suaded it will make part of the happiness of heaven to see the unfolding of the cause of those dispensations; to see the map of Providence laid open, and why it was necessary that we should suffer. "I do not write as one inexperienced on this melancholy subject. I have lost every dear sister; and, with one fever upon another, which has confined me to my room, and, in some measure, to my bed, for several years, I am left to finish my journey alone." Mrs. More was now, almost daily, called to a self-application of the lessons she taught, so numerous were her acquaintance, and so advanced her age. During the latter part of her residence at Barley Wood, she lost many of her earliest and most intimate friends, beside those already mentioned. Among the number were Mrs. Garrick; Sir W. W. Pepys (the Lælius of "The Bas Bleu"); Dr. Fisher, Bishop of Salisbury; Dr. Barrington, Bishop of Durham; Dr. Andrewes, Dean of Canterbury; and Lady Cremorne. It was remarked of Mrs. More that she never lost a friend but by death; and, as she continued to the last enlarging the number of this privileged order, she had, in her later years, and in her rural seclusion, less time at command than she had enjoyed at Hampton, when her evenings passed in the crowded saloons of the fashionable and the literary. To save her own time, as well as to accommodate her numerous visitors, she opened her house daily from twelve or one o'clock to three, for what she not inappropriately termed her "levee." This however, was far from securing the rest of her time for solitude, as friends from distant quarters were frequently besetting Barley Wood, and making importunate and irresistible demands on her leisure. Ingenious, however, to do good, she now employed herself in manufacturing little useful and ornamental articles, to be sold at fancy fairs for charitable purposes; the fact that they were the produce of her industry investing them with many times their intrinsick value. The same energy which distinguished her literary pursuits, was conspicuous in this humbler path of usefulOn one occasion of this sort, she knitted so assiduously as to produce an abscess in her hand. Such, too, was her desire to be useful in as many ways as possible, that she frequently made devices of this kind to plead the cause of freedom and humanity. A favourite contribution was a drawing of a negro slave in a supplicating attitude, under which was written and signed by herself some short metrical appeal.1 She did not, however, ness. I The following verses from her pen appear in " The Amulet" for 1828 "Time was, each lady thought no harm, By ornaments she wore, to charm; permit any intrusion on the concerns of her schools, which, reduced to three, Nailsea, Shipham, and Cheddar, still continued to flourish, containing about 600 children, under her auspices and the personal inspection of Miss Frowd, -the lady who, after the death of Martha More, had constantly resided with the bereaved survivor. Her clubs also continued to prosper, and the neighbouring gentry and clergy, as before, attended the anniversaries, at which Miss Frowd presided, and which produced their accustomed beneficial effects. In the year 1825 the clubs of the three parishes, Nailsea, Shipham, and Cheddar, had saved funds very nearly amounting to 2,000l.! Such is the result of an enlightened economy among the poorest classes. Perhaps all the merely temporal charities of Mrs. More never effected so much good as this instruction of the poor in the art of economising their own means. No amount of almsgiving could have made an approach to it. The parish of Shipham, especially, was benefited by its club, as the mining population, receiving large wages, but ruinously improvident, was exposed to occasional periods of the most grievous destitution, according as any unforeseen occurrence affected the value of calamine in the market. The distress of 1817 recurred at Shipham and Rowberrow in 1824 and 1825; and though the funds of the Female Club were only available in cases of sickness, there can be no doubt that the families of the members had acquired habits of prudence and frugality, which, at such a crisis, would manifest their beneficial effects. Mrs. More had never confined her charities to a course which, though it might be the best, was not always the most applicable. She again interested the great and wealthy in favour of the distressed miners, and even sold out stock to give them 100% Thus passed, from Mrs. More's recovery in 1824, her busy and useful days, in storing and dispersing the best knowledge and the purest wisdom, in dispensing, with liberal hand, the temporal blessings with which her God had intrusted her, in instructing the ignorant and advising the inexperienced, in the sweet intercourse of Christian friendships, and the high communion of Christian devotion. Such, till the year 1828, was the dignified, rátional, and pleasurable tenour of her every well-spent day. It was in that year that Canon Bowles thus pictured her, as he gave a poetical glance from Banwell Hill across the Vale of Wrington: "Accomplish'd, eloquent, and holy More, Who now, with slow and gentle decadence, In the same vale, with look uprais'd to heaven, Smiling at Time !” But she was not permitted to await her translation to "the garden of the Lord" in a place which might seem so well suited to be its "gate." Circumstances which had never entered into her most distant calculations cruelly compelled her, in that year, to part for ever from a spot where she had expected to live in peace, and whence she had hoped to depart to glory. Matt. x. 36. A man's foes shall be they of his own household. Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord; yea, saith the Spirit; that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them. Rev. xiv. 13. CHAPTER X. MRS. MORE was no stranger to the existence of ingratitude; and, considering the length of her life, the number of her benefactions, and the character of the world of which she was an inhabitant, |