Mr. Taylor talks a great deal of the indifference of his family circle to literary fame. He has an ideal of an authoress of the old blue-stocking type, writing for no earthly reason but to get talked about; and this image represents to him the class of female writers, as such to which his mother is an exception. In proof of this immunity he adduces a preface to some simple little manual, wherein she commends this endeavour to employ 'her pen beneficially to the attention of other families, without solicitude for its reputation.' Later on, he particularly notices for admiration his sister's freedom from the airs of literary distinction. So much, in fact, did she retain what he somewhere calls constitutional retiringness,' that he ventures to doubt whether, if a stranger, looking in upon the sewing-class which she with other ladies superintended during the zenith of her reputation, he could have distinguished which was the authoress of the party. This high appreciation of what we cannot but suppose a not very extraordinary humility, probably arises from the nature of the society in which this clever young family woke to the knowledge of their gifts, such as they were. In their childhood their father had removed from London, and rented a house for his family at Lavenham, in Suffolk, for which, with ample room and a good garden, he paid but 67. a-year. Here they had no companions, and learnt to rely on themselves for amusement, except such stimulus as the infant Jane received from the applause of village worthies.

It is curious to observe the germ of every form of real literary -if we may use the word-achievement. We think highly of Original Poems,' and their companion, 'Infant Lyrics;' yet they seem uncommonly easy things to write, till we try. We gather that they did, in fact, need a long mental training, and were part of a life. Her sister Ann says, as quoted by the biographer :—

I can remember that Jane was always the saucy, lively, entertaining little thing the amusement and favourite of all who knew her; at the baker's shop she used to be placed on the kneading-board in order to recite, preach, and narrate, to the great entertainment of his many visitors, and at Mr. Blackadder's she was the life and fun of the farmer's hearth. Her plays from the earliest I can recollect were deeply imaginative, and I think that in "Moll and Bett," "The Miss Parks," The "Miss Sisters," "the Miss Bandboxes," and Aunt and Niece," which I believe to be the entire catalogue of them, she lived in a world wholly of her own creation, with as deep a feeling of reality as life itself can afford. These amusements lasted from the age of three or four till ten or twelve.'-P. 90.

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It was a wise rule of their really excellent mother to avoid everything like manoeuvring or mystery, and all unnecessary concealments in her management of her children; and it explains the cheerful acquiescence with which all fell into their father's strict distribution of time, that at the earliest age in which they

could understand such matters, she made them acquainted with their father's affairs with a view to induce them to adapt their own feelings and expectations to his means. In agreeable exception to a tolerably universal rule of discontent with early training, Mr. Taylor approves of every family practice instituted by his parents, and especially speaks of one custom from which his sister-and she includes all-derived great benefit. The mother gives the history of its commencement. A friend, who was one of those who assume the privilege of administering reproof, came to her some years after her marriage, when the cares of a family with small means began to press upon her, and thus addressed her :

'Your husband may have got a housekeeper and a nurse for his children, but I am sure he has no companion; it will be well if in due time he does not get tired of you. The affections of a man of taste cannot fix permanently on a mere plod, and you are certainly nothing better! The homely truth darted into my mind, and carried conviction with the rapidity of a flash of lightning. Already my husband had begun to read to himself at breakfast time, and tea time, and thus far social intercourse was at a stand. But what was to be done? I had not a moment's time to spare from those plodding duties with which I had been charged by my friend, for I could not afford like her to keep two servants. I viewed the matter in all its bearings, and saw the impending danger without any apparent means of averting it. At length, this will I do, thought I. I will propose to read to him at breakfast and tea time, by which means I may at once revive my own dormant taste, cultivate a mind now rapidly degenerating to its former state of ignorance, divert myself from those harassing cares which beset me on every side; and thus subjects may be brought before us on which we can converse with mutual advantage. My proposal was cordially received, and the plan instantly adopted. But the chil dren-what was to be done with the children? For, alas, there was no nursery! Nothing at all was done with them; they quickly acquired the habit of sitting quietly during the time without any apparent uneasiness from the restraint. Thus commenced a custom of more than forty years' duration, with very partial interruption, and which may fairly be recorded as one of the important events of my life. It has rescued a mind from inanity, which was rapidly degenerating and losing the few attainments it had acquired, it has beguiled many a care, and diverted many a pain, and even afforded energy to weakness and languor, which in most cases would have been deemed insurmountable obstacles to such a custom. Besides this, must be taken into account the incalculable benefit arising to the children of the family from the volumes they have thus heard read, in addition to their own individual reading. It is scarcely conceivable at what an early age they thus obtained gleanings of knowledge from subjects becoming familiar to them, of which they must otherwise have remained ignorant till the regular process of education had directed attention to them. In a word, this custom has proved one of the prominent blessings of our lives.'-Ibid. p. 85.

There is such a remarkable sense of success in this volume in describing all family habits deviating from ordinary custom, that the reader craves to insert his own reservations. Of course, he considers, this is not the way to teach children to converse or to take their part in active life. To the majority of tempers

this custom would become an unedifying bondage, and to many constitutions bring on indigestion and kindred evils, from the want of that spring of gaiety infused into the system by spontaneous talk and perfect freedom of thought. Meals should be the mind's holiday as they are the body's refreshment. What teaching they have-after the children have learnt the civilization of the table should be the joint and, properly, inseparable acts of talking and listening, and generally of being agreeable. But as the majority of family gatherings round the breakfast and tea table fall far short of this ideal, the suggestion of reading aloud is worth something, though forty years of uninterrupted reading does not stir in the mind that admiring approval which leads to imitation, especially as few people could acquire the art attributed by Mr. Taylor to his mother of reading aloud, and taking her food with little interruption to the reading. What we must admire, however, in this history, is the energy, temper, perseverance, and good management apparent on the one hand, and the docility of a family of children on the other, who all acquiesced and profited by what, in so many circles, would produce an extreme irritation, and tacit, if not active rebellion. Without allowing to this little circle the gift of genius, we recognise in them a force and energy of purpose, and a hold over their own minds somewhat akin to it. It is industry redeemed from plodding by the ungrudging consent of the will, striving to develop each and all to the full extent and capacity of their powers in their most congenial direction; and this is precisely the condition of intellect to give satisfaction to the possessor in comparing self in its present effectiveness and past history, with the failures and desultory, fitful discipline of others. gather from Mr. Taylor that these family readings were not rigid in the subject chosen; in fact a good many books were read which would not be thought suitable for the purpose It is a noteworthy fact, that no people ever think themselves injured by having been admitted to a wider range of authors, than they themselves would allow to others.

now.

We

'Since the time of which I am speaking-about seventy years ago—a great change has come upon those tastes, and modes of feeling which regulate the literary habits of well-ordered families. It is no doubt a change in the whole for the better, but not so in every sense, a far higher tone, and more fastidious style prevails now than then, and it is certain that the range of books at that time accounted readable aloud in a family, included many, the very titles of which have barely been heard in my own family. We could not now listen around the breakfast table to certain works of fiction, the hearing of which then inflicted upon us, as I think, very little moral injury. Passages passed over the ear little heeded, therefore with little ill-consequence, the offensiveness of which would now startle and disgust the family party. Certain it is that this liberty or licence had the effect of giving to the young persons of

my father's family, a breadth of acquaintance with standard English literature, which the young persons of my own family have not had the opportunity to acquire.-P. 102.

In addition to this liberty or licence was the sanction given to the children of forming friendships, for which Jane Taylor had an especial aptitude, so that independence of mind and action was cultivated; nor were politics and stirring public events wanting as educating powers; a weekly paper was taken in; and the progress towards, and full details of the French Revolution formed part of the family reading. Mr. Taylor, the father, had his opinions on these events' which, although we are told he kept them to himself, and was a man of peace, irritated the turbulent loyalty of the mob of Lavenham-who in their zeal for Church and King, had a grudge against him as a leading member of the Meeting House. These friends of order assembled with flags, drums, and pitchforks, vowing to burn his house down. Fortunately the Rectory was near, and as the mob advanced the trembling inmates had the relief of seeing Mr. Cook (the rector) appear at his door, and by his persuasions disperse the mob.

"The next morning my father, in his simplicity, thought it incumbent upon him to present himself at the door of his benefactor, there to offer an expression of his heartfelt gratitude for the intervention on his behalf. He did so; but in uttering what he had intended to say, was cut short by the stately rector in this fashion. "Well, Mr. Taylor, you may spare your thanks; for to tell you the truth, Mrs. Cook's sister is at this time very ill, we fear, dangerously ill; and we thought that so much noise and confusion as would have ensued if the people had effected their purpose so near to us, might have been very prejudicial to her in her weak state." This was doing the part of a neighbour and of a Christian minister gracefully! But such were those times.'-P. 111.

Our comment upon this story is, that probably the incivility was a subterfuge; that when the danger was over the Dissenter's thanks for a real and intentional service were so distasteful to the 'true blue' parson of the old school, that he improvised a mode of escape from them that should effectually re-establish the old hostile relations.

6

Circumstances occurred to break up their country home when Jane Taylor was in her thirteenth year, and her biographer several years younger, Their father was invited by a congregation in Colchester to become their pastor in 1796; therefore he removed with his family and assumed the pastoral care of the society assembling at the chapel in Bucklersbury Lane.' Here we gather with some surprise that Jane was allowed to form an intimacy with the daughters of a physician lately dead, who had all become bitten with the French form of unbelief. They are described as handsome spirited girls who despised their mother's feeble efforts

to hold them in; talked of the 'prejudices' of their education, and, by dint of thinking for themselves, acquired a contempt for every principle which they had received from their parents. Such tendencies being aggravated by a general laxity of manners,' and some flagrant scandals among the religionists of Colchester, whose creed had already become the object of their scorn.' These strong-minded ladies had probably not arrived at this pass when the acquaintance began; for we read,—

'I now revert to the time of my sister's first acquaintance with these young ladies. The close intimacy and very frequent intercourse between the two families very greatly promoted the mental improvement of all parties, for there were advantages of different kinds possessed by each which very fairly balanced the mutual benefit. About this time, that is, when Jane was in her fifteenth year, the six friends, in conjunction with two or three other young persons formed themselves into a society for reading original essays, and for the promotion of intellectual improvement. Jane's diffidence as to her own powers, her peculiar dread of competition, as well as the fact of being herself the youngest member of the society, prevented her from assuming any very prominent place in these exercises; but she filled her part well, and some of her compositions, which were read at the meetings of the society, gave indication of that originality of thought, and sprightliness of style, and that soundness of sentiment which have distinguished her writings.'-P. 119.

This proves that voluntary and anxious self-culture among women are not quite so exclusively the characteristic of the present day as some people imagine them. There are in fact few authoresses of our own time who went through such an apprenticeship to the craft, as the subject of this memoir; but it must be perceived that, though her father repudiated the specious Unitarianism as well as the avowed scepticism of that period, he and his family were politically allied to the holders of these opinions. They were the party of progress whether real or so-called-which is perhaps necessarily the party of intellectual activity. We are told that Jane's intimacy with her unbelieving friend was much moderated by difference of opinion on the most important points, and also that the approach of an early death recalled the poor girl to the faith of her childhood. For the sake of providing his daughters with the means of independence, at the same time keeping them at home, he decided to teach them his own art of engraving. Indeed, so great was the desire to keep all his children together under his roof, that all, whether boys or girls, were set to pursue the same calling; while literary conversation and reading aloud went on along with the mechanical work of the graver. We are not sur

prised that under this effort to make the most of time, none of the party made any great progress in the professed business of the day. Jane in an early letter writes:

"The more I see of myself and of the performances of others the more I am convinced that nature never intended me for an artist.

No one can