The sneer equivocal, the harsh reply,
And all the cruel language of the eye;

The artful injury, whose venom'd dart

Scarce wounds the hearing, while it stabs the heart;
The guarded phrase, whose meaning kills, yet told,
The list'ner wonders how you thought it cold;
Small slights, neglect, unmix'd perhaps with hate,
Make up in number what they want in weight.
These, and a thousand griefs minute as these,
Corrode our comfort and destroy our ease.

As feeling tends to good or leans to ill,
It gives fresh force to vice or principle;
"Tis not a gift peculiar to the good,
"Tis often but the virtue of the blood:

And what would seem compassion's moral flow
Is but a circulation swift or slow:

But to divert it to its proper course,

There wisdom's power appears, there reason's force:
If ill directed it pursue the wrong,

It adds new strength to what before was strong;
Breaks out in wild irregular desires,

Disorder'd passions, and illicit fires;

Without deforms the man, depraves within,

And makes the work of God the slave of sin.

But if religion's bias rule the soul,

Then Sensibility exalts the whole;

Sheds its sweet sunshine on the moral part,

Nor wastes on fancy what should warm the heart.

Cold and inert the mental powers would lie,
Without this quick'ning spark of Deity.

To melt the rich materials from the mine,

To bid the mass of intellect refine,

To bend the firm, to animate the cold,

And Heaven's own image stamp on nature's gold ; To give immortal mind its finest tone,

Oh, Sensibility! is all thy own.

This is th' ethereal flame which lights and warms,
In song enchants us, and in action charms.
'Tis this that makes the pensive strains of Gray
Win to the open heart their easy way;
Makes the touch'd spirit glow with kindred fire,
When sweet Serena's poet wakes the lyre:
Makes Portland's face its brightest rapture wear,
When her large bounty smoothes the bed of care:
"Tis this that breathes through Sévigné's fair page,
That nameless grace which soothes a second age;
"Tis this, whose charms the soul resistless seize,
And give Boscawen half her power to please."

Justly to appreciate the value of her writings to her contemporaries, it is necessary to refer to the history of the times in which they were first published. Her comprehensive and exact discernment of the peculiar moral evils incident to her then present generation, and her adroit adaptation of appropriate counteractives, deserve all the admiration, all the praise, all the grateful affection ever offered in tribute to her genius and her goodness.

The different conditions of society at different epochs grow out of intermediate comminglings of means naturally tending, or providentially overruled, to produce those changes, and many improvements in the personal, domestic, and social practices, habitudes, and opinions of Englishwomen may undoubtedly, and without fear of mistake, be attributed to the influence of Hannah More; in those social practices, habitudes, and opinions, comprehending all that relates to and lies between the minute details of cottage cookery and the deportment of regal personages. She wrote more books, which passed through more frequent editions, and were printed in more numerous languages, and read by greater multitudes of persons, than any other authoress upon record. All of them had more or less a beneficial tendency, and never did personal example more cogently enforce preceptive exhortation, than in the instance of this admirable woman.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE POETESSES.

A.D. 1833-OCTOBER.

Mary-Jane Jewsbury.

"But at my back I always hear

Time's winged chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity."-ANDREW MARVEL.

MARY JANE JEWSBURY.

MR. THOMAS JEWSBURY, a cotton-spinner and lacemaker who had mills and a residence at Measham, five miles from Ashby-de-la-Zouche, married, in the year 1799, Miss Maria Smith, a handsome, amiable, and clever woman; and their eldest child, Mary-Jane Jewsbury, was born on the 23rd of October, 1800. Her earliest years were spent in that abundance of corporeal comforts to which the profits of manufacturing prosperity are commonly applied. She was sent to a school kept by a Miss Adams, at Shenston, and there passed through the routine of ordinary female instruction. Her love of reading, although early manifested, found neither encouragement nor guidance, and took the form rather of desultory enjoyment than that of a consistent pursuit of knowledge. Dutiful attachment to her parents, and protecting affection for her brothers and sister, counterbalanced in some measure the isolating conscious

ness of intellectual superiority, softened the rigour of her resolute will, and restrained the impulsive eagerness of her temperament. Earnest sincerity, sound practical sense, and a vivid imagination, soon won the unappreciating and instinctive homage of her family.

The history of her mind in childhood is left chiefly to conjecture: its most peculiar points she often alluded to in after life; its general course doubtless resembled that of other aspirants who have shaped their own way to fame. Slight incentives suffice in childhood to educe and to direct the flow of mind. Praise casually received for knowing, or for wishing to know, seeing a name upon a title-page, admiration of the terse form in which some recognized truth is conveyed by prose or verse, concurring with the inherent self-suspicion of possessing latent power, may cause emulative attempts at clothing thoughts in apt words-may evoke the wish to influence opinions and to win fame. Then follow the examination and selection of words to convey spontaneous ideas, or to adorn matter-offact narrations; the test by ear and eye of those best fitted for imitating metres and rhymes which haunt the memory with harmonious sounds; these studious researches tending to enlarge the tyro's acquaintance with the copiousness of the language, and to enrich the intellect with the various forms, colourings, tintings, and inflexions of verbal signification; increasing thereby the capacity for enjoying the works of the ablest authors, and cultivating critical taste simultaneously with practical improvement of style.

The simple name of a nursery-book, Aunt Mary's Tales for her Nieces,' or some other, has, ere now, taught a thoughtful child to infer,-Then a woman could write and publish what she had seen and known; and why should not I, when I grow up, do the like? I should not

have been commended if I had not attended, observed, and remembered in one particular instance, nor if I had failed to direct my curiosity and my inquiries aright in another, and thus I am encouraged to attend, to observe, and to investigate. In such, and in similar trifles have lain the tiny seeds, which germinating vigorously, and cultivated long and with sedulous toil, have often, ere now, produced goodly plants, pleasant flowers, and useful fruits. By some such means, no doubt, the genius of Mary-Jane Jewsbury was directed in childhood towards literary eminence; and, against a thousand formidable forms of discouragement, she struggled onward to attain it. Impressed with the sense, though probably then unacquainted with the words of Daniel in his Musophilus,'

"This is the thing that I was born to do,

This is my scene; this part I must fulfil,"

-her life exemplified them.

It is certain that her sympathy with family cares, and her industrious participation in household occupations, lightened the troubles of her parents when ill success in business embarrassed their circumstances, and obliged her father to give up his cotton-mills at Measham, and to remove with his wife and children to Manchester. Her letters to her mother, written in 1819, during a temporary absence on a visit to some relations, are fluent and easy, full of good sense and right feeling, indicating superior ability, keenness of observation, and a clever application of a large fund of miscellaneous information. The death of Mrs. Jewsbury, her mother, took place at a later period of the same year, and the care of the orphan family, consisting of her younger sister, and of five brothers, one of them being an infant of a month old, devolved entirely upon Mary-Jane Jewsbury.