PREFATORY NOTE. WITH grateful thanks I beg to acknowledge the kindness of Mrs J. Addington Symonds, Messrs Macmillan, and Messrs Sampson, Low, Marston, & Co., in allowing me to make use of Recollections of a Happy Life,' 'West African Studies,' 'Poems of Christina Rossetti,' and 'Life of Louisa Alcott,' respectively, also to the Chairman of the Bristol Museum Committee, Professor J. Estlin Carpenter, Sir William Herschel and Miss Herschel, Mr Kirby, Mr Charles Kingsley, Madame Belloc, Mrs W. W. Vaughan, Mr F. B. Sanborn, Mr W. M. Rossetti, Mr W. G. Strickland, and Mr C. Elkin Mathews, for their kindly readiness in lending me the originals from which the portraits in this volume are reproduced-most of them for the first time, also to "Delicia" for her clever delineation of Hannah More's handwriting. For a detailed list of the illustrations and an interesting "note" respecting Agnes Strickland, b together with her authentic pedigree, the Appendix may be consulted. What shall I more say? Space would fail were I to tell of all the evidences of interest and encouragement received, always from the most unexpected quarters, but I sincerely wish to acknowledge my indebtedness. Nothing truer has been said as to the making of a book than that "there is scarcely any limit to the improvements which might be suggested, scarcely any point at which an author would acknowledge that he could effect no more." Of this I am most humbly conscious, and, in submitting these "Sketches" to the Public, I would fain claim sympathy rather than challenge criticism, knowing only too well wherein I have failed, but knowing also, even better than It, the difficulties of portraying, satisfyingly, the rare and beautiful lives of these honourable women. A. G.-A. From a photograph, by C. Voss Bark, in the possession of Pro- CAROLINE HERSCHEL 70 From an original oil-painting, by M. G. Tielemann, now in the From a photograph by F. Brown, in the possession of Mr Kirby. MARY KINGSLEY 134 From a photograph by H. Edmunds Hull, in the possession of ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER 166 From a photograph in the possession of Madame Belloc. MARIANNE NORTH 186 From a photograph by Mrs Julia Cameron, in the possession of From a photograph in the possession of Mr F. B. Sanborn, Concord, U.S.A. |