mind has more languor, and my faith less energy here, where I have no temptations from without, and where I live in the full enjoyment and constant perusal of the most beautiful objects of inanimate nature, the lonely wonders of the munificence and bounty of God. Yet, in the midst of his blessings, I should be still more tempted to forget him, were it not for frequent nervous head-aches and low fevers, which I find to be wonderfully wholesome for my moral health. I feel grateful, dear Sir, for your kind anxiety for my best interests. My situation is, as you rightly apprehend, full of danger; yet less from the pleasures than from the deceitful favour and the insinuating applause of the world. The goodness of God, will, I humbly trust, preserve me from taking up with so poor a portion really, I hope what he has given me is to shew that all is nothing, short of himself; yet there are times when I am apt to think it a great deal, and to forget Him who has promised to be my portion for ever.

I am delighted, as you rightly conjectured, with the Pilgrim's Progress.' I forget my dislike to allegory, while I read the spiritual vagaries of his fruitful imagination.'

6

In a previous letter to the same valued Correspondent, Miss More cites, as a very significant, though very odd saying of one ' of the Puritans,' that hell is paved with good intentions.' This is often so quoted, but, we apprehend, incorrectly. At all events, the expression is inconsiderate, and the figure, as here used, preposterous. It ought to have been said, and probably was originally so worded, The way to hell is paved with good 'intentions. The sentiment obviously is, that we may go down to destruction with the best intentions and resolutions, but resolutions never realised, the intended reform never begun.

6

In the year 1788, Hastings's trial was proceeding, and Miss More was present when Burke made his famous oration of three hours and a quarter.

Such a splendid and powerful oration,' she says, 'I never heard; but it was abusive and vehement beyond all conception. Poor Hastings sitting by and looking so meek, to hear himself called villain and cutthroat, &c.! The recapitulation of the dreadful cruelties in India was worked up to the highest pitch of eloquence and passion, so that the orator was seized with a spasm, which made him incapable of speaking auother word, and I did not know whether he might not have died in the exertion of his powers, like Chatham. I think I never felt such indignation as when Burke, with Sheridan standing on one side, and Fox on the other, said, "Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the powers of his understanding, and makes his mind paralytic." I looked at his neighbours, and saw they were quite free from any symptoms of palsy !'

From a letter to Mr. Walpole of the same year, it appears that, half a century ago, there were some who pretended to miraculous gifts, and found the same ready credulity to work upon, that

Mr. Irving and the people of the unknown tongue have in the present day.

Mesmer has got a hundred thousand pounds by animal magnetism in Paris. Mainaduc is getting as much in London. There is a fortune-teller in Westminster who is making little less..... Devils are cast out by seven ministers: and, to complete the disgraceful catalogue, Slavery is vindicated in print, and defended in the House of Peers! Poor human reason, when wilt thou come to years of discretion?'

In letters to Mr. Walpole of the date of Sept. 1789, we find Miss More thus adverting to the first movements of the French Revolution.

'Poor France! though I am sorry that the lawless rabble are so triumphant, yet I cannot help hoping some good will arise from the sum of human misery having been so considerably lessened, at one blow, by the destruction of the Bastile. The utter extinction of the Inquisition, (unless the fire is only sleeping under the ashes, and not totally quenched,) and the redemption of Africa, I hope yet to see accomplished; and when I shall have seen these three great engines of the Devil crushed, demolished, exterminated, my greatest wishes on this side heaven will be gratified.'

I am edified by your strictures on the French distractions. These people seem to be tending to the only two deeper evils than those they are involved in; for I can figure to myself no greater mischief than despotism and popery, except anarchy and atheism. I could find in my heart to forgive Louis Quatorze all the spite I owe him, if he could know that the throne of the grand monarque has been overturned by fisherwomen.'

Some admirable remarks upon the same subject occur in a letter from Mrs. Carter, and must be transcribed.

I am sure you sometimes think with compassion on the miserable situation of our poor neighbours on the continent. Every benevolent mind would wish that all the nations of the earth might enjoy the advantages of civil and religious liberty;-yet, however desirable the end, the heart sinks at a view of the present confusion and horrors with which great revolutions are usually attended. Yet so it must be; since they are most commonly brought about by bad men. The scrupulously conscientious dare not submit to such practices, nor will they condescend to use such instruments as, in the corrupted state of mankind, are necessary to procure great important changes in the constitution of the moral world. Let our pride confess that it is not human wisdom, it is not human virtue, to which we are indebted for remarkable public reformations; but to the Providence of God, which makes the selfish and ambitious passions of men his instruments of general good.'

This is both historically true and didactically just; and yet, how little considered! How opposite to the shallow philosophy of the Deontologists and Utilitarians! It deserves inquiry,

however, how far good men may be to blame, through their supineness and want of moral courage, (which, in them, is want of faith,) for the very necessity thus created of employing bad men to do, from vile motives, and with all sorts of attendant mischief, the work of reformation. Let it not be thought that Divine Providence, for the sake of manifesting the wise and beneficent sovereignty of his dispensations, would prefer to work by evil instruments, (if we may be allowed so to speak,) were his own servants found doing their part. It is not so that this will of God is done in heaven.

It was in the summer of this year (1789), that Miss More first began to take a lively interest and an active part in the instruction of the neglected population in the neighbourhood of Bristol. The state of our rural districts at this time, under the almost undisturbed reign of the Establishment, seems to have been, in a moral and intellectual respect, little beyond the condition of the inhabitants of Japan, and far below that which now characterises the islanders of the South Seas. The following extracts furnish a picture of actual English manners, within ten miles of the second city of the kingdom in commercial wealth and importance at that time, not five and forty years ago!

'I was told we should meet with great opposition if I did not try to propitiate the chief despot of the village, who is very rich, and very brutal; so I ventured to the den of this monster, in a country as savage as himself, near Bridgewater. He begged I would not think of bringing any religion into the country; it was the worst thing in the world for the poor, for it made them lazy and useless. In vain I represented to him that they would be more industrious as they were better principled; and that for my own part I had no selfish views in what I was doing, He gave me to understand that he knew the world' too well to believe either the one or the other. Somewhat dismayed to find that my success bore no proportion to my submissions, I was almost discouraged from more visits; but I found that friends must be secured at all events, for, if all these rich savages set their faces against us, and influenced the poor people, I saw that nothing but hostilities would ensue; so I made eleven more of these agreeable visits; and, as I improved in the art of canvassing, had better success. Miss Wilberforce would have been shocked had she seen the petty tyrants whose insolence I stroked and tamed, the ugly children I praised, the pointers and spaniels I caressed, the cider I commended, and the wine I swallowed. After these irresistible flatteries, I enquired of each, if he could recommend me to a house, and said that I had a little plan which I hoped would secure their orchards from being robbed, their rabbits from being shot, their game from being stolen, and which might lower the poor-rates. If effect be the best proof of eloquence, then mine was a good speech, for I gained, at length, the hearty concurrence of the whole people, and their promise to discourage or favour the poor in proportion as they were attentive or negligent in sending

VOL. XII.-N.S.

3 H

their children. Patty, who is with me, says she has good hope that the hearts of some of these rich poor wretches may be touched: they are as ignorant as the beasts that perish, intoxicated every day before dinner, and plunged in such vices as make me begin to think London a virtuous place. By their assistance, I procured immediately a good house, which, when a partition is taken down and a window added, will receive a great number of children. The house and an excellent garden of almost an acre of ground, I have taken at once for six guineas and a half per year. I have ventured to take it for seven years,—there is courage for you! It is to be put in order immediately; "for the night cometh": and it is a comfort to think, that though I may be dust and ashes in a few weeks, yet by that time this business will be in actual motion. I have written to different manufacturing towns for a mistress, but can get nothing hitherto. As to the mistress for the Sunday school, and the religious part, I have employed Mrs. Easterbrook, of whose judgement I have a good opinion. I hope Miss W. will not be frightened, but I am afraid she must be called a Methodist. I asked the farmers if they had no resident curate; they told me they had a right to insist on one; which right, they confessed, they had never ventured to exercise, for fear their tithes should be raised. blushed for my species.'

*

I

It is grievous to reflect, that while we are sending missionaries to our distant colonies, our own villages are perishing for lack of instruction.'

е

'We have in this neighbourhood thirteen adjoining parishes, without so much as even a resident curate. I am deeply convinced how very poor and inadequate any miserable attempts of mine can be, to rectify so wide-spread an evil; yet I could not be comfortable till something was attempted. We have, therefore, established schools and various little institutions, over a tract of country of ten or twelve miles, and have near five hundred children in training.'

As the land is almost pagan, we bring down persons of great reputation from other places; and the improvements are great for the time. But how we shall be able to keep up these things with so much opposition, vice, poverty, and ignorance, as we have to deal with, I cannot guess. I should not enter into these details, but I know you expect an account of what I have been doing.'

A letter written to Mr. Wilberforce in 1791, gives the following detailed account of the progress of the benevolent experiment at Cheddar.

Perhaps it is the best answer to your question, to describe the origin and progress of one of our schools detached from the rest. And I select Cheddar, which you were the immediate cause of our taking up. After the discoveries made of the deplorable state of that place, my sister and I went and took a lodging at a little public house there, to see what we could do, for we were utterly at a loss how to begin. We found more than two thousand people in the parish, almost all very

poor; no gentry; a dozen wealthy farmers, hard, brutal, and ignorant. We visited them all, picking up at one house (like fortune-tellers) the name and character of the next. We told them, we intended to set up a school for their poor. They did not like it. We assured them, we did not desire a shilling from them, but wished for their concurrence, as we knew they could influence their workmen. One of the farmers seemed pleased and civil; he was rich, but covetous, a hard drinker, and his wife a woman of loose morals, but good natural sense: she became our friend, sooner than some of the decent and formal; and let us a house, the only one in the parish, at £7 per annum, with a good garden. Adjoining to it was a large ox-house; this we roofed and floored; and by putting in a couple of windows, it made a good schoolroom. While this was doing, we went to every house in the place, and found every house a scene of the greatest ignorance and vice. We saw but one Bible in all the parish, and that was used to prop a flower-pot. No clergyman had resided in it for forty years. One rode over, three miles from Wells, to preach once on a Sunday, but no weekly duty was done, or sick persons visited; and children were often buried without any funeral service. Eight people in the morning, and twenty in the afternoon, was a good congregation. We spent our whole time in getting at the characters of the people, the employment, wages, and number of every family; and this we have done in our other nine parishes. On a fixed day, of which we gave notice in the church, every woman with all her children above six years old, met us. We took an exact list from their account, and engaged one hundred and twenty to attend on the following Sunday. A great many refused to send their children, unless we would pay them for it; and not a few refused, because they were not sure of my intentions, being apprehensive that at the end of seven years, if they attended so long, I should acquire a power over them, and send them beyond sea. must have heard this myself in order to believe that so much ignorance existed out of Africa. . . We are now in our sixth year at Cheddar, and two hundred children, and above two hundred old people, constantly attend. God has blessed the work beyond all my hopes. The farmer's wife (our landlady) is become one of the most eminent Christians I know; and though we had last year the great misfortune to lose our elder mistress, her truly Christian death was made the means of confirming many in piety; and the daughter proceeds in the work with great ability.’—p. 300.

In September 1796, Miss More writes to Mr. Newton.

I

You will be glad to hear that our work rather increases. I think our various schools and societies consist of about sixteen or seventeen hundred. This would comparatively be little fatigue, if they lay near together, but our ten parishes lie at considerable distances, so that poor Patty and I have a diameter of above twenty miles to travel in order to get at them. In some of these parishes we dare not do all we wish, by reason of the worldly clergymen, who are now quiet and civil, but who would become hostile if we attempted in their parishes what we do in some others. In some of the most profligate places, we have had