class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 15]"/> who died November 16th, and on December 14th, the anniversary of her honoured father's death, she, too, was summoned home.

The changes and sorrows of life, and, perhaps, especially the death, of a darling little one, who fell from a window, in 1873, and was killed by the fall, had been blessed to her by the Holy Spirit of God; and scenes of family sickness and bereavement seem to have led the endeared Princess Alice to that loving and sympathizing Saviour who is ever ready to save the heart that fully trusts in Him.

The whole English nation mourned for her, as for one near and dear to each, and a solemnity pervaded all classes, though Christmas was at hand.

Possibly the anticipation of Christmastide had been bright in her own loving spirit: if so, that anticipation was realized, for the first Christmas in heaven with Jesus Himself must indeed surpass the most joyous and happy one ever spent on earth.

Montacute, Ilminster, Somerset, Christmas, 1878.

II.

MRS. HANNAH MORE.

Mrs. Hannah More spent her happy childhood at Stapleton, near Bristol; and her early girlhood in Bristol itself, as a pupil in the school of her three elder sisters.

Besides these three sisters, whose names were Mary, Betty, and Sally, there was also one younger than Hannah herself, named Patty.

The five little girls were the children of a Mr. Jacob More, the head master of a foundation school at Stapleton.

Mr. More had married the daughter of a farmer, who had been carefully brought up, and possessed considerable mind and also great judgment.

Hannah was born in 1745, and, together with her four sisters, learned to read at home, the mother herself teaching them.

It is not difficult to picture that happy home, with all its quiet influence of love, for the five little girls appear to have been good children, very affectionate to each other, and would form a sweet, bright group as they stood with respectful attitude and intelligent faces round the kind mother, and repeated with interest and earnest emulation, the familiar "A, B, C."

Presently, something more than this was needed, but books were scarce. Mr. More had been educated for the Church, but his desire to be a clergyman was frustrated. He removed from Norfolk, his native county, and in his transit to Stapleton, which in those days was a long and difficult journey, he lost the greater part of his library. He therefore endeavoured to supply from memory, information and instruction to his five daughters, and Hannah was always extremely delighted to stand by her father's knees and listen to his stories of Grecian and Roman history, and also to gain thus from him a fair amount of classical learning.

The nurse who assisted the busy mother with her happy charge, had lived for some time in the family of Dryden, and often interested and amused Hannah and her sisters with accounts of the poet.

When Mr. More found that Hannah evinced such a desire for information, he began to teach her Latin and Mathematics; but as she outstripped all his pupils in the foundation school with extreme rapidity, the father, fearing that it might tend to make Hannah unfeminine, ceased these instructions. They seem, however, to have been supplemented by a different mode of education. The parents were poor, too poor to supply all the requirements of so large a family. Very wisely they determined that the children should be trained to support themselves. Miss More was, therefore, sent to a good school in Bristol, as a weekly boarder, and every Saturday, on her return home, she was required to teach her four sisters all that she had learned in the week!

When this sister was twenty years old, she, together with Betty and Sally, opened a school themselves in Bristol; and Hannah, then twelve years of age, and Patty were sent as pupils.

On one occasion Hannah was taken ill, and Dr. Woodward, evidently a literary man of that time, was sent for to attend her. But so great was her conversational power, that the kind doctor forgot the purpose for which he came. After some time, he took his leave, but exclaimed, presently, "Bless me! I forgot to ask the girl how she is to-day!"

This remarkable talent, thus early developed, was one of Mrs. Hannah More's charms through life, and existed to the last lingering days of an intelligent old age.

Hannah's other great talent, as a writer, was also early and fully indicated. As a mere child, she would scribble poems and prim essays upon every scrap of available paper, and a story is told of her, that she had one grand ambition constantly before her young life, and that was to be old enough to "possess a whole quire of paper!" As a schoolgirl, Dr. Johnson, the elder Sheridan, and the astronomer Ferguson, seem to have been on terms of some intimacy, and exercised a talented influence upon the strong sense and mental capacity of Hannah More.

England was experiencing change during the younger years of this well-known and justly honoured writer; the upper circles of society were gay and semi-infidel in principle, disposed to laugh at, and ridicule anything of a religious character; the lower were so intensely ignorant that they devoted themselves to indolence and vice. But already Wesley and