Thomas and Samuel, the two next sons, were brought up for business. After leaving Mr. Pickburn's school at Hackney they read for some time under Mr. Burgh, who had written "On the Dignity of Human Nature." They were then taken as clerks, and afterwards as partners, into their father's banking-house in Freeman's Court. Thomas died within a year or two of that event, in his father's lifetime, and his brother's feelings towards him are described in some beautiful lines in the "Pleasures of Memory ”—

Oh thou! with whom my heart was wont to share
From Reason's dawn each pleasure and each care,
With whom, alas! I fondly hoped to know
The humble walks of happiness below;
If thy blest nature now unites above,
An angel's pity with a brother's love,
Still o'er my life preserve thy mild control,
Correct my views, and elevate my soul;
Grant me thy peace and purity of mind,
Devout yet cheerful, active yet resigned;
Grant me like thee whose art knew no disguise
Whose blameless wishes never aimed to rise,
To meet the changes Time and Chance present
With modest dignity and calm content.
When thy last breath ere Nature sank to rest,
Thy meek submission to thy God expressed;
When thy last look ere thought and feeling fled,
A mingled gleam of hope and triumph shed:
What to thy soul its glad assurance gave,
Its hope in death, its triumph o'er the grave?
The sweet Remembrance of unblemished youth,
The still inspiring voice of Innocence and Truth!

"Pleasures of Memory." Second Part, pp. 43, 44.

Samuel, the poet, had wished to be sent to the Manchester Presbyterian College, but while his father lived he was kept in strict attention to the banking business. This was of course broken in upon by occasional journeys, besides the annual visit to The Hill, near Stourbridge. He spent one winter in Devonshire, as he had been

threatened with an attack upon the lungs. He made a journey to Paris before the outbreak of the French Revolution; and he paid a visit to Edinburgh, where he made the acquaintance of Dr. Robertson and Mr. Adam Smith, and where he met Mrs. Piozzi, to whom his poems had before introduced him. On the death of his father, in 1793, he was more at liberty to follow his own tastes.

He inherited an ample property and a prosperous business, and into this he soon introduced his younger brother Henry to manage it for him. He had already published his "Ode to Superstition" and "Pleasures of Memory," and his society was eagerly courted by persons of rank and talent. He first took chambers at Paper Buildings, in the Temple, but afterwards he built a house for himself in St. James's Place, which he gradually enriched with his valuable collection of pictures, vases, and other works of art. His literary friends had been Dr. Price, Dr. Priestley, Mrs. Barbauld, Mr. Horne Tooke, but now Charles James Fox, Grattan, and Erskine became his frequent guests, and for fifty years his house has been one of the chief centres of attraction with men of letters and men of taste.

Henry Rogers, my youngest uncle, was educated under Priestley and Belsham at the New College, Hackney, of which his father was one of the principal founders. As soon as he was of age he joined the banking house in Freeman's Court. . . . . He was the patron of all his nephews and nieces, to whom they at all times looked for help and advice. To me and my brothers and sisters he was like a second father, and though he was the youngest of our uncles, his constant wish to be of use to us, and to have us near him, made us all look up to him as the head of the family. In 1824 he retired out of business, and thereby made room for my admission into the firm.

Martha, my eldest aunt, married Mr. John Towgood, who was also a Dissenter, a grandson of the Reverend Micaiah Towgood. He was a member of the firm of

Langston, Towgood and Company, and in 1811, being the only survivor that wished to continue in business, he united his bank to that of his brothers-in-law, under the firm of Rogers, Towgood and Company.

Maria, my mother, was, I have always heard, the favourite of the family, from her goodness of heart and winning manners. She was sent with one or both of her sisters to a boarding-school at Stoke Newington, kept by Mrs. Crisp. And it was on meeting his sister with a troop of the girls of this school in their walks that Samuel Rogers wrote the following lines. He never thought them good enough to print among his poems, but they are interesting as being among the hasty works of a writer who for the most part finished everything with great care.

TO A PARTY OF YOUNG LADIES WHO WERE SITTING ON A BENCH IN QUEEN ELIZABETH'S WALK AT EIGHT O'CLOCK LAST THURSDAY NIGHT.

Evening had flushed the clear blue sky,
The birds had sung themselves to sleep,
When I presumed, I don't know why,
In old Queen Bess's walk to peep.

And there was she; Her belles and beaux

In ruffs and high-crowned hats were there!
But soon, as you may well suppose,

The vision melted into air.

When hark! Soft voices, thro' the shade,
Announced a little fairy train.

And once, methought, sweet music played,
I wished to see, but wished in vain.

I shut my eyelids at the sound,

And found, what every youth will find,
That he who treads on sacred ground

Is sure to leave his wits behind.

Saturday, May 14th, 1785.

My mother died in April, 1806, leaving six children, of whom the youngest was only a fortnight old, and my father died in September of the same year. The following lines, from my uncle's poem of " Human Life," mention my mother's death:

:

Such grief was ours-it seems but yesterday—
When in thy prime, wishing so much to stay,
'Twas thine, Maria, thine without a sigh,
At midnight in a Sister's arms to die!
Oh thou wert lovely-lovely was thy frame,
And pure thy spirit as from Heaven it came!
And, when recalled to join the blest above
Thou diedst a victim to exceeding love,

Nursing the young to health. In happier hours,
When idle Fancy wove luxuriant flowers,
Once in thy mirth thou bad'st me write on theę;
And now I write-what thou shalt never see.*

* "Human Life," p. 82.

23

CHAPTER II.

CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-TIME.

THE elder half-sister, to whose care the orphan family were left, and of whose training by her father and uncle an account has already been given, was happily possessed of great vigour and decision. She was only nine years old when her own mother died, and now at the age of twenty-three she found herself called to discharge a mother's duties towards her father's second family. Her own grief for the loss of her second mother ("the first sorrow I had known," she says, "for I was too young to feel the loss of my own mother,") was too great to allow her to do much to alleviate her father's sorrow. "The only consolation that presented itself," she continues, "was the promise of becoming a mother to her children, and so far as in me lay to repay the debt of gratitude I owed her." The five summer months during which Sutton Sharpe survived his wife were the gloomiest period in the family history. refused to be comforted, and his daughter looked back in after years with much needless self-reproach upon her failure "to afford him the consolation he required." His death was accelerated by pecuniary difficulties, and he was found to have left his family in such a position that it was needful to give up the

He