to have been acquainted with the family at Westwood, and he speaks as with a personal recollection of the lady of the house, commemorating her virtues, and practical graces of her Christian life. "She had moreover," he says, "an excellent judgment, and a talent of speaking correctly, pertinently, clearly, and gracefully; in which she was so accomplished, particularly in an evenness of style and consistent manner of writing, that she deserved to be called and reputed the author of a book concerning the Duty of Man." To this Ballard adds, in his Memoirs of British Ladies, that a lady then living assured him that Dr. Hickes had informed her that he had seen the manuscript of the Whole Duty of Man written in her ladyship's own hand, which, from the many erasures, alterations, and interlinings, he was fully satisfied was the very original book. This manuscript is said to have been some time in the possession of Mrs. Eyre of Rampton, a daughter of Lady Pakington; it was interlined with corrections by Bishop Fell, who seems, from the part he took in these publications, to have been in the author's 1 Pref. to his Anglo-Saxon and Moeso-Gothic Grammars, prefixed to his Thesaurus. 2 Art. Lady Pakington. 3 Nash's Hist. of Worcestershire, vol. i. p. 352. ed. 1761. secret. Mrs. Eyre always believed her mother to be the author of this work, and of the Decay of Christian Piety; but is said to have expressed herself doubtfully about the Treatises. As, however, Bishop Fell published them all as the works of the same author, there seems no reason to question that the Art of Contentment, and the rest, proceeded from the same hand. Should the general tenour of these works appear too learned to justify the supposition that the author was a lady, it must be borne in mind that female education in the days of Lady Pakington, though less general, went much deeper than in our own. Lady Jane Grey and Ethelreda Cecil had learnt to write and converse in Greek as readily as in English; and in the next century the sister of Sir Philip Sidney, Mary Countess of Pembroke, and Lucy Countess of Bedford, were as much distinguished for their learning as for their beauty and accomplishments.2 It was not till a much later age and a more effeminate generation, after the Revolution, that fashionable gentlemen thought it requisite to decry female 1 Ballard, as above. 2 "Lady Pembroke wrote verse with grace and facility: her chief works, however," says William Gifford, were works of piety, and her virtues went still before her talents." Ben Jonson's beautiful lines on Lucy, Countess of Bedford, "have learning. A lady of talent, who had Sir Norton Knatchbull for her preceptor in youth, and Dr. Hammond, Bishops Fell and Morley, for her friends and correspondents in later life, might well be qualified to speak of books, and write on subjects, which formed no part of a lady's acquirements in the eighteenth century. The careful and successful concealment of the the further merit," as the same good critic observes, "of being consonant to truth:" "This morning, timely rapt with holy fire, I thought to form unto my zealous Muse To honour, serve, and love; as poets use. Nor lend like influence from his lucent seat: Only a learned and a manly soul I purposed her; that should, with even powers, My Muse bade BEDFORD write, and that was she!" name is in itself the best proof that the motive of this excellent person was the benefit of her fellowcreatures, not the advancement of her own reputation. How much benefit she conferred upon her own generation by a series of treatises so popular, and so well calculated to heal the distempers of the time, by setting forth an orderly, and peaceable, and practical system of religion, "full of mercy and good fruits," in contrast to the bitter disputes and strifes of words, which had set the kingdom in a flame, we cannot now fully appreciate. The sterling English style in which these writings are composed, has attracted the notice of a modern celebrated critical journal, (not otherwise remarkable for its favourable opinion of English sacred literature), in which it is observed, that they contain scarcely a word or phrase which has become superannuated. In a very few instances, where the change of time, since the first appearance of this treatise, seems to have left the meaning obscure, a few words of explanation have been added at the foot of the page. Having thus introduced the treatise and its presumed authoress to the reader's notice, the editor's part might be concluded; but the importance of the subject here treated of, and its seasonableness to 1 Edinburgh Review. these times, have induced him to subjoin a few re.flections of his own. All must confess contentment to be a Christian duty; but few can deny that it is a duty which Englishmen in this nineteenth century are very apt to forget to cultivate. The reason of this fact is indeed, in some degree, to be found in human nature itself. It is not in the nature of man to be satisfied with what he possesses in this world; and too frequently he will not feel contented, because he v cannot feel satisfied. But it is the Christian's duty, it is one of the lessons taught him by heavenly Wisdom, while he owns the insufficiency of earthly goods, to own likewise that these, insufficient as they are in themselves, and scantily as they may have been bestowed upon him, are, notwithstanding, enough: if the servant of God has ever so little of silver and gold, he may be contented with these; if he had ever so much, he could not have been perfectly satisfied with them. The chief inducement to contentment under our present lot, whatever that may be, is the possession of a sure and certain hope of better things in future; whereas one principal cause of a discontented spirit is, the absence of this hope; instead of which, how often is to be found |