these were neither to be expected from the nature of her mind nor views. This vigilant attention by her parents to the selection and the pronunciation of her words might, on the other hand, conduce to her ignorance of the condition and manners of the poor and lower classes which attended her through life. We can hardly at present understand the jealous watchfulness which the ultra-liberal school of that day showed against the intercourse of children with their inferiors, more especially with servants, or the haughty assumption of moral as well as social superiority which was thus inculcated upon young chits, who were expected in their maturity to assist in the equalizing of the world, and the demolition of mere rank distinctions. Knowing nothing of the poor herself, she subsequently showed a great jealously of the move in another direction, which the revival of church principles gave rise to, and there are arguments later on in the book of the harm to purity and refinement of manner that intercourse with the poor might do to the young ladies who throw themselves into such work, though not without some consciousness of her own shortcomings. Of the influences upon her own childhood she thus writes:—

'One memorable day, my brother George, several years older, seized and devoured half of a tart destined for the supper of us two little ones. Fired at the injury, I ran with the fragment into the presence of papa and mamma, and denounced the offender in most emphatic terms. "You should be willing to give your brother part of your tart," said my mother. "But he did not ask us," I replied-" he took it ;" and I still think that the distinction was just, and that his action ought to have brought him, and not me, the reprimand. But how many fold was I compensated when my father, who had listened with great attention to my harangue, exclaimed, Why Lucy, you are quite eloquent!" O! never-to-be-forgotten praise! Had I been a boy, it might have made me an orator; as it was, it incited me to exert to the utmost, by tongue and by pen, all the power of words I possessed or could ever acquire-I had learned where my strength lay.'-P. xvii.

66

And afterwards on the great effect of natural scenes upon

her:

This interest was inexpressibly exalted by Mrs. Barbauld's prose hymns, which were taught me, I know not how soon. Her "Early Lessons" had prepared the way, for in them too there dwells the spirit of poetry; but the hymns gave me the idea of something bright and glorious, hung on high above my present reach, but not above my aspirations. They gave me first the sentiment of sublimity, and of the Author of all that is sublime. They taught me piety.'-P. xviii.

From Yarmouth, Dr. Aikin moved to London in 1792, where he practised till ill health obliged him to retire from his profession. Then he removed to Stoke Newington, and devoted the remainder of his life to literature, and also to the cultivation of his daughter's mind, who was a wonder of acquirement in that day when young ladies had not yet caught the knack, in which they are at present so happy, of learning something of

everything. It was thought a great thing in Miss Aikin that she read the Latin classics with facility, and was familiar with the best French and Italian authors; and she herself comments on the all but universal ignorance of German in her own youth; their early friend William Taylor, the translator of 'Lenora,' being, she believed, the first Englishman of letters who had read Goethe, Wieland, Lessing, and Bürger in the original. It was a sort of matter of course that she should enter in due time upon literary composition. She was an authoress from her seventeenth year, translating, writing articles in the magazines and the Annual Register, making attempts at verse, after the manner of Pope, and finally settling upon history as the vein for which she was best adapted. She brought out in 1819 her 'Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth,' of which it is perhaps no disgrace to profess an ignorance, though the work was very well received at the time. This was followed by the reigns of James I. and Charles I.; the last of which it is worth while to glance through, for the simple picture of prejudice it presents, and the curious feminilities through which this prejudice sometimes transpires. It was a family affair with her, as not only had her family principles to be respected, but her ancestors were Presbyterians: and with a king so strict for his prerogative as Charles, and a bench of bishops with Laud at their head as representatives of tyranny and priestcraft, candour appears to her a virtue scarcely called for. Her first step, in the very first page, is to undermine our idea of the king's personal beauty by falling foul of his legs; every act of his that does not square with our modern administrative system is black treachery and oppression; she quotes avowed libels against him as history, on the ground that there must be truth in them, or they would not have been written, and hurries and slurs over the pathetic account of his last days and the last scene of all, as though it burnt her fingers. How important and prominent she felt herself as a writer of history, and how perilous, even, she esteemed the boldness of her line of thought, we may gather from what she on one occasion says to Dr. Channing (1838):

'In the meantime, it seems to me we are going on well; reforms proceeding slow and sure, and decidedly the tone of at least a large portion of society becoming constantly more liberal, both in religion and politics-the natural effect of the continuance of a whig and low-church administration. I-perceive signs also of a revival of literature, which now again is able to hold up its head in the presence of science, by which it was for some time in apparent danger of being totally overshadowed. In particular it pleases me to perceive that historical literature is cultivated with great activity, for which there are two obvious causes: a state of public feeling which allows history to be written freely without incurring persecution either from the government or the mob; and, with respect to our own country, a great accession of new information from the printing of the public records.

These favouring circumstances, I think, will enable even me to conquer my long desponding indolence, and attempt a new design. My plan is not yet matured, but it is only entre nous that I give any hint of it; but I am turning my thoughts towards something like a view of letters and social life in England during the first sixty years of the last century, i.e. the reigns of Anne and the two first Georges.'-Pp. 375, 376.

Either, however, she felt the state of things, in some respects so friendly, was leaving her behind, or the correspondence of Dr. Channing condensed all her thoughts into one channel. But conversation was probably her real forte: and for this a friendly reviewer of her works in the Athenæum estimates she spent no inconsiderable time in preparing herself beforehand; as her talk itself showed. This might not be from mere love of display, but that she liked to do things well; and no doubt, whenever talk is an art, some time and thought must be devoted in preparation for it. We do not profess to know how the preparation is done, but something of the sort there must have been when people talked so much more formally well than they do now.

'One who knew her well,' has truly said of her-"that she possessed in a remarkable degree the art of conversation, an art which seems in some danger of being lost in the crowds which fashion brings together. It was not, however, an art cultivated for display. Whether in intercourse with a single friend in a small circle, or an assemblage of persons of intellectual attainments equal to her own, there was some flow of anecdote, quotation and allusion, furnished by a most retentive memory, and enlivened by wit and humour."-P. xxvii.

She lived in a circle of good talkers, and was in the way of meeting the greatest literary celebrities of the day. So many people who cannot do without society are yet uncandid enough to do nothing but abuse it, that it is pleasant to read her avowed satisfaction with her friends, and her allusions to the close circle of friends and neighbours who 'tempted her with delicious ' idleness-if that social intercourse may be called idleness in which neither head nor heart are unoccupied.' It has been argued that nobody really feels that he himself is in the centre of things; that he, in the full understanding of the word, is the world; that he enjoys free companionship with the choicest development of intellect. But Miss Aikin had the feeling. She felt that all the people worth knowing she knew, not by occasional chance, and tolerated contact, but as a courted privileged member, a sort of centre who could bring eminent men together, secure introduction for her friends, pass judgments, admit and reject. I want' (she writes to Dr. Channing) 'I want you to know multitudes of English people. How 'much we could do towards placing you in a small select 'circle, where you would be appreciated,' &c. &c. Hence society was, with her, the field, the subject for the exercise of

The Rev. John Kenrick, of York.

her independent mind. When her thoughts expatiate most naturally it is on social questions; her heart was in society, the world, in its least frivolous sense. Her set were mainly of one way of thinking, and she could not do justice to any one who was not a liberal in religion and politics; but also she was never intimately acquainted with minds of any other order. When she has to describe or define what good talk really is, and to give her own experience, there is a finish and accuracy of discrimination which prove that in this case she is drawing from her observation, and not, as elsewhere, from her prejudices. Take the following peep at Cambridge society, written in 1827, to her friend Mr. Holland:

'I am a very little addicted to journeys myself; but lately an irresistible temptation was thrown in my way, and I indulged myself in the pleasantest thing possible-a jaunt to Cambridge, which I had never seen, planned by Mr. Whishaw and Professor Smyth, and in which our very agreeable neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Mallet (he is a son of Mallet du Pan, and secretary to the Audit Board, and she a charming woman) partook. Mr. Whishaw took her and me down in his carriage, and a very amiable young Romilly on the box; Mr. Mallett went down by coach. We left on the Thursday and returned on the Sunday. The professor gave us two grand dinners, and assembled several of the brightest stars of the university to meet us; among the rest the Bishop of Lincoln, certainly one of the most admirable persons I have ever seenmild, polished, perfectly unassuming; but firm and consistent in liberal views and principles, and acute and full of talent. We had also Mr. Sedgwick, the Woodwardian Professor, and the great mathematician Whewell. These two are intimate friends, and a good deal alike in their cast of mind and manners; that is to say, they are very clever and able men of that kind of which Mr. Brougham is the great exemplar-men of wonderful energy and activity of mind, profound in one or two branches of knowledge, and ignorant of none, whose conversation teems with allusions drawn from the most various and distant sources, illustrating bright and original ideas of their own-men to whom it is a delight, but not a relaxation, to listen-whose thoughts flow almost too rapidly for language to overtake them-whose ideas come crowding and jostling like a throng in a narrow gate. In Mr. Brougham, the experience of the world and the habit of applying his eloquence to practical points in law and politics, on which it is his business to talk down to very ordinary capacities, has moderated the exuberance which reigns unchecked in the discourse of these academics; but if any force of circumstance could have tied him down to a college life, he would have been such as one of these, It pleased me to observe how completely in these instances the spirit of the nineteenth century has mastered the spirit of monkery and the middle ages in which our universities were founded; but the forms are still kept up, more than the forms in some things.'-Pp. xxv. xxvi.

Elsewhere she again adduces Lord Brougham as her ideal of

a converser :

'Brougham is our new Lord Chancellor-the Edinburgh reviewer-the radical-whig the apostle of universal education and popular literature, whom we are astonished and delighted to behold in that highest dignity of a subject! This is the man, the only man, whose powers I contemplate with wonder. In society he has the artless gaiety of a good-humoured child. Never leading the conversation, never canvassing for audience (in truth he has no need), he catches

the ball as it flies with a careless and unrivalled skill. His little narratives are inimitable, the touch-and-go of his remarks leaves a trail of light behind it. On the tritest subjects he is new without paradox and without effort, simply, as it seems, because nature has interdicted him from commonplace. With that tremendous power of sarcasm which he has so often put forth in public, he is the sweetest-tempered man in private life, the kindliest in its relations, the most attracting to his friends-in short, as amiable as he is great.'-P. 216.

On many occasions Dr. Channing sends his countrymen to her, and she reports their success in English society. Thus :'Your friend Mr. Goodhue spent an hour with me one morning, and I was much pleased with his mild and amiable manners, and the information which he gave me respecting many of your institutions and societies. I wished for more of his company, and invited him for the next evening, when I expected Mrs. Joanna Baillie, Professor Smyth, and another valued friend, Mr. Whishaw, a gentleman who has written little, but whose literary opinions are heard in the most enlightened circles with a deference approaching that formerly paid to Dr. Johnson. Mr. Goodhue was unfortunately engaged, but he sent me Mr. Richmond, and the result was, one of the most animated and amusing conversaziones, chiefly between him and the two gentlemen I have named for we ladies were well content to be listeners-at which it has ever been my good fortune to be present.

'A more fluent talker than Mr. Richmond I think I never heard, and I doubted at first how he might suit my two old gentlemen-both of them great eulogists of good listeners-but he is very clever, and there was something so piquant in his remarks on what he had seen here, such a simplicity in his questions, and when he spoke of his country, such abundant knowledge, so ably and clearly expressed, that they were content for once take such a share of talk as they could get by hard struggling. I think the professor of modern history got matter for a new lecture on American law and politics; and he and Mr. Richmond took pains to contrive another meeting. But to me the most curious part was Mr. Richmond's wonder at having got into such high company as two or three baronets, a Scotch countess, and some lord; and his difficulty to imagine, and ours to explain to him, how our difference of ranks works in society. He evidently supposed a much wider separation of classes than actually takes place. I believe the structure of society with us may best be expressed by what an eminent naturalist has said of organised nature-it is not a chain of being, it more resembles a net, each mesh holds to several others on different sides. Our complicated state of society, in recompense of great evils, has at least this advantage, that it brings the rich man or noble into relation with a multitude of individuals, with whom he finds it necessary to his objects to associate on terms of social equality, notwithstanding great disparity of birth or fortune.'-Pp. 210, 211.

Lord Denman she regarded as a sort of family achievement, her aunt having given the bent to his tastes, a fact which may throw some light on the part he took as a lawyer and judge in Church questions:

'You know, of course, by reputation, our new Lord Chief Justice, Denmanthe zealous defender of poor Queen Caroline, who in his excitation called our last king Nero, and our present one 66 a base calumniator." He wants caution, and is not the deepest of our lawyers; but his promotion is hailed by all congenial spirits as a triumphant example of the highest professional dignities attained by a man who never showed any other fear than that of being thought capable of sacrificing the most minute portion of truth, the nicest punctilio of