shall never have one, I am soe sillie. Father gave me a gold Piece. Dear Mother is chafed, methinks, touching this Debt of five hundred Pounds, which Father says he knows not how to pay. Indeed, he sayd, overnighte, his whole personal Estate amounts to but five hundred Pounds, his Timber and Wood to four hundred more, or thereabouts; and the Tithes and Messuages of Whateley are no great Matter, being mortgaged for about as much moore, and he hath lent Sights of Money to them that won't pay, so 'tis hard to be thus prest. Poor Father! 'twas good of him to give me this gold Piece.

May 2nd, 1643.

Cousin Rose married to Master Roger Agnew. Present, Father, Mother, and Brother of Rose. Father, Mother, Dick, Bob, Harry, and I; Squire Paice and his Daughter Audrey; an olde Aunt of Master Roger's, and one of his Cousins, a stiffe-backed Man with large Eares, and such a long Nose! Cousin Rose looked bewtifulle—pitie so faire a Girl should marry so olde a Man—'tis thoughte he wants not manie Years of fifty.

May 7th, 1643.

New Misfortunes in the Poultrie Yarde. Poor Mother's Loyalty cannot stand the Demands for her best Chickens, Ducklings, etc., for the Use of his Majesty's Officers since the King hath beene in Oxford. She accuseth my Father of having beene wonne over by a few faire Speeches to be more of a Royalist