HANNAH MORE [Hannah More, the daughter of a village schoolmaster, was born at Stapylton in 1745. She learnt Latin and a little mathematics from her father, French from her sisters, and Spanish and Italian at a later stage. In 1772 she made the first of the annual visits to London which were continued throughout the greater part of her long and busy life. Here, among those who had the best right to be critical, she seems to have been a favourite from the first. few tragedies. After some epigrams, compliments, and ballads, she wrote a Florio and Bas Bleu. Two years later she began to work vigorously for the abolition of slavery, and was thus brought into contact with a certain religious set of persons who may be considered as the earliest of the Evangelical school, and under this influence she published: Thoughts on the Manners of the Great, 1788; An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World, 1790; Strictures on Female Education, 1799; and Calebs in search of a Wife, 1809. She published Remarks on Mr. Dupont's Speech, 1794; the Cheap Repository Tracts, 1795-1798; and Hints towards forming the Character of a Princess, 1805, for the benefit of the Princess Charlotte. Practical Piety followed in 1811; Christian Morals, 1813; Essay on the Character and Writings of St. Paul, 1815; patriotic songs and leaflets, 1817; Moral Sketches, 1819; The Spirit of Prayer, 1825. She spent the last five years of her life at Clifton, where she died in 1833, aged eighty-eight.] THE dream of Hannah More's childhood was to go to London and see the bishops and the booksellers; her earliest ambition to possess a quire of paper which she might fill with letters of exhortation to sinners and their repentant answers. She regretted the absence of practical precepts in the Waverley novels, and stands herself convicted of some moral intention in almost every one of even her most trifling and artificial productions. She never became a slave to the brilliant society that flattered and caressed her, while its vagaries moved her to righteous indignation. The missionary spirit was strong in her, and she did not possess the artistic sense which had enabled Fanny Burney to look on these things as an irresponsible outsider and turn them to comedy. The chief aim, indeed, of her literary activity, after her apprentice VOL. IV 2 L ship with the Bas Bleus, was to expose the fashionable vices and minor everyday irregularities of her generation. She addressed herself primarily "to those persons of rank and fortune who live within the restraints of moral obligation, who acknowledge the truth of the Christian religion," and demanded from them a practice consistent with the creed to which they outwardly subscribed. The combined rigour and spirituality of her teaching offended both the Calvinists and their opponents, though she desired to attack neither, and simply accepted the guidance of the Church in all matters of dogma. The same didactic aim underlies Calebs in Search of a Wife, where the novel form served merely to attract such readers as might be frightened away from an essay or disquisition. The plot is of the slightest and clumsily constructed, the principal characters are unreal and painfully priggish, but some of the "warnings" are drawn with considerable spirit. In the Cheap Repository Series, she wrote expressly "for the common people,” to counteract the influence of Tom Paine and the French Revolution; teaching industry, sobriety, content, loyalty to duly constituted authorities, and the practice of religion. The arguments used were somewhat crude, and the average British squire was perhaps a little idealised; but she was really intimate with the needs of the poor, and made these publications the instruments of much excellent practical advice. Hannah More's style is almost always conventional, and generally careless, but The Cheap Repository Tracts are simple, forcible, and dramatic; and her faults of manner never entirely obscure her natural vigour and good sense. She is animated and fluent, possessing an extensive, though not a pure vocabulary, and some turn for epigram. Her heaviest works are sprinkled with admirable phrases, reflections, and descriptions, as happy as those which make many of her letters so delightful. She was a thoroughly cultivated and charming woman, who could hold her own in the best society of her day, at once observant, sympathetic, and tactful, with a capacity for unfailing enthusiasm. Her books, now little read, were once immensely popular. They were more harmless than most fiction, less dry than most theology, and attracted notice in her lifetime as the work of a woman of great personal attractions, fearless principle, and indomitable energy. REGINALD BRIMLEY JOHNSON. PROFESSION AND PRACTICE I SHALL conclude these loose and immethodical hints with a plain though short address to those who content themselves with a decent profession of the doctrines and a formal attendance on the offices, instead of a diligent discharge of the duties, of Christianity. Believe and forgive me!-You are the people who lower religion in the eyes of its enemies. The openly profane, the avowed enemies to God and goodness, serve to confirm the truths they mean to oppose, to illustrate the doctrines they deny, and to accomplish the very predictions they affect to disbelieve. But you, like an inadequate and faithless prop, overturn the edifice which you pretend to support. When an acute and keeneyed infidel measures your lives with the rule by which you profess to walk, he finds so little analogy between them, the copy is so unlike the pattern, that this inconsistency of yours is the pass through which his most dangerous attack is made. And I must confess, that, of all the arguments, which the malignant industry of infidelity has been able to muster, the negligent conduct of professing Christians seems to me to be the only one which is really capable of staggering a man of sense. He hears of a spiritual and self-denying religion; he reads the beatitudes; he observes that the grand artillery of the Gospel is planted against pride and sensuality. He then turns to the transcript of this perfect original; to the lives which pretend to be fashioned by it. There he sees, with triumphant derision, that pride, selflove, luxury, self-sufficiency, unbounded personal expense, and an inordinate appetite for pleasure, are reputable vices in the eyes of many of those who acknowledge the truth of the Christian doctrines. He weighs that meekness, to which a blessing is promised, with that arrogance which is too common to be very dishonourable. He compares that non-conformity to the world, which the Bible makes the criterion of a believer, with that rage for amusement which is not considered as disreputable in a Christian. He opposes the self-denying and lowly character of the Author of our faith with the sensual practices of his followers. He finds little resemblance between the restraints prescribed and the gratifications indulged in. What conclusions must a speculative reasoning sceptic draw from such premises? Is it any wonder that such phrases as a "broken spirit,” a “contrite heart,” "poverty of spirit," "refraining the soul," "keeping it low," and "casting down high imaginations," should be to the unbeliever 'foolishness," when such humiliating doctrines are a "stumbling block" to professing Christians; to Christians who cannot cordially relish a religion which professedly tells them it was sent to stain the pride of human glory, and "to exclude boasting?" But though the passive and self-denying virtues are not high in the esteem of mere good sort of people, yet they are peculiarly the evangelical virtues. The world extols brilliant actions; the Gospel enjoins good habits and right motives; it seldom inculcates those splendid deeds which make heroes, or teaches those lofty sentiments which constitute philosophers; but it enjoins the harder task of renouncing self, of living uncorrupted in the world, of subduing besetting sins, and of "not thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought." The acquisition of glory was the precept of other religions, the contempt of it is the perfection of Christianity. Let us, then, be consistent, and we shall never be contemptible, even in the eyes of our enemies. Let not the unbeliever say that we have one set of opinions for our theory, and another for our practice; that to the vulgar— We show the rough and thorny way to heav'n, Would it not become the character of a man of sense, of which consistency is a most unequivocal proof, to choose some rule and abide by it? An extempore Christian is a ridiculous character. Fixed principles, if they be really principles of the heart, and not merely opinions of the understanding, will be followed by a consistent course of action; while indecision of spirit will produce instability of conduct. If there be a model which we profess to admire, let us square our lives by it. If either the Koran of Mahomet, or the Revelations of Zoroaster, be a perfect guide, let us follow one of them. If either Epicurus, Zeno, or Confucius, be the peculiar object of our veneration and respect, let us avowedly fashion our conduct by the dictates of their philosophy; and then, though we may be wrong, we shall not be absurd; we may be erroneous, but we shall not be inconsistent but if the Bible be in truth the Word of God, as we profess to believe, we need look no further for a consummate pattern. "If the Lord be God, let us follow Him": if Christ be a sacrifice for sin, let Him be also to us the example of an holy life. (From Thoughts on the Manners of the Great.) A RELIGIOUS FAMILY AT tea, I found the young ladies took no more interest in the conversation than they had done at dinner, but sat whispering and laughing, and netting white silk gloves till they were summoned to the harpsichord. Despairing of getting on with them in company, I proposed a walk in the garden. I now found them as willing to talk, as destitute of anything to say. Their conversation was vapid and frivolous. They laid great stress on small things. They seemed to have no shades in their understanding, but used the strongest terms for the commonest occasions, and admiration was excited by things hardly worthy to command attention. They were extremely glad, and extremely sorry, on subjects not calculated to excite affections of any kind. They were animated about trifles, and indifferent on things of importance. They were, I must confess, frank and good-natured, but it was evident, that as they were too open to have anything to conceal, so they were too uninformed to have anything to produce; and I was resolved not to risk my happiness with a woman who could not contribute her full share towards spending a wet winter cheerfully in the country. In the evening Mrs. Ranby was lamenting, in general and rather customary terms, her own exceeding sinfulness. Mr. Ranby said, "You accuse yourself rather too heavily, my dear; you have sins to be sure."-"And pray what sins have I, Mr. Ranby?" said she, turning upon him with so much quickness that the poor man started. "Nay," said he, meekly, "I did not |