Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

"The few hours we have been parted seem too many to me to let this first post-night pass without giving my dear man a little talk," she wrote to him, when he had been obliged to be present at the parliament, just called together again. She tells him about their little child named after her mother, Rachel, how she "fetched but one sleep last night," and how "very good she was this morning;" how she is writing in the nursery with "little Fubs," as they generally called her, and how she knew the father would be rejoiced to hear that Fubs "was breeding her teeth so well," and beginning to talk.

The letters are badly written, bad grammar is used, and the spelling neglected, but they are so homely and happy, they are written with such ease and enjoyment, that we forget that the writer was never really educated, though an earl's daughter.

In 1679 Elizabeth Noel died. This was no common loss to Lady Rachel Russell; it was her only sister, her beloved, the person whom, next to her husband, she loved most dearly in all the world. Though she writes to her husband of her loss, she does not fill her letters with her own feelings; she tries to rouse herself to public affairs, which will interest him more, and chats about the three little children and their doings and sayings. She taught the children herself, and their happiness and welfare was her great object in life; she liked "Fubs" to write to her father whenever he went away, and the conscientious little girl used to bring a tiny letter to be enclosed, though sometimes tears were shed when the spelling and writing would not come right.

Nevertheless, very anxious times were hovering over England, and Lady Rachel Russell was not blind to her husband's danger.

Lord Russell had been in the parliament that called Charles II. to the throne; but slowly he and many others awoke to the fact that they had blundered. Charles was weak, selfish, unfit to rule England, unsettled as she was then, and a few years after the Restoration Lord Russell, together with others, joined the country party against the court. He was a generous, kind-hearted man, "raised by birth and fortune high above his fellows," and he soon became one of the most powerful opponents of the court, one of the most influential leaders of the country party. By the Whigs he was honoured as a chief; he was one of those who wished to exclude the Duke of York, brother to Charles II., from the throne on account of his religion.

In 1678 Lord Russell was supporting a bitter measure against the court party. Lady Russell was very much alarmed; she wrote to him in the House, and begged him not to support it.

"If you do, I am most assured you will repent it; if I have any interest, I use it to beg you to be silent in this case, at least to-day."

In 1681 a crisis arrived. The king and parliament could no longer act together, and when parliament was dissolved, two men were at the head of the struggle. One of these was Lord Russell. Meetings were held; some proposed to overthrow the king and set up a new ruler; others wished to rise and murder Charles II. But they were discovered, and Lord Russell was arrested. The messenger waited about the door for many hours, so that Lord Russell might have escaped, for the back door was open, but he would not; "he had done nothing," he said, "which caused him to dread the justice of the country." Lady Russell consulted his friends, and they agreed he ought not to fly.

Then he was sent to the Tower. It was the 26th of June. During the fortnight that elapsed between his arrest and trial, Lady Russell spared neither pains nor energy in finding supporters to defend her husband. She was constantly with him, she wrote for him, she encouraged his timid friends, she strengthened his firm ones, she left not a stone unturned to provide against the charges which would be brought forward to crush him whom she loved so dearly.

At last the trial came. The night before, Lady Russell wrote a few lines to her husband; she told him that she was going to be present, for friends thought she might be of use; she begged him to keep up heart for _her_ sake as well as his own. The court was densely filled; as Lady Russell entered, her pale face calm and brave, a thrill of anguish ran through the crowd.

"We have no room to sit down," said the counsel. Lord Russell asked for pen, ink, paper, and the use of any papers he had, adding, "May I have somebody to write for me?"

"Any of your servants shall assist you in writing anything you please," said the Chief Justice.

"My wife," said Lord Russell, "is here to do it." And Lady Russell stood up in the midst of that crowded court to show that she was willing, more than willing, to fulfil this almost sacred office for her husband.

"If my lady will give herself that trouble," said the judge, carelessly.

Trouble! It was no trouble to her. The resolute wife took her seat beside her husband, took up the pen, and during the whole long trial sat there, his only secretary and adviser.

Even when the sentence of death was pronounced, Lady Russell did not give way. She tried later to move the heart of the king, but in vain; though she was the daughter of one of his oldest and most faithful servants, he refused pardon, unless Lord Russell would change his opinions.

"It is all true," said the king when Russell's innocence was pleaded; "but it is true that, if I do not take his life, he will take mine."

Slowly all hope disappeared, and the fatal day approached. Lord Russell wrote to the king, "I hope your majesty's displeasure against me will end with my life, and that no part of it shall fall on my wife and children."

His last thoughts were for his wife; he dreaded the blow for her more than for himself. The parting with her was the hardest thing he had to do, for he was afraid she would hardly be able to bear it, he said to Burnet, the bishop who was allowed to be with him the last few days.

Tears came into his eyes when he spoke of her. The last day came, and Lady Russell brought the three little children to say good-bye for ever to their father. "Little Fubs" was only nine, her sister Catherine seven, and the baby three years old, too young to realize his loss. He kissed them all calmly, and sent them away.

"Stay and sup with me," he said to his wife. She stayed, and they ate their last meal together. Then they kissed in silence, and silently she left him. When she had gone, Lord Russell broke down completely.

"Oh, what a blessing she has been to me!" he cried. "It is a great comfort to me to leave my children in such a mother's care; she has promised me to take care of herself for their sakes; she will do it," he added resolutely.

Lady Russell returned heavy-hearted to the sad home to which she would never welcome him again, there to count the wretched hours till the fatal stroke was given.

On July 21st, 1683, she was a widow, and her children fatherless. They left their dreary London house, and went to an old abbey in the country, where Lady Russell gave herself up to the education of her children. She never neglected this duty she had taken upon herself, and her daughters never had any other teacher but their mother. She tried to dismiss her sorrow for their sakes, and interest herself in their pleasures. Politics still interested her, and it was with troubled feelings she saw James II. mount the throne of England.

In 1688 her eldest daughter Rachel was married. The same year the Great Revolution began.

In 1689, William and Mary were crowned; one of their first acts was to annul the sentence against Lord Russell. When the parchment which effected this was laid on the table of that assembly in which, eight years before, his face and his voice had been so well known, the excitement was great. One old Whig member tried to speak, but could not. "I cannot," he faltered, "name my Lord Russell without disorder. It is enough to name him. I am not able to say more."

Lady Russell's health was broken, and she was threatened with blindness. It has been said that she wept herself blind, but this is hardly true. It was discovered she had cataract, and must give up writing by candlelight and reading.

Soon after her son, Lord Tavistock, was married at fifteen to a rich heiress, and her daughter Catherine to a nobleman.

An amusing account is given of Catherine and her husband, which shows what favour the family was in at this time.

When they drew near Belvoir, where they were going to stay, verses were presented them on the occasion of their happy marriage; at the gate stood "four-and-twenty fiddlers all in a row; four-and-twenty trumpeters with their tan-tara-ra-ra's; four-and-twenty ladies, and as many parsons."

Her son was only just married when Lady Russell was requested to let him stand to be elected to the House of Commons. He was just going to Cambridge to study, a mere boy, and his mother, feeling it would ruin his future, and turn his head, to enter parliament so young, refused, though the offer was a tempting one.

In 1701 she was called to the deathbed of that son, who had caught small pox, which was raging at that time. His wife and little children had been obliged to flee from it, and his mother was left to comfort his last hours.

"I did not know the greatness of my love to him, till I could see him no more," she cried, when he had gone. She was confused and stunned by the suddenness of his death, but she had need of all her strength, for another blow was close at hand.

Six months after, her second daughter Catherine died. Rachel, Duchess of Devonshire, was very ill at the time, but, knowing of her sister's illness, she constantly enquired for her. It was all the poor mother could do to keep up herself, and conceal from Rachel the death of her sister for a time.

The last years of Lady Russell's life were calm, but very sad;--her husband, her son and daughter, were all gone, and she longed to follow them.

At last, on a September day in 1723, she died in the arms of her daughter Rachel, the little "Fubs" of bygone days, and she was buried beside the husband whom she had loved and served so devotedly during the few happy years of their married life.

ANGELICA KAUFMANN (1741-1807).

Angelica Kaufmann, though the name is foreign, though she was born on the banks of the German Rhine, may still be called an Englishwoman, for her work lay chiefly in England, and the greater part of her life was spent in this country. Although no mighty heroine, she was on the one hand a lover of art, a painter, a musician, in the eyes of the public beautiful and popular; on the other, a genuine, true-hearted woman, often deceived, but never deceiving, true to the world, and true to herself. She was born in 1741, at a town on the Rhine, in a wild and picturesque district.

Her father, John Kaufmann, had been a sort of travelling painter, mending a picture here, copying one there, and painting signs for the public houses in the neighbourhood. In the course of his travels he had met a German girl, married her, and their only child they called Marie Anne Angelica Catherine; so, though born to poverty, she was rich in names. John Kaufmann then took to painting as a means of livelihood. The first toys that little Angelica had were his paint-brushes, his unstrained canvas, his bladders of colour, which she would play with till her little fingers were discoloured, and her pinafore daubed all over.

It was not many years before it became evident that the little girl would surpass her father in the love--if not in the art--of painting. When he gave her copy-books to learn her letters, she left the words unwritten, and copied the pictures only. Instead of playing with childish toys, she would get scraps of paper and copy the pictures and models in her father's studio, or sketch the trees and houses in the country round.

Then her father began to teach her drawing; he showed her how to mix the colours, and lay them on; he explained to her about light and shade, and gave her models to copy. When they went out for walks, he would take the child's hand and make her look well at the faces of the people they passed, then draw their features when she got home. So little Angelica, or Angela, as her father loved to call her, learnt to love drawing and painting more and more. When she was eleven, her father moved to Como in Italy; here people heard of Angelica and her wonderful power of painting, and the Bishop of Como offered to sit for the little girl to paint him. He was an old man with a long flowing beard, a difficult subject for such a young artist, but Angelica did it, and the portrait was such a success that the Archbishop of Milan and many other great Italians sat to be painted by the eleven-year-old child, until she had more work than she could well do. Still she went on, learning, copying the Old Masters' pictures, and teaching herself the old Italian art.

When she was sixteen her mother died. Poor little Angelica took it terribly to heart, and her father thought it best to leave Italy and go to Switzerland, so that change of scene might divert her mind. Her father's love for her was unbounded; he petted her, he loved to sing her praises, to call her his Angel, his Angelina, his little artist daughter, and she returned it with all the warmth of her lonely little heart.

Once Angelica was entrusted to paint alone an altar-piece on the wall of a village church. Day after day father and daughter went to the church, and Angelica would sit on the top of a high scaffolding, her dark hair falling over her shoulders, her eyes eagerly fixed on the fresco before her, on which angels, lambs, doves, grew under her clever fingers. Below stood the honest John Kaufmann watching the form he loved so well, his arms folded, his head thrown back, and feelings of pride and joy kindling in his heart.

Besides her love for painting, Angelica was intensely fond of music, her voice was pure and sweet, and she could play wonderfully well. She learnt to conquer the most difficult of the grand old Italian pieces, and would sing from memory the old ballads to amuse her father when he was melancholy and troubled. And this was often the case. He had little money, he had nearly starved himself to give his daughter the education he knew she deserved; the roof was humble, the beds were hard, the sheets coarse, the bread dark and sour. Angelica had to mend her own scanty and often thread-bare clothes. But the time was coming when she would have money enough to dress in silk and satin had she wished.

On their return to Milan, John Kaufmann was urged strongly to have Angelica educated for the stage; her beauty and her voice would soon win her renown, they said; managers made her tempting offers, and her father was ready to give his consent. But Angelica was true to her art. The stage had its attractions for her; the offer was a tempting one; she drew a picture of herself standing between music on one side and painting on the other, turning towards painting, and bidding a tender farewell to music. Then bravely, though not without a sigh, she took up her brushes, and with fresh energy set her whole mind to painting.

In 1763 she took up her abode in Venice to study and paint pictures; six years of travelling among Italian art had widened her experience and given a firmer grasp both to mind and hand. Countesses, duchesses, ladies, came to see her, and sit for their portraits, and when, in 1766, a rich lady offered to take her to England to make her fortune, Angelica consented.

The first few days in London were rather lonely for the poor girl, but she soon learnt the English language, and her bright, pleasant manners won her many friends. Among these was Sir Joshua Reynolds, the greatest artist in England.

"Mr. Reynolds is the first of painters here," she wrote to her father in Germany. She admired his colouring so much that she became his pupil, and the great artist was delighted with her, not only as a clever painter, but as a woman. He painted her portrait, she painted his. On the establishment of the Royal Academy, Angelica Kaufmann was made a member. It is said that Sir Joshua Reynolds wanted her to be his wife; be that as it may, we soon after find Angelica living in Golden Square, some way from her old home. She was very popular; no large evening party was complete without her; the world of fashion, the world of art, all sought her society, and her praises were sung throughout the country. She painted the young Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., and other members of the royal family, which made her trebly popular.

Before beginning a portrait Angelica would scan the features before her closely, she would wait till the sitters had arranged themselves in natural positions, and then, as truthfully as she could, she would paint them. She was making her fortune rapidly; her father had come over to live with her, and life seemed to go on very happily for her till she was twenty-six. Then she married a man calling himself Count Horn, handsome, clever, amusing; but three weeks after it was discovered that the _real_ Count Horn had arrived in England, and that the man who had married Angelica was only the Count's footman, who had taken his master's name. This was a terrible blow to Angelica and her father; for a long time she seemed bordering on despair, and could not even go on painting. Her husband went abroad, Angelica never saw him again, and he died some years after. At last her friends roused her, and persuaded her to take up her brushes again, and she threw herself into her work once more.

As time wore on, John Kaufmann grew old and infirm, and the doctors said he must go abroad. Angelica was tired of London society, weary of London fogs and mists, and she had long been yearning for her beloved Italy. So they left England, and though it cost Angelica many pangs to leave the friends who had been so kind to her, she was very thankful to be in a sunny climate once more, under the blue Italian skies.

In Venice she painted several well-known pictures on historical subjects; they were eagerly bought at high prices, and are now to be seen in different parts of Europe.

After the death of her father, Angelica took up her abode in Rome; she would get up early, take up her palette and brush, and paint on till sunset in winter, till nearly six in the summer. In the evening, when she could no longer see to paint, she would go out and see her friends, and several nights in the week she would open her rooms to receive visitors. A hall, filled with statues and busts, led to her studio and other rooms, where hung her pictures by the great masters, heads by Vandyke and Rembrandt, her own portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and many other pictures.

Not only by the rich was she known and loved, but also by the poor. Her charity and kindness were boundless; she did not simply give her money to the many beggars who abound in Italy, but she tried to improve their condition, and help them to work for themselves.

Having obtained news of the death of her husband, Angelica Kaufmann married a Venetian artist; together they painted, together they enjoyed the grand Italian art, and when, in 1795, he died, Angelica seemed overwhelmed. This was the beginning of a series of troubles. She lost a great deal of the money she had saved owing to the failure of a bank and the unsettled state of England, which often prevented her money from arriving. "But I have two hands still left," she would say, "and I can still work." In 1802 her health failed. She went to Switzerland for change, but on her return her cough came back. Her strength grew less, her hand lost its cunning, and at last her busy fingers could no longer hold the brush.

In the summer of 1807 she died. People of all ranks gathered together at her funeral in Rome; artists, nobility, poor, and rich came alike to do her honour. Her coffin was borne by girls in white, and like the great master Raphael, her two last pictures were carried behind the coffin, on which was placed a model of her right hand in plaster, with a paint-brush between its fingers.

Compared to the great and powerful artists before her, she was no mighty genius; her figures are more full of grace than force or energy; there is a sameness of design, which has called forth the saying, "To see one is to see all," but what she has painted she has painted truly. "Her pencil was faithful to art and womanhood," and we are proud to think that Angelica Kaufmann was one of the greatest artist-women the world has ever seen.

HANNAH MORE (1745-1833).

Hannah More was one of the first women who devoted her life to the poor. She had been in London society; she knew most of the leading men of the day; she could have lived a comfortable life in the midst of great people; but she chose rather to build herself a little house in the country, and there to work with her sister Patty among the rough miners of Somersetshire.

She was one of the younger daughters of Jacob More, a schoolmaster, near Gloucester. Her grandmother was a vigorous old woman, who even at the age of eighty used to get up at four in the morning with great energy.

Hannah learnt to read at the age of three. While still small enough to sit on her father's knee, she learnt Greek and Roman history; he used to repeat the speeches of the great men of old in the Greek or Latin tongue, which delighted the child, and then translate them till the eager little eyes sparkled "like diamonds." Her nurse had lived in the family of Dryden, and little Hannah heard many a story of the poet from her nurse's lips.

When quite small, it was her delight to get a scrap of paper, scribble a little poem or essay, and hide it in a dark corner, where the servant kept her brush or duster. Sometimes the little sister who slept with her, probably Patty, would creep downstairs in the dark to get her a piece of paper and a candle to write by. To possess a whole quire of paper was the child's greatest ambition.

One of her elder sisters went to a school in Bristol from Mondays till Saturdays, and from Saturday to Monday little Hannah set herself diligently to learn French from her sister. When she was sixteen, she also went to Bristol, and there she met many clever people, who were charmed with her, and looked on her bright conversation and manner as proofs of dawning genius.

Once, when she was ill, a well-known doctor was called in to attend her. He had paid her many visits, when one day she began to talk to him on many interesting subjects. At last he went; but when he was half-way downstairs, he cried out, "Bless me! I quite forgot to ask the girl how she was!" and returning to the room he inquired tenderly, "And how are you to-day my poor child?"

The following year she wrote a drama called "The Search after Happiness." "The public have taken ten thousand copies," she says, "but _I_ have not the patience to read it!"

When she went to London she was introduced to Garrick the actor, Sir Joshua Reynolds the artist, and many other clever people. Sir Joshua Reynolds one day took her to see Dr. Johnson, or "Dictionary Johnson," as she called him. She was very nervous, as no one knew how the great doctor would receive her, or what temper he would be in. But it was all right. He came to meet her "with good humour on his countenance," and with royal grace greeted her with a verse out of her own "Morning Hymn."

When she went to see him one day alone, he was out. So Hannah More went into his parlour, and seated herself in his great chair, hoping to feel inspired by so doing. When Dr. Johnson entered, she explained to him why she was sitting there; at which he went into fits of laughing, and cried out that it was a chair he _never_ sat in.

After this he became a frequent visitor at the house of the five sisters--

"I have spent a happy evening," he cried one night. "I love you all five; I am glad I came. I will come and see you again."

In 1777, Hannah More wrote a play called "Percy." Hidden in the corner of a box at the theatre, she anxiously watched the performance of her play; she heard her hero speak through the voice of her friend Garrick; she saw her audience--even the men--shedding tears, and she knew it was a success. So much did her writings apply to the feelings of her audience, that after the performance of one of her plays called the "Fatal Falsehood," when a lady said to her servant girl, who had been to the play, that her eyes looked red, as if she had been crying, the girl answered:

"Well, ma'am, if I did, it was no harm; a great many respectable people cried too!"

The death of David Garrick affected Hannah More deeply. Mrs. Garrick sent for her at once in her trouble, and, though ill in bed at the time, Hannah More came to comfort her friend. After this she spent much time with Mrs. Garrick, often in the depths of the country giving up her time to reading and writing, and taking long walks to the pretty villages round.

Then she built herself a little house near Bristol, where she went to live with her sister Patty. They made long expeditions together to villages round, and they soon discovered what a bad state the country people were in.

In a village near, she set to work to establish a school for the little children, and was soon rewarded by finding that three hundred were ready and longing to be taught. Difficulties lay at every turn; the rich farmers objected to the children being taught, and religion brought into the country.

"It makes the people so lazy and useless," they said.

"It will make the people better and more industrious," urged Hannah More; "they will work from higher and nobler motives, instead of merely for money and drink!"

At last they consented to have a school, and the children came by hundreds to be taught.

Then she went on to two mining villages high up on the Mendip Hills. In these villages the people were even more ignorant than those at Cheddar; they thought the ladies came to carry off their children as slaves. For at this time the selling of little children as slaves had reached a terrible height, and many great men, Pitt, Fox, and others, were doing what they could to have it abolished by an Act of Parliament.

It was into districts where no policemen dared to go that Hannah More and her sister ventured. There was no clergyman for miles round; one village had a curate living twelve miles away; another village had a clergyman who himself drank to excess, and was never sober enough to preach. There was one Bible in the village, but that was used to prop up a flower-pot. Such was the state of affairs when Hannah More first went among them.

Soon a school was established, and again the children were ready and willing to be taught. Before long they had six schools and as many as twelve hundred children were being taught. Very soon their work bore fruit.

"Several day-labourers coming home late from harvest, so tired that they could hardly stand, will not go to rest till they have been into the school for a chapter and a prayer," wrote Hannah More.

In 1792 she wrote "Village Politics," at the request of friends, to try and give a more healthy turn to politics in England. She did not put her own name to it, but called herself "Will Chip." One of her friends discovered who had written it, and sitting down he began a letter, "My dear Mrs. Chip," thanking her for giving to the world such a popular and wholesome tract.

Hannah More still kept up with the world outside; she watched with the keenest interest the struggle against slavery; her heart ached for the victims of the French Revolution across the Channel, and she wrote pamphlets on both subjects. Then came an attack on her writings; people said she wished for the success of France; some said she was an enemy to liberty, and many other false things.

This made Hannah More very unhappy. She liked to be loved, she could not bear to be hated; she who was ready to see good in all, could not bear to be forced to see evil. Then her poor people upheld her, and school-teachers and church-workers came forward to bear witness to the world-wide good her writings had done. Sympathy flowed in from all sides, and she found heart to go on again.

At last the happy home was broken up--the bright home where the poor people had never failed to find warmth and shelter and a welcome from the five sisters.

The three eldest died first. Still, through all the sad partings, Hannah More bravely worked on, while she had strength for it, writing when she could, and keeping bright those who still remained around her.

A few years later Patty died; she was the nearest of all to Hannah's heart, and the "aching void" she felt after her sister's death affected her health. Long and dangerous illnesses constantly left her unable to work for many months. Her work had been taken up by others now, and the "tide she had helped to turn had already swept past her."

"I learns geography and the harts and senses," boasted a little girl in a county parish, meaning the arts and sciences.

"I am learning syntax," a little servant said to Hannah More when questioned about her school.

Hannah More died at the age of eighty-eight, after years of intense suffering. She had lived to see how education was helping the poorer classes, and stamping out crime; how a little love and kindness had helped even the rough miners in their work, and how the children, taught in the village schools, were already growing up better and happier men and women, and it pleased her, long after her health and memory had failed, to hear that they still remembered the name of Hannah More.

ELIZABETH FRY (1780-1845).

Elizabeth Fry was one of those rare women whose "life was work." Once having recognized the path of duty, she never left it; through illness and suffering, trouble and sorrow, she held fast to it, and the result was grand. For she was our first great prison reformer, the first to open the eyes of the nation to the alarming state of the prisons, the first to take active steps for their improvement.

She was born in Norwich on May 21, 1780. Her father, John Gurney, belonged to the Society of Friends; he was a popular, warm-hearted man, fond of his children, devoted to his wife. Elizabeth was the third of eleven children; when she was two years old, her father and mother moved to Earlham Hall, an old house standing in a well-wooded park, about two miles from Norwich. She was a nervous, delicate little child; every night, on going to bed, she would quake with fear at the prospect of being left alone in the dark, when the moment should come for the candle to be blown out. Sea-bathing, too, had its horrors for her. She was forced to bathe when they went to the sea-side, but at the sight of the sea she would begin to cry and tremble till she turned her back on it again. The child's devotion to her mother was intense; she would often lie awake at night and cry at the thought that her mother might some day die and leave her, and her childish wish was that two big walls might fall and crush them both together. But the two big walls never _did_ fall; when Elizabeth was but twelve, her mother died, leaving eleven children, the eldest barely seventeen, the youngest only two. Elizabeth was tall and thin; she had quantities of soft flaxen hair and a sweet face, but she was so reserved and quiet, that people thought her quite stupid. She was very fond of dancing and riding and any kind of amusement, and when she was a little older we hear of her as a "beautiful lady on horseback in a scarlet riding-habit."

When she was eighteen a great Quaker preacher came to Norwich, and Elizabeth went with her six sisters to hear him. Hitherto she had cared little for Quaker meetings, but this time, as soon as the preacher began, her attention was fixed. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and "Betsy wept most of the way home," says one of her sisters. From that day all love of amusement and pleasure seemed gone. New feelings had been stirred within her; she felt there was something more to live for than mere pleasure; a nobler spirit was moving within her, that showed her there lay work around her to be done, and work specially for her to do. And she soon found the work; an old man, who was dying, wanted comfort and care; a little boy called Billy from the village needed teaching. Slowly other little boys came to be taught, and in a few months she had a school of seventy. She taught them in an empty laundry, no other room being large enough.

Life went on thus till she was twenty. The more she saw of Quakers, the more firmly she believed they were right; she now wore their dress,--a plain slate-coloured skirt with a close handkerchief and cap, with no ornaments of any kind. In the summer of this year she married Joseph Fry, also a Quaker, engaged in business in London, where they accordingly went to live. Leaving her old home was a great trial to her, for the "very stones of the Norwich streets seemed dear to her."

A new sphere of work now opened before her; she was surrounded by the poor, workhouses claimed her attention, the sick and dying begged for a sight of the simple Quaker woman, whom "to see was to love," and whose gentle words always comforted them.

In 1809, Mr. and Mrs. Fry and their five children moved into the country for a time, for rest after the smoke and din of the crowded city life. Here Elizabeth Fry was very happy; she loved to live out of doors with her little children, to explain to them the growth of a flower, the structure of a bee's wing or caterpillar; they would all go long rambles together with baskets and trowels to get ferns and wild flowers to plant in their garden at home. Then, refreshed and strengthened, she was again ready to take up her London work.

It was in 1813 that she first entered the prison at Newgate, and the special work of her life began. She found the prison and prisoners in a disgraceful state, and her womanly heart was touched with pity for the poor creatures who were compelled to live in these unhealthy wards and cells. Many had not sufficient clothing, but lived in rags, sleeping on the floor with raised boards for pillows. Little children cried for food and clothes, which their unhappy mothers could not give them. In the same room they slept, ate, cooked, and washed; in the bad air they fell ill, and no one came to nurse them or comfort them, no one came to show them how to live an honest, upright life, when their prison-life was over. Sick at heart, Elizabeth Fry went home, determined to help these miserable people in some way or other. Then trouble came to her. Her little Betsy, a lovely child of five, died, and long and bitter was her grief.

"Mama," said the child, soon before her death, "I love everybody better than myself, and I love thee better than everybody, and I love Almighty better than thee."

Sorrow was making Elizabeth Fry more and more sympathetic and able to enter into the sufferings of those around her.

At last she was able to work again, and with her whole heart she set herself to improve the prisons.

She got the prison authorities to let the poor women have mats to sleep on, especially those who were ill, and she begged to be alone with the convicts for a few hours. The idleness, ignorance, and dirt of these women shocked her. How could the poor little children, pining for food and fresh air, ever grow up to be good women in the world, into which they might be turned out any time? How could those wretched women ever learn to be better and happier by being thrown into those unhealthy cells with others as bad or worse than themselves, if no one ever tried to teach them how to live better lives, and start afresh in the world? She proposed to start a school for the children, and the prisoners thanked her with tears of joy. They had not known such kindness before; they had never been spoken to so gently; the noise and fighting ceased, and they listened to the simple Quaker's words.

So an empty cell was made into a school-room, and one of the prisoners was made school-mistress. Mrs. Fry and a few other ladies helped to teach, and the children soon got on, and learnt to like their lessons. Still the terrible sounds of swearing, fighting, and screaming went on; Mrs. Fry met with failure and discouragement on every side; the utter misery and suffering sickened her, and she would sometimes wonder if she should have strength to go on. But she found she had.

Soon others came forward to help, and not long after we find a very different scene. Instead of the inhuman noises that reached the ear before, comparative stillness reigned; most of the women wore clean blue aprons, and were sitting round a long table engaged in different kinds of work, while a lady at the head of the table read aloud to them.

The news of this reformation soon spread. Newspapers were full of it; pamphlets were sent round; the public awoke to the evils of prison-life, and the voice of the people made itself heard; and Queen Charlotte herself sought an interview with Elizabeth Fry, the leader of this important work.

To improve the state of convict ships was the next work for Mrs. Fry. Up to this time the vessels were terribly over-crowded; the women had nothing to do all day during the voyage; their children were separated from them, and all were marked with hot irons, so that if by any chance they escaped, they might be found again. Part of the vessel was made into a school for the children; pieces of print were collected for the women to make into patchwork, and a matron was chosen to nurse those who were ill.

Mrs. Fry herself went to bid the emigrants farewell. She stood in her plain Quaker dress at the door of the cabin with the captain; the women stood facing her, while sailors climbed up to the rigging to hear her speak. The silence was profound for a few moments. Then she spoke to them a few hopeful, encouraging words, and prayed for them; many of the convict women wept bitterly, and when she left, every eye followed her till she was out of sight. From this time she visited every convict ship with women on board leaving England till 1841, when she was prevented by illness.

Elizabeth Fry had a wonderful power of winning hearts by her gentle and earnest way of speaking. One day she went over a large Home for young women; as she was going away the matron pointed out two as being very troublesome and hard to manage. Mrs. Fry went up to them, and holding out a hand to each, she said, looking at them with one of her beautiful smiles: "I trust I shall hear better things of thee."

The girls had been proof against words of reproach and command, but at these few heartfelt words of hope and kindness, they both burst into tears of sorrow and shame.

In 1839 Elizabeth Fry went to Paris, in order to visit the workhouses, prisons, and homes on the continent, and to stir up the people to enquire into their arrangements.

A few days after her arrival she went to a little children's hospital. As she entered the long ward, the only sound audible was a faint and pitiful bleating like a flock of little lambs. A long row of clean white cots was placed all round the room; on a sloping mattress before the fire a row of babies were lying waiting their turn to be fed by the nurse with a spoon. The poor little things were swathed up, according to the foreign custom, so tightly that they could not move their limbs. For some time Mrs. Fry pleaded with the Sister of the ward to undo their swathings, and let their arms free, and, as she did so at last, one of the babies, who had been crying piteously, ceased, and stretched out its arms to its deliverer.

Everywhere, abroad and at home, among old and young, she was welcomed as a friend; from the head of the land to the poorest prisoner, she was loved, for "it was an honour to know her in this world." Through illness and intense suffering she struggled on with duty and work, until she was no longer able to walk. She was still wheeled to the meetings in a chair, but the work of her life was ended. Then sorrow upon sorrow came to her; her son, sister, and a little grandchild all died within a short time of one another.

"Can our mother hear this and live?" cried her children. A long year of intense pain and suffering followed, and then, one autumn evening, Elizabeth Fry died. Universal was the mourning for her; vast crowds assembled in the Friend's burying ground, near her old country home at Plashet, silently and reverently to attend the simple Quaker funeral, and to do honour to Elizabeth Fry, now laid at rest beside her little child.

MARY SOMERVILLE (1780-1872).

Mary Somerville, whose parents' name was Fairfax, was born in Scotland on the day after Christmas in the year 1780. Her father was away at sea; he had begun life early as a midshipman, and had been present at the taking of Quebec in 1759. He had left his wife in a little seaport town on the Scotch coast just opposite Edinburgh, in a house whose garden sloped down to the sea and was always full of bright flowers. The Scotch in this part lived a primitive kind of life; we are told that all the old men and women smoked tobacco in short pipes, and the curious way in which a cripple or infirm man got his livelihood. One of his relations would put him into a wheelbarrow, wheel him to the next neighbour's door, and there leave him. The neighbour would then come out, feed the cripple with a little oatcake or anything she could spare, and wheel him onto the next door. The next neighbour would do the same, and so on, and thus the beggar got his livelihood.

Here it was that Mary lived with her mother, her brother Sam, and sometimes her father.

Now Mrs. Fairfax was very much afraid of thunder and lightning, and when she thought a storm was coming on, she used to prepare by taking out the steel pins which fastened on her cap, in case they might attract the lightning. Then she sat on a sofa at some distance from the fireplace, and read aloud descriptions of storms in the Bible, which frightened her little daughter Mary more than the storm itself. The large dog Hero, too, seems to have shared in the general fear of thunder, for, at the first clap, he would rush howling indoors and place his head on Mary's knee. Thus, with shutters closed, they awaited the utter destruction they expected, but which never came.

When Mary was seven, her mother made her useful at shelling peas and beans, feeding the cocks and hens, and looking after the dairy. Once she had put some green gooseberries into some bottles, and taken them to the kitchen, telling the cook to boil the bottles uncorked, and when the fruit was enough cooked, to cork and tie them up. In a short time the whole house was alarmed by loud screams from the kitchen. It was found they proceeded from the cook, who had disobeyed orders, and corked the bottles before boiling, so of course they exploded. This accident interested Mary very much, and in after years she turned it to account in her reading of science.

She was devoted to birds, and would watch the swallows collecting in hundreds on the house roofs to prepare for their winter flight. She always fed the robins on snowy mornings, and taught them to hop in and pick up the crumbs on the table. All through her life this love of birds continued; and, when she was quite old, and her little mountain sparrow died, having been her constant companion for eight years, she felt its death very much.

When she was between eight and nine, her father came back from sea, and was quite shocked to find his little daughter still a wild, untrained child, unable to write, and only reading very badly, with a strong Scotch accent. So, after breakfast every morning, he made her read a chapter from the Bible and a paper from the "Spectator." But she was always glad when this penance was over, and she could run off with her father into the garden, and take a lesson in laying carnations and pruning fruit trees.

At last one day her father said: "This kind of life will never do; Mary must at least know how to write and keep accounts."

So Mary was sent to a boarding school kept by a Miss Primrose, where she was very unhappy. Fancy the wild, strong Scotch child, used to roaming about the lanes, wandering by the sea at her own will, caring for no lessons but those of Nature, suddenly enclosed in a stiff steel support round her body, a band drawing her shoulders back till the shoulder-blades met, a steel rod with a semicircle passing under her chin to keep her head up, and thus bound up having to learn by heart pages of Johnson's dictionary; not only to spell the words and give their parts of speech and meaning, but to remember the order in which they came! Such was the strict discipline through which Mary Fairfax passed for one long year. Once home again, she was like a wild animal escaped from a cage, but still unable so much as to write and compose a letter.

When the tide went out, she would spend hours and hours on the sands, watching closely the habits of the starfish and sea-urchins, collecting shells, and wondering at curious marks of fern leaves and shells on blocks of stone. She had no one to tell her they were fossils, or to explain to her their curious forms.

Still her people at home were not satisfied with the way she "wasted her time," and she was sent to the village school to learn plain needlework. The village schoolmaster also came on the winter evenings to teach her the use of the globes, and at night she would sit up at her own little window trying to learn about the stars and moon. And yet, fond as she was of stars, the dark nights had their terrors for her.

One night, the house being full, she had to sleep in a room apart from the rest of the house, under a garret filled with cheeses, slung by ropes to the rafters. She had put out her candle and fallen asleep, when she was awakened by a tremendous crash and a loud rolling noise over head. She was very frightened; there were no matches in those days, so she could not get a light; but she seized a huge club shod with iron, which lay in the room, and thundered on the bedroom door till her father, followed by the whole household, came to her aid. It was found that some rats had gnawed the ropes on which the cheeses hung, and all the cheeses rolled down. However, Mary got no comfort, but only a good scolding for making such an uproar and disturbing the household in the night.

When she was thirteen, her mother took a small house in Edinburgh, and Mary was sent to a writing-school, and also taught music and arithmetic.

One day, when she was getting up, she suddenly saw a flash in the air. "There is lightning!" she cried to her mother.

"No," answered Mrs. Fairfax, "it is fire;" and on opening the shutters they found the next house but one was burning fiercely. They dressed quickly, and sent for some men to help pack the family papers and silver.

"Now let us breakfast; it is time enough to move our things when the next house takes fire," said her mother, calmly showing the presence of mind one would not have expected from a woman so afraid of a thunder-storm.

At last Mary obtained what she had so long wished for, a Euclid, and she worked at it by day and night. "It is no wonder the stock of candles is soon exhausted," said the servants, "for Miss Mary sits up till a very late hour;" and accordingly an order was given that the candle should be put out as soon as she was in bed. So she had to content herself by repeating the problems at night by heart, till she knew well the first six books.

She had learnt to paint, too, in Edinburgh, and her landscapes at this time were thought a great deal of by various people.

In 1797 her father was in a naval battle against the Dutch, and for his brave action he was knighted.

"You ask for the promotion of your officers, but you never ask a reward for yourself," were words addressed to him on his return.

"I leave that to my country," answered Fairfax. And his daughter tells us that his country did little for him, and his wife had nothing to live on but L75 a year at his death in 1813.

In 1804 Mary Fairfax married a cousin, a Mr. Greig, and went to live in London. She was very poor, her mother could afford her but a small outfit, and gave her L20 to buy a warm wrap for the winter. Mrs. Greig lived a lonely life, for her husband was out all day for three years, at the end of which time she returned to her old home, a widow, with two little boys, one of whom died soon after.

Then she threw her whole self into the study of mathematics and astronomy. At last she succeeded in solving a prize problem, and was awarded a silver medal with her name upon it, which greatly delighted and encouraged her. When she had money enough she bought a little library of books on her favourite subjects, which have since been presented to the College for Women at Cambridge.