In spite, however, of all the interruptions of company and of sickness; for, as she tells us, “From early infancy to late old age, her life was a successive scene of visitation and restoration,” she found time and strength to compose a series of works on “Morals,”—the last of the three being produced in the seventy-fifth year of her age.
In 1828, Miss More was subjected to the severest trial, perhaps, of her life. After the death of her sister Martha, who had been the manager of the domestic economy of the sisterhood, affairs at Barley Wood got into sad confusion. Dishonest and dissolute servants wasted her substance. After trying in vain to correct the evil by mild remonstrance, she sank quietly under what seemed inevitable, and determined to take the infliction as a chastisement to which it was her duty to submit. At length, however, her friends interposed, and represented to her the danger of her appearing as the patroness of vice, and thereby lessening the influence of her writings. It was determined that her establishment should be broken up. At a bleak season of the year, on a cold and inclement day, after a long confinement to her chamber, she removed to Clifton. From her apartment she was attended by several of the principal gentlemen of the neighborhood, who had come to protect her from the approach of any thing that might discompose her. She descended the stairs with a placid countenance, and walked silently for a few minutes round the lower room, the walls of which were covered with the portraits of her old and dear friends, who had successively gone before her. As she was helped into the carriage, she cast one pensive, 166 parting look upon her bowers, saying, “I am driven, like Eve, out of paradise; but not, like Eve, by angels.” From the shock of the discovery of the misconduct of her servants, Miss More never recovered. After her removal to Clifton, her health was in a very precarious state. To her friends and admirers it was painful to see her great and brilliant talents descending to the level of mere ordinary persons; but the good, the kind, the beneficent qualities of her mind suffered no diminution or abatement. So long as her intellectual faculties remained but moderately impaired, her wonted cheerfulness and playfulness of disposition did not forsake her; and no impatient or querulous expressions escaped her lips, even in moments of painful suffering. Thus free from the infirmities of temper, which often render old age unamiable and unhappy, she was also spared many of the bodily infirmities which often accompany length of years. To the very last her eye was not dim; she could read with ease, and without spectacles, the smallest print. Her bearing was almost unimpaired, and, until very near the close of her life, her features were not wrinkled or uncomely. Her death-bed was attended with few of the pains and infirmities which are almost inseparable from sinking nature. She looked serene, and her breathing was as gentle as that of an infant in sleep. Her pulse waxed fainter and fainter, and her spirit passed quietly away on the 7th of September, 1833.
MRS. BARBAULD.
Anna Letitia Barbauld, a name long dear to the admirers of genius and the lovers of virtue, was born at the village of Kibworth Harcourt, in Leicestershire, on June 20th, 1743. She was the eldest child and only daughter of John Aikin, D.D., and Jane, his wife, daughter of the Rev. John Jennings, of Kibworth, and descended by her mother from the ancient family of Wingate, of Harlington, in Bedfordshire.
That quickness of apprehension by which she was eminently distinguished, manifested itself from early infancy. Her mother writes thus respecting her in a letter which is still preserved: “I once, indeed, knew a little girl who was as eager to learn as her instructors could be to teach her; and who, at two years old, could read sentences and little stories in her wise book, roundly, without spelling, and, in half a year more, could read as well as most women; but I never knew such another, and, I believe, never shall.”
Her education was entirely domestic, and principally conducted by her excellent mother, a lady whose manners were polished by the early introduction to good company which her family connections had procured her; whilst her mind had been cultivated, and 168 her principles formed, partly by the instructions of religious and enlightened parents, and partly by the society of the Rev. Dr. Doddridge, who was for some years domesticated under the parental roof.
In the middle of the last century, a strong prejudice still existed in England against imparting to females any degree of classical learning; and the father of Miss Aikin, proud as he justly was of her uncommon capacity, long refused to gratify her earnest desire of being initiated in this kind of knowledge. At length, however, she in some degree overcame his scruples; and, with his assistance, she enabled herself to read the Latin authors with pleasure and advantage; nor did she rest satisfied without gaining some acquaintance with the Greek.