WOMEN OF HISTORY. (continued 4)

"You will know all what concerns me. Love, dear sir, is all what me concerns. And love shall be all what I will tell you in this letter. In one happy night I read my husband's poem, 'The Messiah.' I was extremely touched with it. The next day I asked one of his friends who was the author of this poem, and this was the first time I heard Klopstock's name. I believe I fell immediately in love with him. At the least, my thoughts were ever with him filled, especially because his friend told me very much of his character. But I had no hopes ever to see him, when quite unexpectedly I heard that he should pass through Hamburg. I wrote immediately to the same friend, for procuring, by his means, that I might see the author of the 'Messiah' when in Hamburg. He told him that a certain girl in Hamburg wished to see him, and for all recommendation showed him some letters in which I made bold to criticise Klopstock's verses. Klopstock came, and came to me. I must confess that, though greatly prepossessed of his qualities, I never thought him the amiable youth whom I found him. This made its effect. After having seen him for two hours I was obliged to pass the evening in a company which never had been so wearisome to me. I could not speak. I could not play. I thought I saw nothing but Klopstock.

"I saw him the next day, and the following, and we were very seriously friends. But the fourth day he departed! He wrote soon after, and from that time our correspondence began to be a very diligent one. I sincerely believed my love to be friendship. I spoke to my friends of nothing but Klopstock, and showed his letters. They rallied me, and said I was in love. I rallied them again, and said that they must have a very friendshipless heart if they had no idea of friendship to a man as well as to a woman. Thus it continued eight months, in which time my friends found as much love in Klopstock's letters as in mine. I perceived it likewise, but I would not believe it. At the last, Klopstock said plainly that he loved; and I startled as for a wrong thing. I answered that it was no love, but friendship, as it was what I felt for him; we had not seen one another enough to love (as if love must have more time than friendship). This was sincerely my meaning, and I had this meaning till Klopstock came again to Hamburg. This he did a year after we had seen one another for the first time. We saw; we were friends; we loved; and we believed that we loved; and a short time after I could even tell Klopstock that I loved. But we were obliged to part again, and wait two years for our wedding. My mother would not let marry me a stranger. I could marry then without her consentment, as by the death of my father my fortune depended not upon her; but this was an horrible idea for me, and thank heaven I have prevailed by prayers. At this time, knowing Klopstock, she loves him as her lifely son, and thanks God that she has not persisted. We married, and I am the happiest wife in the world."

This was written in March 1758, after they had been about four years married. Writing again in the beginning of May, she thus sketches the life they led together: "It will be a delightful occupation for me to make you more acquainted with my husband's poem. Nobody can do it better than I, being the person who knows the most of that which is not yet published, being always present at the birth of the young verses, which begin always by fragments here and there of a subject of which his soul is just then filled. He has many great fragments of the whole work ready. You may think that persons who love as we do have no need of two chambers; we are always in the same. I, with my little work, still only regarding sometimes my husband's sweet face, which is so venerable at that time with tears of devotion and all the sublimity of the subject, my husband reading me the young verses and suffering my criticism."

With this we may compare what Klopstock says, writing of her: "How perfect was her taste! how exquisitely fine her feelings! she observed everything even to the slightest turn of the thought. I had only to look at her, and could see in her face when even a syllable pleased or displeased her; and when I led her to explain the reason of her remarks, no demonstration could be more true, more accurate, or more appropriate to the subject. But, in general, this gave us very little trouble, for we understood each other when we had scarcely began to explain our ideas."

But all this happiness, too bright for earth, or for long endurance, was about to be suddenly extinguished. There is another letter from Meta to Richardson, dated 26th August, in which she informs him that she has a prospect of being a mother in the month of November, and of thus attaining what has been her only wish ungratified for these four years. She writes from Hamburg, where she was on a visit to her family, while her husband had been obliged to make a journey to Copenhagen. It was the first time that they had been separated. It is remarkable that she seems to have had more than a mere apprehension, almost an assured foreboding, of what awaited her. Klopstock rejoined her at last about the end of September; her last lines, written to him before his return, are dated the 26th of that month. The two following months they spent together at Hamburg. From that place poor Meta was never to return. There, where she had first drawn breath, she died in childbed on the 28th of November. [Klopstock lived till 1803, and was then buried under a lime tree in the churchyard of Ottenson, near Altona, by the side of his Meta and the child that slept in her arms.]

ELIZABETH BLACKWELL.

[1720.] JAMES BRUCE.

HE piety and domestic virtues of Elizabeth Blackwell entitle her to rank among the best women whose names have found their way into public history; a fortune which has happened to her and Lady Rachel Russel, and two or three other virtuous women; but which has, in the instance of most of their sex who have attained to celebrity, been a calamity upon their memory, being a rank at which it is not easy for a woman to arrive by the practice of those private and retiring virtues and graces which are the real solid ornaments of the female character. Elizabeth Blackwell was the daughter of a stocking merchant in Aberdeen, where she was born about the beginning of last century. The first event of her life which is now known, was her secret marriage with Alexander Blackwell, and her elopement with him to London. He had received a finished education, and was an accurate Greek and Latin scholar. He had studied medicine under the famous Boerhaave, and, in travelling over the Continent, had lived in the best society, and had acquired an extensive knowledge of the modern languages. He was, however, unsuccessful in his endeavours to secure a comfortable livelihood. After having in vain attempted to get into practice as a physician, and having now a wife also to provide for, he applied for the situation of corrector of the press to a printer of the name of Wilkins, and for some time continued in that employment. He then set up a printing establishment in the Strand, but became involved in debt, and was thrown into prison.

It was this circumstance that brought into practice the talents and virtues of Mrs Blackwell. She resolved, by an unexampled labour for a woman, to effect the delivery of her husband. She had in her girlish days practised the drawing and colouring of flowers, a suitable and amiable accomplishment of her sex. Engravings of flowers were then very scarce, and Mrs Blackwell thought that the publication of a Herbal might attract the notice of the world, and yield her such a remuneration as would enable her to discharge her husband's debts. She now engaged in a labour which is at once a noble and marvellous monument of her enthusiastic and untiring conjugal affection, and interesting evidence of the elegant and truly womanly nature of her own mind. Having submitted her first drawings to Sir Hans Sloane and Dr Mead, these eminent physicians encouraged her to proceed with the work. She also received the kindest countenance from Mr Philip Miller, a well-known writer on horticulture. Amongst those who were honoured in patronising her labour of piety was Mr Rand of the Botanical Garden at Chelsea. By his advice Mrs Blackwell took lodgings in the neighbourhood of this garden, from which she was furnished with all the flowers and plants which she required for her work. Of these she made drawings, which she engraved on copper, and coloured with her own hands. Her husband supplied the Latin names and the descriptions of the plants, which were taken principally from Miller's "Botanicum Officinale," with the author's permission.

In 1737, the first volume, a large folio, came out under the following title, "A Curious Herbal, containing 500 Cuts of the most useful Plants which are now used in the Practice of Physic. Engraved in Folio Copperplates, after Drawings by Eliz. Blackwell." The profits which Mrs Blackwell received from this work enabled her to relieve her husband from prison. The adventures of Blackwell after his release are well known. Having devoted much of his attention to agricultural science, he obtained for some time a lucrative employment from the Duke of Chandos. He was subsequently invited to Sweden on account of a work he had published on agriculture. He went there, leaving his wife in England. He was received with honour at the court of Stockholm, where he lived with the prime minister, in the enjoyment of a salary from the government. During this period of prosperity he had continued to send large sums of money to his wife, who was now making arrangements to leave England with her only child and join her husband. But heaven, which often brings human histories to a very different conclusion from what readers of romances are disposed to acquiesce in, for the wise end of impressing men with the most solemn conviction of the reality of another world, which is the appointed place of rest and reward for goodness, saw fit to remove from this noble woman the husband whom she had loved so ardently, and for whom she had wrought a work of such singular piety, and to take him from the world by a melancholy and frightful death. A conspiracy against the constitution of Sweden was formed by Count Tessin; and Blackwell, it is believed innocently, was suspected of being concerned in the plot. He was seized and put to the torture. He was beheaded in July 1747.

LÆTITIA BARBAULD.

[BORN 1743. DIED 1825.] JOHNSTONE.

HE only daughter of Dr John Aikin, a Dissenting minister. Her youth was spent in entire seclusion, and her education was entirely domestic. At two years of age, it is stated on the authority of her mother, she could read with tolerable ease, and, at two years and a half, as well "as most women." It is at least certain that, from the instructions of her father, Miss Aikin acquired a competent knowledge of Latin; and that she was not indebted, for even a single lesson, either to professional female tuition, or to the teachers of the fashionable accomplishments, considered so important in forming the minds and manners of young ladies. Dr Aikin became a teacher at the Dissenting academy in Warrington, in Lancashire, when his daughter was about fifteen. This seminary enjoyed high celebrity. The teachers were all men of distinguished talents. Dr Priestley and Dr Enfield were of their number. In such a society the genius of Miss Aikin was fostered and animated; and her poems, published in 1773, rose into immediate popularity. Verse had the quality of comparative rarity in those days, and a female poet had a clear and unoccupied field.

In 1744, Miss Aikin married Rochemont Barbauld, a young gentleman who, having been sent to Warrington for instruction previous to entering the church, imbibed, with a passion for her, the tenets of the sect to which her family belonged. Mr Barbauld obtained the charge of a congregation in Suffolk, and at Palgrave opened a seminary for the instruction of youth. The acquirements and habits of Mrs Barbauld eminently qualified her to be the coadjutor of her husband in this undertaking, and she afterwards received pupils of a very tender age as her peculiar charge. Of this number were Mr Denman the barrister, and Sir William Gell. Having no child of her own, she adopted the infant of her brother, Dr Aikin; and for his use, and that of her infant class, were composed those early lessons and hymns in prose which confirmed her literary reputation.

After a long interval, Mrs Barbauld resumed her pen, and published a selection of papers from the classic essayists, with a Life of Richardson, and a selection from his correspondence. In 1808 she lost her husband, who had for a long time suffered under that mental affliction which makes death a welcome release. After this event, she published a selection of the British novelists, and then her poem, "Eighteen Hundred and Eleven,"—a production far more ambitious, though much less successful, than her early and quieter performances. Its tone is that of gloomy prediction, its spirit desponding and altogether infelicitous. That was no palliation for the virulence of party feeling by which this useful and elegant author, now venerable even for years, was assailed by certain periodical writers. She never again appeared before the public. She died at the age of eighty-two, entitled to the veneration and gratitude of every one who has a child to train for this life, and for a higher state of existence.

HANNAH MORE.

[BORN 1745. DIED 1833.] PROFESSOR CRAIK.

HE greatest name in the list of female writers on moral and religious subjects in the last century was born in Gloucestershire in 1744. In 1762 she is said to have written her pastoral drama in rhymed verse, entitled "The Search after Happiness," which was immediately performed by the young ladies of the school of which she, with her sister, was the mistress. If it was not much improved before its publication eleven years afterwards, this was certainly a remarkable production for a girl of seventeen. Shortly after the production of this poem, the sisters had prospered sufficiently to enable them to build a house, the first erected in Park Street, Bristol. The order and management of the establishment, together with the superior quality of the education afforded, rendered this school the most celebrated of the kind in the kingdom. It comprised upwards of sixty pupils, and twice the number might have been easily entered had the accommodation admitted.

The person to whom Hannah was indebted for her advancement in critical knowledge and the principles of correct taste was, we are informed, a Bristol linen-draper named Peach. "He had," says Mr Roberts, "been the friend of Hume, who had shown his confidence in his judgment by entrusting to him the correction of his "History," in which, he used to say, he had discovered more than two hundred Scotticisms." "At the age of twenty," says Mr Roberts, "having access to the best libraries in her neighbourhood, she cultivated with assiduity the Italian, Latin, and Spanish languages, exercising her genius and polishing her style in translations and imitations, especially of the Odes of Horace, and of some of the dramatic compositions of Metastasio."

One of the most important events in Hannah More's history was her first visit to London. "The theatre," it is said in her Life, "on her arrival in town, was the great point of attraction, and Garrick the great object of curiosity." Garrick "was delighted with his new acquaintance, and took pride and pleasure in introducing her in the splendid circle of genius in which he moved. To the royal family, who inquired of him concerning her, he spoke in terms of the most ardent commendation. Mrs Montagu, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Dr Johnson, rapidly succeeded in her acquaintance; and in the course of six weeks (for such was the limit of this visit) she had become intimate with the greatest names in intellect and taste."

In 1774 she published her tragedy of the "Inflexible Captive," altered from Metastasio. The following year it was acted, first in Exeter and then in Bath, with the greatest applause; Garrick on the latter occasion being behind the scenes, and a host of distinguished persons filling the house. Her first publication, "The Search after Happiness," had by this time reached a sixth edition, besides having been reprinted in America. In November 1777 her tragedy of "Percy" was produced at Covent Garden theatre; Garrick, who had also contributed both the prologue and epilogue, sustaining the principal character. The success of the play was complete, perhaps at that time unsurpassed. It was translated by the prime minister of France into French, and in a German dress "Percy" appeared on the stage of Vienna. Miss More received on the occasion the most flattering honours and distinctions; the whole blood of the Percys did honour to their minstrel. The Duke of Northumberland, Earl Percy, and the editor of the "Reliques," all came forward, complimented, and thanked her. An edition of nearly four thousand copies of the play was sold in a fortnight, and the authoress realised on the whole nearly £600. The tragedy of "Percy," nevertheless, has now ceased to be acted, and has, it may be apprehended, been read by very few living men.

But Hannah More's exertions in the cause of religion, morality, and civilisation, were not confined to the writing of books, of which she produced a great number, realising to her ultimately £30,000. One of her most meritorious services to the best interests of her country was her establishment of schools for the young throughout the district around her place of residence, the mining region of the Mendip hills, where, till she came among them, the people, taught scarcely anything either by schoolmaster or clergyman, were almost universally in a state of barbarism. Schools upon the same system were established in neighbouring parishes, and in a short time five hundred children were in training in ten schools. Her habitual cheerfulness never forsook her, and in some other respects she was, at near the age of ninety, what many have ceased to be at seventy.

ANNA SEWARD.

[BORN 1747. DIED 1809.] SIR WALTER SCOTT.

HIS poetical lady was born in 1747. Her father, the Rev. Thomas Seward, rector of Hyam, in Derbyshire, prebendary of Salisbury, and canon residentiary of Litchfield, was himself a poet; and a manuscript collection of his fugitive pieces is now lying before me, the bequest of my honoured friend, when she entrusted me with the task which I am now endeavouring to discharge. Several of these effusions were printed in Dodsley's collection. Thus accomplished himself, the talents of his eldest daughter did not long escape his complacent observation.

[In 1754, Mr Seward removed with his family to Litchfield.] The classical pretensions of this city were exalted by its being the residence of Dr Darwin, who soon distinguished and appreciated the talents of our young poetess. At this time, however, literature was deemed an undesirable pursuit for a young lady in Miss Seward's situation—the heiress of an independent fortune, and destined to occupy a considerable rank in society. Her mother, although an excellent woman, possessed no taste for her daughter's favourite amusements; and even Mr Seward withdrew his countenance from them, probably under the apprehension that his continued encouragement might produce in his daughter that dreaded phenomenon—a learned lady.

After the death of Miss Sarah Seward, her sister's society became indispensable to her parents, and she was never separated from them. Offers of matrimonial establishments occurred, and were rejected in one instance entirely, and in others chiefly from a sense of filial duty. As she was now of an age to select her own society and studies, Miss Seward's love for literature was indulged; and the sphere in which she moved was such as to increase her tastes for its pursuits. Dr Darwin, Mr Day (whose opinions formed singular specimens of English philosophy), Mr Edgeworth, Sir Brooke Boothby, and other names well known in the literary world, then formed part of the Litchfield society. The celebrated Dr Johnson was an occasional visitor of their circles; but he seems, in some respects, to have shared the fate of a prophet in his own country—neither Dr Darwin nor Miss Seward were partial to the great moralist. There was perhaps some aristocratic prejudice in their dislike; for the despotic manners of Dr Johnson were least likely to be tolerated where the lowness of his origin was in fresh recollection. At the same time, Miss Seward was always willing to do justice to his native benevolence, and to the powerful grasp of his intellectual powers, and she possessed many anecdotes of his conversation which had escaped his most vigilant recorders. These she used to tell with great humour, and with a very striking imitation of the sage's peculiar voice, gesture, and manner of delivery.

Miss Seward, when young, must have been exquisitely beautiful; for, in advanced age, the regularity of her features, the fire and expression of her countenance, gave her the appearance of beauty, and almost of youth. Her eyes were auburn, of the precise shade and hue of her hair, and possessed great expression. In reciting, or speaking with animation, they appeared to become darker, and, as it were, to flash fire. I should have hesitated to state the impression which the peculiarity made upon me at the time, had not my observation been confirmed by that of the first actress of this or any other age, with whom I lately happened to converse on our deceased friend's expressive powers of countenance. Miss Seward's tone of voice was melodious, guided by excellent taste, and well suited to reading and recitation, in which she willingly exercised. She did not sing, nor was she a great proficient in music, though very fond of it, having studied it later in life than is now usual. Her stature was tall, and her form was originally elegant; but having broken the patella of her knee by a fall in the year 1768, she walked with pain and difficulty, which increased with the pressure of years.

[In 1784, Miss Seward produced a poetical novel, entitled "Louisa," which became popular, and passed through several editions. Her memoirs of the life of Dr Darwin was her last composition. In this she lays claim to the lines at the commencement of "The Botanic Garden," though unacknowledged by the author. Her other poems are "Langollen Vale," a volume of sonnets, and some paraphrases of Horace. She died in March 1809, leaving Sir Walter Scott her literary executor. Mr Polwhele, in his "Unsexed Females," speaks thus: "Miss Seward's poems are thoughts that breathe, and words that burn."]

CATHERINE COCKBURN.

[BORN 1679. DIED 1749.] PROFESSOR CRAIK

RS Cockburn, whose maiden name was Trotter, the daughter of a commander in the navy, was in youth said to have been distinguished by personal attractions. Her father died when she was very young; and her mother, who was nearly related to more than one Scotch noble family, was left in very narrow circumstances. Catherine began to show remarkable talent or vivacity of mind at a very early age. It is told that, while she was still a mere child, she one day surprised a company of her friends by some extemporaneous verses on an incident which had just happened in the street. Her first literary attempts were in verse. One poem, which she is stated to have written when she was only fourteen, is printed among her works. It is certain that in 1695, when she was only in her seventeenth year, she appeared as a dramatic writer,—a tragedy written by her, entitled "Agnes de Castro," having been brought out with success at the Theatre Royal in that year, and printed the following. This was followed by a second tragedy, entitled "Fatal Friendship," which was performed in the new theatre, Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1698, and printed the same year; and then came another tragedy and a comedy.

These juvenile productions had, probably all of them, great defects; but the authoress of three tragedies and a comedy, all both printed and acted before she had reached the age of twenty-two, was at any rate no common phenomenon. And she had also, it seems, already been long a diligent student of metaphysics, besides having, while as we gather only in her teens, ventured so far into the maze of theological speculation and controversy, as to have been induced to leave the Church of England in which she had been educated, and to profess herself a Roman Catholic. The first fruit of her philosophical studies appeared in May 1702, when she published anonymously a defence of "Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding," in reply to an attack upon it, which was afterwards known to have proceeded from the learned and eloquent Dr Thomas Burnet of the Charter House.

About the beginning of 1707 she returned to the Church of England, having previously changed her name for another. Mr Cockburn is said to have been a man of learning and talent, but he never was fortunate in obtaining much preferment; and throughout the remainder of his life she had both the cares of a family to occupy her time and thoughts, and very straitened circumstances to struggle with. In 1726 he became minister of an episcopal congregation at Aberdeen. Her return to England seems to have been like the recommencement of existence to her, or the awakening from a state of torpor. In the last stage of her life, notwithstanding broken health and some sharp sorrow, her intellectual and literary activity emulated what she had displayed at the outset of her career. In 1739 she boldly set out upon what we may call a voyage round the world of metaphysics, in "Remarks upon some Writers in the Controversy concerning the Foundation of Moral Duty and Moral Obligation; particularly the Translator of Archbishop King's Origin of Moral Evil [Dr Edmund Law, afterwards Bishop of Carlisle], and the Author of Divine Legation of Moses [Warburton]; to which are prefixed some Cursory Thoughts on the Controversies concerning Necessary Existence, the Reality and Infinity of Space, the Extension and Place of Spirits, and on Dr Watt's Notion of Substance." It was not printed till the year 1743, when it was given to the world, without the name of the author, in "The History of the Works of the Learned."

Mrs Cockburn here adopted Dr Clarke's theory of the foundations of morality, namely, that the distinctions between virtue and vice are not created by the declarations or even by the will of the Deity, but arise out of eternal and immutable relations and essential differences of things. Not long after, her strength was much worn down by frequent attacks of asthma, to which she had been subject for many years. "I have," she says, "very little prospect of tolerable health for any continuance. My cough returned at the beginning of September, and held me about two months, but is now succeeded by such a difficulty of breathing that I do not know which is most grievous; but between them I am reduced to great weakness." Yet she was at this time engaged upon a new metaphysical work, which proved to be the most elaborate and able of all her literary performances, her "Remarks upon the Principles and Reasonings of Dr Rutherford's Essay on the Nature and Obligations of Virtue, in Vindication of the Contrary Principles and Reasonings Enforced in the Writings of Dr Samuel Clarke." The Rev. Dr Thomas Rutherford, whose essay appeared in 1744, had therein maintained the doctrine that the test and essence of virtue was its tendency to promote the good properly understood, whether of the agent or others; in other words, was utility in the largest sense. When her tract was finished, Mrs Cockburn sent it to Warburton, whose theory on the subject of it was different both from Rutherford's and her own, and against whose views one of her previous works, as we have seen, had been in part directed. Warburton held that the distinction between virtue and vice was constituted by the arbitrary will of the Deity. Notwithstanding this difference of opinion, however, he not only admitted the merit of the present work in the frankest and most cordial terms, styling it, in a letter to the authoress, the strongest and clearest piece of metaphysics that ever was written, but took upon himself the charge of finding a publisher for it; and when it appeared in 1747, it was introduced by a preface from the pen of Warburton, in which he almost reiterated those strong expressions, declaring it to contain "all the clearness of expression, the strength of reason, the precision of logic and attachment to truth which makes books of this nature really useful to the common cause of virtue and religion."

This work appears to have attracted much more notice than anything that Mrs Cockburn had previously done. She was subsequently induced by the advice of her friends to set about the preparation of a complete collection of her writings, with the view of publishing it by subscription. But this task she did not live to see accomplished. At last, in January 1749, she lost her husband, who appears to have been about a year older than herself; and this stroke probably shortened her own existence, which terminated on the 11th of May of the same year.

ELIZABETH BERKELEIGH.

[BORN 1750. DIED 1828.] TEMPLE BAR.

HE youngest daughter of Augustus, fourth Earl of Berkeleigh, born in 1750, came into the world two months ere by the laws of nature she was to be looked for; and this circumstance, which was a fit prelude to an eccentric life, had nearly led to an abrupt termination of the infant's earthly career ere its sands of life had run through the boiling of an egg. A certain ceremonial was observed in those days when ladies of a certain rank swelled the rolls of the aristocracy; and the first person who approached the bed of the noble accouchée was the Countess of Albemarle, her aunt. The infant which had so unexpectedly claimed its share of the world had doubly disappointed its mother; first, by being a girl, when a boy had been predicted with assurance, for Lady Berkeleigh had previously had four girls in succession, three of them, singularly enough, at one birth; next, the little being, so far from exhibiting any signs of the future beauty, presented the most miserable half-alive aspect imaginable; and there being nothing ready to receive it, a piece of flannel was huddled round it, and it was left on an arm-chair in a kind of despair, and for some minutes altogether unheeded, till the visitor already named was on the point of sitting down on foresaid arm-chair, and, but for the screams of the attendants, would have driven out, once and for ever, the small instalment of life-breath the forlorn babe had been strenuously endeavouring to suck in.

Thereupon Lady Albemarle snatched up the child, took it to the light to examine it, and observing that it there managed to open a pair of very bright eyes, pronounced its chances of vitality to be far from desperate. A wet nurse was therefore immediately procured; and, by dint of great care, the puny little being was preserved to become eventually the lovely, accomplished, and vivacious subject of this article [afterwards to become first Lady Craven, and subsequently the Margravine of Anspach]. Lady Berkeleigh, who is described by the margravine in her own memoirs as having but little maternal affection, treated her youngest daughter with even worse than indifference, and reserved all the indulgence and attention she was disposed to show to her offspring for her eldest sister, Lady Georgiana, who was regarded as the beauty. The neglect and severity of the mother stamped a peculiar air of shyness and modesty on Lady Elizabeth; and as her natural character was vivacious, and disposed to gaiety and enjoyment, a contrast was thus created, which, as she herself very unreservedly confesses, greatly contributed to her fascination.

Lady Elizabeth had already shot up into a tall, lithe figure; and her countenance developed the budding signs of that lively beauty which afterwards distinguished her. At this time, however, though she observes that many opportunities offered themselves of discovering her own personal charms, she protests herself to have been entirely ignorant of them; the exclusive admiration that was bestowed by her mother on her elder sister leading her to imagine herself rather ill-favoured than otherwise. There was no such blindness to the fascination of her person in after years, and her memoirs teem with amusing evidences of the high sense she entertained of her outward attractions. Among others is a passage in which she criticises the various portraits that have been painted of her; and though Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose portrait of her at Petworth seems charming enough, and Romney and Madame Lebrun exerted in turns, and more than once, their skill to transfer her graces to canvas, she declares they, none of them, have done justice either to her face or figure. The same candour, in exposing her thorough self-appreciation as regards her mental and moral excellences, is observable through the entertaining sketch of her career, and gives at first the impression that one is listening to the weakest and vainest woman that ever breathed. A little further acquaintance, however, removes this notion almost altogether. When a woman has been sought and admired all her life for her beauty, grace, sense, wit, and good nature by the highest and most distinguished personages of her age, it would seem more shocking than the grossest display of vanity to affect a mincing reserve and humility in speaking of her own merits.

[Lady Elizabeth was afterwards married to Mr Craven, who came to be Lord Craven. The marriage, at its outset, seems to have been in its most essential respects a happy one. The margravine acknowledges that Lord Craven possessed the highest admiration for the refined character and many graces and accomplishments of his young wife; and the contests between them were the amiable ones arising from his unbounded generosity towards her, and the refusals his offered presents met with from her discretion and modesty. At length a discovery was made by Lady Craven, which led to that eventful change in her life and fortunes, but for which, in all probability, the subject of this sketch would have attracted as little attention as many other brilliant noblewomen of her day. Lord Craven had for some time absented himself for long periods from home, under pretexts which his wife discovered to be false; but all doubts were removed when Lord Macartney came to the injured wife and entreated her to prevent Lord Craven from travelling in one of his coaches with a woman calling herself Lady Craven. This led to the explosion of a mine of intrigue. Lady Craven then went to France, and subsequently travelled over all Europe, at the various courts of which she was honoured and fêted. During her stay in Paris she had received the visits of the Margrave of Anspach, who had known her from childhood, and had formed a strong attachment to her. He had now invited her to pass some time at Anspach with himself and the margravine as his adopted sister. To this she agreed; and, subsequently, by a strange coincidence, the Margravine and Lord Craven having died about the same time, she became the wife of the margrave. In 1816 the margrave died, and from that time the margravine chiefly resided at Naples, where she died in the seventy-eighth year of her age.]

CAROLINE HERSCHEL.

[BORN 1750. DIED 1848.] PROFESSOR CRAIK.

NOTHER distinguished name can scarcely be forgotten or omitted here, although its honoured and venerable possessor still lives [in 1847], connecting the present with the past age. Caroline Herschel, the sister of the illustrious Sir William Herschel, was, as is well known, the associate of her brother, both in the business of observation and in that of calculation, throughout the whole of his splendid career. Four comets are enumerated as discovered by her—one on the 1st of August 1786, another on the 21st of December 1788, another on the 7th of January 1790, another on the 8th of October 1793.

After the death of her brother, on the 23d of August 1822, Miss Herschel returned to his and her own native country, Hanover, and there proceeded to employ herself in drawing up a catalogue of twenty-five thousand nebulæ discovered by her brother, which she completed in 1828, and for which the Astronomical Society of London that year voted her a gold medal. The newspapers announced that she celebrated the ninety-seventh anniversary of her birth-day on the 16th of March 1847. "On that occasion, the king, it is stated on the authority of a letter from Hanover, sent to compliment her; the prince and princess-royal paid her a visit, and the latter presented her with a magnificent arm-chair, the back of which had been embroidered by her royal highness; and the minister of Prussia, in the name of his sovereign, remitted to her the gold medal awarded for the extension of the sciences." Notwithstanding her advanced age and bodily infirmities, Miss Herschel, it has since been stated by her distinguished nephew, Sir John F. W. Herschel, in a letter to the Athenæum, is still [1847] in possession of her faculties.

MADAME D'ARBLAY.

[BORN 1752. DIED 1840.] MACAULAY.

HE daughter of Dr Burney deserves to have the progress of her mind recorded from her ninth to her twenty-fifth year. When her education had proceeded no further than her hornbook she lost her mother, and thenceforward educated herself. Her father appears to have been as bad a father as a very honest, affectionate, and sweet-tempered man can well be. He loved his daughter dearly; but it never seems to have occurred to him that a parent has other duties to perform to children than that of fondling them. No governess, no teacher of any art or of any language, was provided for her. But one of her sisters showed her how to write, and before she was fourteen she began to find pleasure in reading. It was not, however, by reading that her intellect was formed. Indeed, when her best novels were produced, her knowledge of books was very small. When at the height of her fame, she was unacquainted with the most celebrated writings of Voltaire and Molière, and, what seems still more extraordinary, had never heard or seen a line of Churchill, who, when she was a girl, was the most popular of living poets. It is particularly deserving of observation, that she appears to have been by no means a novel-reader. Her father's library was large, and he had admitted into it so many books which rigid moralists generally exclude, that he felt uneasy, as he afterwards owned, when Johnson began to examine the shelves. But in the whole collection there was only a single novel—Fielding's "Amelia."

But the great book of human nature was turned over before Fanny Burney. A society, various and brilliant, was sometimes to be found in Dr Burney's cabin. Johnson and he met frequently, and agreed most harmoniously. One tie, indeed, was awanting to their mutual attachment. Burney loved his own art, music, passionately, and Johnson just knew the bell of St Clement's Church from the organ. They had, however, many topics in common; and in winter nights their conversations were sometimes prolonged till the fire had gone out, and the candles had burned away to the wicks. Burney's admiration of the powers which had produced "Rasselas" and the "Rambler" bordered on idolatry. Johnson, on the other hand, condescended to growl out that Burney was an honest fellow, a man whom it was impossible not to like. Garrick, too, was a frequent visitor in Poland Street. That wonderful actor loved the society of children, partly from good nature, and partly from vanity. The ecstasies of mirth and terror which his gestures and play of countenance never failed to produce in a nursery, flattered him quite as much as the applause of pure critics. He often exhibited all his powers of memory for the amusement of the little Burneys, awed them by shuddering and crouching as if he saw a ghost, scared them by raving like a maniac in Saint Luke's, and then at once became an auctioneer, a chimney-sweeper, or an old woman, and made them laugh till the tears ran down their cheeks.

Fanny's propensity to novel-writing could not be kept down. She told her father she had written a novel ["Evelina"]. On so grave an occasion it was surely his duty to give his best counsel to his daughter, to win her confidence, to prevent her exposing herself if her book was a bad one, and if it were a good one to see that the terms which she made with the publisher were likely to be beneficial to her. Instead of this he only stared, burst out a-laughing, kissed her, gave her leave to do as she liked, and never even asked the name of the work. The contract with Lowndes was speedily concluded. Twenty pounds were given for the copyright, and were accepted by Fanny with delight. Her father's inexcusable neglect of his duty happily caused her no worse evil than the loss of £1200 or £1500. After many delays, "Evelina" appeared in 1778. Poor Fanny was sick with terror, and durst hardly stir out of doors. Some days passed before anything was heard of the book. Soon, however, the first accents of praise begin to be heard. The keepers of the circulating libraries reported that everybody was asking for "Evelina," and that some person had guessed Anstey to be the author. Scholars and statesmen, who contemptuously abandoned the crowd of romances to Miss Lydia Languish and Miss Sukey Saunter, were not ashamed to own that they could not tear themselves away from "Evelina." After producing other novels, for one of which, "Camilla," she is said to have received three thousand guineas, and encountering many strange vicissitudes, Madame D'Arblay died at the age of eighty-eight.

MADAME ROLAND.

[BORN 1754. DIED 1793.] CARLYLE.

far nobler victim follows, one who will claim remembrance from several centuries—Jeanne-Marie Phlipon, the wife of Roland. Queenly, sublime in her uncomplaining sorrow, seemed she to Riouffe in her prison. "Something more than is usually found in the looks of women painted itself," says he, "in those large black eyes of hers, full of expression and sweetness. She spoke to me often at the grate; we were all attentive round her, in a sort of admiration and astonishment. She expressed herself with a purity, with a harmony and prosody, that made her language like music, of which the ear could never have enough. Her conversation was serious, not cold. Coming from the mouth of a beautiful woman, it was frank and courageous as that of a great man." "And yet her maid said, 'Before you she collects her strength; but, in her own room, she will sit three hours sometimes leaning on the window and weeping.'" She has been in prison,—liberated once, but recaptured the same hour,—ever since the 1st of June, in agitation and uncertainty, which has gradually settled down into the last stern certainty—that of death. In the Abbaye Prison, she occupied Charlotte Corday's apartment. Here, in the Conciergerie, she speaks with Riouffe; with ex-minister Clavière calls the beheaded twenty-two "nos amis, our friends," whom all are so soon to follow. During these five months, those Memoirs of hers were written which all the world still reads.

But now, on the 8th of November, "clad in white," says Riouffe, "with her long black hair hanging down to her girdle," she is gone to the judgment-bar. She returned with a quick step; lifted her finger, to signify to us that she was doomed; her eyes seemed to have been wet. Fouquier-Tinville's questions had been "brutal;" offended female honour flung them back on him with scorn, not without tears. And now, short preparation soon done, she too shall go her last road. There went with her a certain Lamarche, "director of assignat-printing," whose dejection she endeavoured to cheer. Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, she asked for pen and paper, "to write the strange thoughts that were rising in her"—a remarkable request—which was refused. Looking at the statue of Liberty which stands there, she says, "O Liberty, what things are done in thy name!" For Lamarche's sake she will die first, to show him how easy it is to die. "Contrary to the order," says Samson. "Pshaw, you cannot refuse the last request of a lady;" and Samson yielded.

Noble white vision, with its high queenly face, its soft proud eyes, long black hair flowing down to the girdle, and as brave a heart as ever beat in woman's bosom! Like a white Grecian statue, serenely complete, she shines in that black wreck of things, long memorable. Honour to great Nature who, in Paris city, in the era of Noble-sentiment and Pompadourism, can make a Jeanne Phlipon, and nourish her clear perennial womanhood, though but on Logics, Encyclopédies, and the Gospel according to Jean-Jacques! Biography will long remember that trait of asking for a pen "to write the strange thoughts that were rising in her." It is as a little light-beam, shedding softness and a kind of sacredness over all that preceded; so in her, too, there was an unnameable; she, too, was a daughter of the Infinite; there were mysteries which Philosophism had not dreamt of! She left long written counsels to her little girl. She said her husband would not survive her.

Some days afterwards, Roland, hearing the news of what happened on the 8th, embraces his kind friends at Rouen; leaves their kind house which had given him refuge; goes forth, with farewell too sad for tears. On the morrow morning, 16th of the month, "some four leagues from Rouen, Paris-ward, near Bourg-Baudoin, in M. Normand's avenue," there is seen, sitting leant against a tree, the figure of a rigorous wrinkled man, stiff now in the rigour of death, a cane-sword run through his heart, and at his feet this writing: "Whoever thou art that findest me lying, respect my remains; they are those of a man who consecrated all his life to being useful, and who has died, as he lived, virtuous and honest. Not fear, but indignation, made me quit my retreat, on learning that my wife had been murdered. I wished not to remain longer on an earth polluted with crimes."

MARIE ANTOINETTE.

[BORN 1755. DIED 1793.] CARLYLE.

N Monday, 14th October 1793, a cause is pending in the Palais de Justice, in the new Revolutionary Court, such as these stone walls never witnessed—the trial of Marie Antoinette. The once brightest of queens, now tarnished, defaced, forsaken, stands here at Fouquier-Tinville's judgment-bar, answering for her life. The indictment was delivered her last night. To such changes of human fortune, what words are adequate? Silence alone is adequate.

There are few printed things one meets with of such tragic, almost ghastly significance, as those bald pages of the Bulletin du Tribunal Révolutionnaire, which bear title, "Trial of the Widow Capet." Dim, dim, as if in disastrous eclipse, like the pale kingdoms of Dis! Plutonic judges, Plutonic Tinville; encircled nine times with Styx and Lethe, with Fire-Phlegethon and Cocytus, named of Lamentation! The very witnesses summoned are like ghosts; exculpatory, inculpatory, they themselves are all hovering over death and doom; they are known in our imagination as the prey of the guillotine. Tall ci-devant Count d'Estaing, anxious to show himself patriot, cannot escape; nor Bailly, who, when asked if he knows the accused, answers with a reverent inclination towards her, "Ah, yes, I know Madame." Ex-patriots are here, sharply dealt with as Procureur Manuel; ex-ministers, shorn of their splendour. We have cold aristocratic impassivity, faithful to itself even in Tartarus; rabid stupidity of patriot corporals, patriot washerwomen, who have much to say of plots, treasons, August tenth, old insurrection of women. For all now has become a crime in her who has lost.

Marie Antoinette, in this her utter abandonment and hour of extreme need, is not wanting to herself, the imperial woman. Her look, they say, as that hideous indictment was reading, continued calm. "She was sometimes observed moving her fingers, as when one plays on the piano." You discern not without interest across that dim Revolutionary Bulletin itself, how she bears herself queen-like. Her answers are prompt, clear, often of laconic brevity; resolution, which has grown contemptuous without ceasing to be dignified, veils itself in calm words. "You persist, then, in denial?" "My plan is not denial; it is the truth I have said, and I persist in that." Scandalous Hébert has borne his testimony as to many things; as to one thing concerning Marie Antoinette and her little son, wherewith human speech had better not further be soiled. She has answered Hébert; a juryman begs to observe that she has not answered to this. "I have not answered," she exclaims with noble emotion, "because nature refuses to answer such a charge brought against a mother. I appeal to all the mothers that are here." Robespierre, when he heard of it, broke out into something almost like swearing at the brutish blockheadism of this Hébert, on whose foul head his foul lie has recoiled. At four o'clock on Wednesday morning, after two days and two nights of interrogating, jury charging, and other darkening of counsel, the result comes out—sentence of death. "Have you anything to say?" The accused shook her head, without speech. Night's candles are burning out; and with her, too, Time is finishing, and it will be eternity and day. This hall of Tinville's is dark, ill-lighted, except where she stands. Silently she withdraws from it to die.

There was once a procession before, "on the morrow," says Weber, "the Dauphiness left Vienna. The whole city crowded out, at first with a sorrow which was silent. She appeared. You saw her sunk back into her carriage, her face bathed in tears; hiding her eyes now with her handkerchief, now with her hands; several times putting out her head to see yet again this palace of her fathers, whither she was to return no more. She motioned her regret, her gratitude, to the good nation which was crowding here to bid her farewell. Then arose not only tears, but piercing cries on all sides. Men and women alike abandoned themselves to such expression of their sorrow. It was an audible sound of wail in the streets and avenues of Vienna. The last courier that followed her disappeared, and the crowd melted away."

The young imperial maiden of fifteen has now become a worn, discrowned widow of thirty-eight, grey before her time. This is the last procession. "Few minutes after the trial ended, the drums were beating to arms in all sections; at sunrise the armed force was on foot, cannons getting placed at the extremities of the bridges, in the squares, crossways, all along from the Palais de Justice to the Place de la Révolution. By ten o'clock, numerous patrols were circulating in the streets; thirty thousand foot and horse drawn up under arms. At eleven, Marie Antoinette was brought out. She had on an undress of piqué blanc; she was led to the place of execution in the same manner as an ordinary criminal, bound in a cart, accompanied by a Constitutional Priest in lay dress, escorted by numerous detachments of infantry and cavalry. These, and the double row of troops all along her road, she appeared to regard with indifference. On her countenance there was visible neither abashment nor pride. To the cries of Vive la République, and Down with Tyranny, which attended her all the way, she seemed to pay no heed. She spoke little to her confessor. The tricolour streamers on the house-tops occupied her attention in the Streets du Roule and Saint-Honoré; she also noticed the inscriptions on the house-fronts. On reaching the Place de la Révolution, her looks towards the Jardin National, whilom Tuileries; her face at that moment gave signs of lively emotion. She ascended the scaffold with courage enough; at a quarter past twelve her head fell. The executioner showed it to the people amid universal long-continued cries of Vive la République."

SARAH SIDDONS.

[BORN 1755. DIED 1831.] CUNNINGHAM.

HIS unrivalled actress, born in 1755, was, like her brother John Kemble, led upon the boards at a very early age; so young indeed was she, that the rustic audience, offended at her infantile appearance, began to hoot and hiss her off, when her mother Mrs Kemble, herself an actress, led her to the front of the stage, and made her repeat the fable of the boys and the frogs, which she did in such a manner as appeased the critics, and insured a favourable reception for her ever after. In her eighteenth year, she married Mr Siddons, an actor in her father's company; and the young couple soon after took an engagement to act at Cheltenham. "At that time," says Mr Campbell, "the Hon. Miss Boyle, the daughter of Lord Dungarvon, a most accomplished woman, and authoress of several pleasing poems, one of which, an "Ode to the Poppy," was published by Charlotte Smith, happened to be at Cheltenham. She had come accompanied by her mother and her mother's second husband, the Earl of Aylesbury. One morning that she and some other fashionables went to the box-keeper's office, they were told that the tragedy to be performed that evening was "Venice Preserved." They all laughed heartily, and promised themselves a treat of the ludicrous in the misrepresentation of the piece. Some one who overheard their mirth, kindly reported it to Mrs Siddons. She had the part of Belvidera allotted to her, and prepared for the performance of it with no very enviable feelings. It may be doubted whether Otway had imagined in Belvidera a personage more to be pitied than her representative now thought herself. The rabble in "Venice Preserved" showed compassion for the heroine; and when they saw her feather-bed put up to auction, "governed their roaring throats, and grumbled pity." But our actress anticipated refined scorners more pitiless than the rabble, and the prospect was certainly calculated to prepare her more for the madness than the dignity of her part. In spite of much agitation, however, she got through it. About the middle of the piece, she heard some unusual and apparently suppressed noises, and therefore concluded that the fashionables were in the full enjoyment of their anticipated amusement, tittering and laughing, as she thought, with unmerciful derision.

She went home, after the play, grievously mortified. Next day, however, Mr Siddons met in the street Lord Aylesbury, who inquired after Mrs Siddons' health, and expressed not only his own admiration of her last night's exquisite acting, but related its effects on the ladies of his party. They had wept, he said, so excessively, that they were unpresentable in the morning, and were confined to their rooms with headaches. Mr Siddons hastened home to gladden his fair spouse with this intelligence. Miss Boyle soon afterwards visited Mrs Siddons at her lodgings, took the deepest interest in her fortunes, and continued her ardent friend till her death. She married Lord O'Neil of Shanes Castle, in Ireland. It is no wonder that Mrs Siddons dwells with tenderness, in her memoranda, on the name of this earliest encourager of her genius. Miss Boyle was a beauty of the first order, and gifted with a similar mind, as her poetry and patronage of the hitherto unnoticed actress evince." A rumour of the newly-discovered genius having reached Garrick, Mrs Siddons began, through his patronage, that career of success which is so well known.

Mrs Siddons undoubtedly possessed the highest order of poetical conception for the purposes of stage delivery; yet, like her brother, not a little of the impression she produced was owing to her great physical powers, and the commanding dignity of her person. In her most violent scenes, the majesty of her mien was pre-eminent; and even when prostrate on the stage, she still lay graceful and sublime. As Madame de Staël says of her in her "Corrine," "L'actrice la plus noble dans ses manières, Madame Siddons, ne perd rien de sa dignité quand elle se prosterne contre terre." Of her Lady Macbeth, which all critics now allow to be her chef d'œuvre, Lord Byron said: "It was something above nature. It seemed almost as if a being of a superior order had dropped from a higher sphere to awe the world with the majesty of her appearance. Power was seated on her brow; passion emanated from her breast as from a shrine. In coming on in the sleeping scene, her eyes were open, but their sense was shut; she was like a person bewildered—her lips moved involuntarily, all her gestures seemed mechanical; she glided off and on the stage like an apparition. To have seen her in that character was an event in every one's life never to be forgotten."

"It was impossible," says an able critic, "for those who beheld Mrs Siddons in Lady Macbeth, to imagine the embodied in any other shape. That tall, commanding, and majestic figure; that face, so sternly beautiful, with its firm lips and large dark eyes; that brow, capacious of a wild world of thought, overshadowed by a still gloom of coal-black hair; that low, clear-measured, deep voice, audible in whispers, so portentously expressive of strength of will, and a will to evil; the stately tread of those feet, the motions of those arms and hands, seeming moulded for empiry—all those distinguished the Thane's wife from other women, to our senses, our soul, and our imagination, as if nature had made Siddons for Shakspeare's sake, that she might impersonate to the height his sublimest and most dreadful creation. Charles Lamb may smile—and his smile is ever pleasant—but we are neither afraid nor ashamed to say that we never read the tragedy—and we have read it a thousand and one nights—without seeing and hearing that Lady Macbeth—our study becoming the stage—and 'out damned spot,' a shuddering sigh, terrifying us in the imagined presence of a breathless crowd of sympathising spirits. That sleep-walker, in the power of her guilt, would not suffer us to be alone in our closet. Noiseless her gliding steps, and all alone in her haunted unrest, we saw her wringing her hands before a gazing multitude; their eyes, how unlike to hers! and we drew dread from the quaking all around us, not unmingled with a sense of the magnificent, breathed from the passion that held the great assemblage mute and motionless—yet not quite—that sea of heads all lulled; but the lull darkened as by the shadow of a cloud surcharged with thunder."

MRS GRANT.

[BORN 1755. DIED 1838.] PROFESSOR CRAIK.

HE late excellent Mrs Grant of Laggan, as she used to be designated to the end of her long life, from the parish of Inverness-shire, of which her husband had been clergyman, and with which her first publications were connected, affords another remarkable example both of the successful cultivation of literature by a woman in trying or unusual circumstances, and of the attainment thereby of many worldly in addition to higher advantages. She has herself told us the story of her early life and her first struggles, in an unfinished Memoir which has been published since her death. In the mere acquisition of knowledge she had no peculiar difficulties to encounter either from circumstances or any deficiency in herself. On the contrary, her faculties were quick and early developed, and her opportunities, though not affording her a regular education, were well suited to nourish and strengthen those tendencies and powers which chiefly gave her mind its distinctive character.

"I began to live," she observes, "to the purposes of feeling, observation, and recollection much earlier than children usually do. I was not acute, I was not sagacious, but I had an active imagination and uncommon powers of memory. I had no companion; no one fondled or caressed me, far less did any one take the trouble of amusing me. I did not, till I was six years of age, possess a single toy. A child with less activity of mind would have become torpid under the same circumstances. Yet, whatever of purity of thought, originality of character, and premature thirst for knowledge, distinguished me from other children of my age, was, I am persuaded, very much owing to these privations. Never was a human being less improved in the sense in which that expression is generally understood, but never was one less spoilt by indulgence, or more carefully preserved from every species of mental contagion. The result of the peculiar circumstances in which I was placed had the effect of making me a kind of anomaly very different from other people, and very little influenced by the motives, as well as very ignorant of the modes of thinking and acting prevalent in the world at large."

It was this anomalous character in her case, happily free from any kind of grotesqueness or absurdity, and allied to everything virtuous and noble, that both directed her to literature and authorship in the first instance, and gave much of its interest to what she wrote.

[Annie Macvicar, Mrs Grant's maiden name, the daughter of Duncan Macvicar, "a plain, brave, pious man," having been taken by her parents to America, returned to Scotland, and married in 1779 Mr Grant, a chaplain at Fort-Augustus in Inverness-shire. She acquired a taste for farming, led a life of fervid activity, and had a large family of children, all promising, and the greater number of them beautiful. It would have been strange indeed if her literary aspirations had sprung out of the domestic habits of the mother of a large family, and the manager of a farm; but we are told by herself that she had begun to scrawl a kind of Miltonic verse when she was little more than nine years old. She had early written off many scraps of poetry, and distributed them among her friends, who had taken care to preserve them, while Mrs Grant had retained no copies. It was by a kind of amicable conspiracy that these friends set about the good work of collecting and publishing these pieces in such a way as would secure pecuniary relief to the author. The subscriptions amounted to three thousand names, and the "Original Poems, with some Translations from the Gaelic," appeared in 1803. Some years afterwards came her "Letters from the Mountains," which not only claimed the attention of the reading world, but inspired so much love and respect for the quiet virtues and literary abilities of the author, that many who knew her, and some who did not, contributed to help her in her hard struggle with the world. But Mrs Grant's life was destined to be a passage through storm and sunshine. Her husband died, and her children, inheriting his tendency to decline, fell off one by one, so that every year brought her fresh trouble, yet still with a noble spirit that enabled her to surmount her afflictions by something like philosophy. In 1811 she published her "Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland, with Translations from the Gaelic," in two volumes, and subsequently a poem, entitled "Eighteen Hundred and Thirteen," which excited little attention.]

Mrs Grant's life for some years after she gave up writing for the public had been in part devoted to an intellectual employment of another kind, the superintendence of the education of a succession of young persons of her own sex who were sent to reside with her. From the year 1826 also, her means had been further increased by a pension of £100, which was granted to her by George IV., on a representation drawn up by Sir Walter Scott, and supported by Henry Mackenzie, Lord Jeffrey, and other distinguished persons among her friends in Edinburgh. During the period of nearly thirty years that she resided there, she was a principal figure in the best and most intellectual society of the Scottish metropolis, and to the last her literary celebrity made her an object of curiosity and attraction to strangers from all parts of the world. Even after the loss of the last of her daughters, her correspondence testifies that she still took a lively interest in everything that went on around her. "With all its increasing infirmities," she says, "and even with the accumulated sorrows of my peculiar lot, I do not find age so dark and unlovely as the Celtic bard seems to consider it. However imperfectly my labour has been performed, we may consider it nearly concluded; and even though my cup of sorrow has been brimful, the bitter ingredient of shame has not mingled with it. On all those who were near and dear to me, I can look back with approbation, and may tenderly cherish unspotted memories, fond recollections, and the hopes that terminate not here. I feel myself certainly not landed, but in a harbour from whence I am not likely to be blown out by new tempests." Even after this, she was destined to receive another severe shock from the death, in April 1837, in her twenty-eighth year, of her daughter-in-law, who had been married only three years, and to whom she was strongly attached. Still her courageous heart bore her up, and the zest with which she enjoyed intellectual pleasures continued almost as keen as ever.

ELIZABETH INCHBALD.

[BORN 1756. DIED 1821.] CUNNINGHAM.

HE daughter of a small farmer in Suffolk, of the name of Simpson. Having lost her father in her infancy, she was left under the care of her mother, who continued to manage the farm; and in the pleasant seclusion of this cottage home, Miss Simpson was presented with abundant opportunities of gratifying her literary propensities. So sensibly had her imagination been wrought upon by the tales of fictitious grief and happiness she had met with in the course of her desultory reading, that she formed the romantic resolution of visiting the metropolis, the scene of many of the stories which had so powerfully excited her sympathies. This intention did not, as may be supposed, meet with the approbation of her friends; but so fixed was her determination to accomplish, à tout prix, the object she had in view, that she seized an opportunity of eloping from her home entirely without the knowledge of her family. Early one morning in February 1772, she left Staningfield for London, and with a few necessary articles of apparel packed in a band-box, walked, or rather ran, a distance of two miles to the place from which the coach set out for the metropolis.

This step, in a girl of sixteen years of age, did not augur very favourably of her future conduct or respectability; but the subsequent tenor of her life affords additional proof that very admirable results will often arise out of indifferent and even reprehensible beginnings. On her arrival at London, she sought a distant relation who lived in the Strand; but on reaching the house, was, to her great mortification, informed that she had retired from business, and was settled in North Wales. It was near ten o'clock at night, and her distress at this disappointment moved the compassion of the people of whom she had made her inquiries, who kindly accommodated her with a lodging. This civility, however, awakened her suspicions. She had read in "Clarissa Harlowe," of various modes of seduction practised in London, and feared that similar intentions were being meditated against her. A short time after her arrival, therefore, observing that she had awakened their curiosity, our young heroine seized her band-box, and, without uttering a single word, rushed out of the house, and left them to their conjectures that she was either a maniac or an impostor.

Her necessities drove her to the stage, where she met with considerable success, and performed principal characters when she was only eighteen years of age. After a residence of four years in Edinburgh with her husband, Mr Inchbald, also an actor of some celebrity, she returned to London, where she acted for several years at Covent Garden. Soon after she became an authoress. Her first piece, the comedy entitled "I'll Tell you What," was at first rejected by Colman of Haymarket, but finally approved and brought out with considerable success in 1785. In 1789 she retired from the stage, and devoted herself from that time entirely to literature. She wrote a number of popular dramatic pieces, and edited a new edition of "The British Theatre," and other dramatic collections; but it is to her two novels, "Nature and Art," and "The Simple Story," that she chiefly owes her reputation. She died at Kensington in 1821.

The mind of this authoress had an original cast, and her literary style was peculiar, terse, pointed, and impressive. By exemplary industry and prudence, she had raised herself into a state of comfortable independence; but she had a liberal heart, and deprived herself of many enjoyments in order to provide for relations who stood in need of her assistance. She was animated, cheerful, and intelligent in conversation, and her remarks were not taken on trust, but were the effects of acute penetration. She was very handsome in youth, and retained much of her beauty and elegance till her death.

ELIZABETH HAMILTON.

[BORN 1758. DIED 1816.] PROFESSOR CRAIK.

ISS, or as she latterly chose to style herself, Mrs Elizabeth Hamilton, is one of the female writers of what may now be called the last age, whose eruption into literature was about as spontaneous and irregular as well as could be; for there was nothing either in the education she received, or in the circumstances of her position, to give her any peculiar impulse towards such a career; yet she may be said to have registered her name there among the classics of our language. If everything else she produced be forgotten, as may almost be said to be already the case, her "Cottagers of Glenburnie" at least will live, and continue to be read, so long as the Scottish dialect remains intelligible. It is the only work written in that dialect, between the era of the poetry of Burns and that of the prose of Scott, which is now remembered. Of Scottish prose writing, there is no earlier subsisting example, until we go back to the sixteenth century. Here it claims the honour of having been the only modern predecessor of the Waverley Novels, if not that of having been, in some degree, their model. In so far as its interest and humour lie in the use of the popular dialect, it is probably to be accounted the offspring of Miss Edgeworth's "Castle Rackrent," which is the earliest work still surviving, in which the comedy and expressiveness to be found in the peculiarities of the Irish provincial speech were highly taken advantage of.

[Born in Ireland about the middle of the last century, yet of Scotch descent, Miss Hamilton while yet young came to Scotland, where, residing with relations, she went through many changes of life. She wrote a great many books, both on religious and political subjects, some of which challenged without retaining attention; but it was otherwise with the "Cottagers of Glenburnie."] This work was begun, we are told, merely as the amusement of an idle hour; she was encouraged to proceed with it, and to extend the plan, by the mirth which the first sheets of it excited, when she read them to a few friends collected at her own fireside. It was not, her biographer further informs us, without considerable distrust on the part of the publisher that it was committed to the press. Is it indeed the unhappy instinct of publishers to be thus always blindest to the value, before they come out, of the books that succeed the best? or is it thought expedient, for the sake of making the better story, that every instance of remarkably successful publication should be set off by being made to fall out contrary to expectation?

However that may be, the success of the present work was immediate and decided. It was universally read in Scotland, and very generally even in England, where its humour could less be appreciated. The great demand soon induced the publishers to print a cheap edition; and, in the native country of the writer, it was to be seen in the hands of all classes. Miss Benger relates, that in Stirlingshire a person named Isabel Irvine, who had been Miss Hamilton's attendant when she was at school there some thirty or forty years before, and to whom, we suppose, a copy had been sent by the authoress, made money by lending it out among her neighbours. It is believed, too, not to have been without effect in making the peasantry ashamed of the indolence and slovenliness which it exposed and ridiculed. "Perhaps few books," observes a friend and countryman of Miss Hamilton's, in a sketch of her character and her literary and other services to her country, which Miss Benger has printed, "have been more extensively useful. The peculiar humour of this work, by irritating our national pride, has produced a wonderful spirit of improvement. The cheap edition is to be found in every village library; and Mrs M'Clarty's example has provoked many a Scotch housewife into cleanliness and good order."

Miss Benger thus describes Miss Hamilton's ordinary mode of life after she took up her residence in Edinburgh: "The morning, whenever her infirmities admitted, was devoted to study. At two o'clock she descended to the drawing-room, where she commonly found some intimate friend ready to receive her. If no engagement intervened, the interval from seven till ten was occupied with some interesting book, which, according to her good Aunt Marshall's rule, was read aloud for the benefit of the whole party. On Monday, she deviated from the general system, by admitting visitors all the morning; and such was the esteem for her character, and such the relish for her society, that this private levee was attended by the most brilliant persons in Edinburgh, and commonly protracted till a late hour. But it was in the heartsome ingle-nook by her ain fireside, when the world was shut out, and its cares, and conflicts, and pretensions consigned to temporary oblivion, that Mrs Hamilton was most truly known and most perfectly enjoyed. Of anecdote she was inexhaustible, and in narrative she dramatised with such effect that she almost personated those whom she described."

"All who had the happiness to know this amiable woman," said Miss Edgeworth, in a tribute to her memory, which she contributed to an Irish paper soon after Mrs Hamilton's death, "will with one accord bear testimony to the truth of that feeling of affection which her benevolence, kindness, and cheerfulness of temper inspired. She thought so little of herself, so much of others, that it was impossible she could—superior as she was—excite envy. She put everybody at ease in her company, and in good humour and good spirits with themselves. So far from being a restraint on the young and lively, she encouraged by her sympathy their openness and gaiety. She never flattered, but she always formed the most favourable opinion, that truth and good sense would permit, of every individual who came near her. Instead, therefore, of fearing and shunning her reputation, all loved and courted her society." She died on the 23d July 1816, in the sixtieth year of her age.

COUNTESS DE VEMIEIRO.

[1760.] SISMONDI.

HE Academy of Sciences in Portugal having proposed a prize for the best Portuguese tragedy, on the 13th of May 1788 conferred the laurel-crown on "Osmia," a tragedy which proved to be the production of a lady, the Countess de Vemieiro. On opening the sealed envelope accompanying the piece, which usually conveys the name of the author, there was found only a direction, in case "Osmia" should prove successful, to devote the proceeds to the cultivation of olives, a species of fruit from which Portugal might derive great advantages. It was with some difficulty that the name of the modest writer of this work, published in 1795, in quarto, was made known to the world. Bouterwek has erroneously attributed it to another lady, very justly celebrated in Portugal, Catharina de Sousa, the same who singly ventured to oppose the violence of the Marquis de Pombal, whose son she refused in marriage. From the family of this illustrious lady I learned that the tragedy of "Osmia" was not really the production of her pen.

In this line of composition, so rarely attempted by female genius, the Countess de Vemieiro displays a singular purity of taste, an exquisite delicacy of feeling, and an interest derived rather from passion than from circumstances,—qualities, indeed, which more particularly distinguish her sex. In the catastrophe, as well as in the rest of the piece, the Countess de Vemieiro appears to have studied the laws of the French theatre; and, in the vivacity of her dialogue, Voltaire, rather than Corneille or Racine, would seem to have been kept in view. The whole is composed in iambic verse, free from rhyme; and we are, perhaps, justified in asserting that this tragedy is the only one which the Portuguese theatre can properly be said to possess.

JOANNA BAILLIE.

[BORN 1762. DIED 1851.] PROFESSOR SPALDING.

HE daughter of a parish minister in Bothwell in Lanarkshire. Her mother was sister of John and William Hunter, the famous anatomists. Her life was spent in domestic privacy, and marked by no events more important than the appearance of her successive works. Her brother, who became Sir Matthew Baillie, having settled as physician in London, Miss Baillie removed thither at an early age. She resided in the metropolis or its neighbourhood almost constantly, and died at Hampstead in February 1851.

Her first volume of dramas was published in 1798. Their design, as to which it is not too much to say that the works were good in spite of it, not by means of it, was indicated in the title, "A Series of Plays, in which it is Attempted to Delineate the Stronger Passions of the Mind, each Passion being the Subject of a Tragedy and a Comedy." A second volume of the "Plays of the Passions" appeared in 1802, and a third in 1812. The tragedies are fine poems, noble in sentiment, and classical and vigorous in language; but they were not fit for the stage, and "De Montfort" itself was with difficulty supported for a while by the acting of John Kemble and Mrs Siddons. The tragedy of "The Family Legend," not contained in the series, was acted in Edinburgh in 1809, after a visit the poetess had paid to Sir Walter Scott. In 1836 she published another series of "Plays of the Passions," of which "Henriquez" and "The Separation," the former a very striking piece, were attempted on the stage. Some of Miss Baillie's small pieces were exceedingly good.

JOSEPHINE.

[BORN 1763. DIED 1814.] ALISON.

EW persons in that elevated rank have undergone such varieties of fortune as Josephine [first wife of Napoleon], and fewer still have borne so well the ordeal both of prosperity and adversity. Born in the middle class of society, she was the wife of a respectable but obscure officer. The Revolution afterwards threw her into a dungeon, where she was saved from a scaffold only by the fall of Robespierre. The hand of Napoleon made her successively the partner of every rank, from the general's staff to the emperor's throne; and the same connection consigned her, at the very highest point of her elevation, to degradation and seclusion—the loss of her consequence, separation from her husband, the sacrifice of her affections. Stripped of her influence, cast down from her rank, wounded in her feelings, the divorced empress found the calamity, felt in any rank, of being childless, the envenomed dart which pierced her to the heart.

It was no common character which could pass through such marvellous changes of fortune unmarked by any decided stain, unsullied by any tears of suffering. If, during the confusion of all moral ideas, consequent on the first triumphs of the Revolution, her reputation did not escape the breath of scandal; and if the favourite of Barras occasioned, even when the wife of Napoleon, some frightful fits of jealousy in her husband; she maintained an exemplary decorum when seated on the consular and imperial throne, and communicated a degree of elegance to the court of the Tuileries which could hardly have been expected after the confusion of ranks and ruin of the old nobility which had preceded her elevation.

Passionately fond of dress, and often blameably extravagant in that particular, she occasioned no small embarrassment to the treasury by her expenditure; but this weakness was forgiven in the recollection of its necessity to compensate the inequality of their years, in the amiable use which she made of her possessions, the grace of her manner, and the alacrity with which she was ever ready to exert her influence with her husband to plead the cause of suffering, or avert the punishment of innocence. Though little inclined to yield in general to female persuasion, Napoleon both loved and felt the sway of this amiable character, and often in his sternest fits he was weaned from violent measures by her influence. Her influence over him was evinced in the most conclusive manner by the ascendant which she maintained after their separation from each other. The divorce, and marriage of Marie Louise, produced no estrangement between them; in her retirement at Malmaison she was frequently visited and consulted by the emperor; they corresponded to the last moment of her life; and the fidelity by which she adhered to him in his misfortunes won the esteem of his conquerors, as it must command the respect of all succeeding ages of the world.

ANNE RADCLIFFE.

[BORN 1764. DIED 1823.] EDINBURGH REVIEW.

ORN in 1764, died in 1823, this lady was as truly an inventor, a great and original writer in the department she had struck out for herself—whether that department was of the highest kind or not—as the Richardsons, Fieldings, or Smolletts whom she succeeded, and for a time threw into the shade; or the Ariosto of the North, before whom her own star has paled its ineffectual fires. The passion of fear, "the latent sense of supernatural awe and curiosity concerning whatever is hidden and mysterious"—these were themes and sources of interest which, prior to the appearance of her tales, could scarcely be said to have been touched upon. The "Castle of Otranto" was too obviously a mere caprice of imagination; its gigantic helmets, its pictures descending from their frames, its spectral figures dilating themselves in the moonlight to the height of the castle battlements,—if they did not border on the ludicrous, no more impressed the mind with any feeling of awe than the enchantments and talismans, the genii and peris, of the "Arabian Nights."

A nearer approach to the proper tone of feeling was made in the "Old English Baron;" but while it must be admitted that Mrs Radcliffe's principle of composition was to a certain degree anticipated in that clever production, nothing can illustrate more strongly the superiority of her powers, the more poetical character of her mind, than a comparison of the way in which in her different works the principle is wrought out; the comparative boldness and rudeness of Clara Reeves' mode of exciting superstitious emotions as contrasted with the profound art, the multiplied resources, the dexterous display and concealment, the careful study of that class of emotions on which she was to operate, which Mrs Radcliffe displays in her supernatural machinery. Certainly never before or since did any one more accurately perceive the point to which imagination might be wrought up by a series of hints, glimpses, or half-heard sounds, consistently at the same time with pleasurable emotion, and with the continuance of that very state of curiosity and awe which had been thus excited. The clang of a distant door, a footfall on the stair, a half-effaced stain of blood, a stream of music floating over a wood or round some decaying château—nay, a very "rat behind the arras,"—become, in her hands, invested with a mysterious dignity; so finely has the mind been attuned to sympathise with the terrors of the sufferer by a train of minute details and artful contrasts, in which all sights and sounds combine to awaken and render the feeling more intense. Yet her art is more visible in what she conceals than in what she displays. "One shade the more, one ray the less," would have left the picture in darkness; but to have let in any farther the garish light of day upon her mysteries, would have shown at once the hollowness and meanness of the puppet which alarmed us, and have broken the spell beyond the power of reclasping it. Hence, up to the moment when she chooses to do so herself by those fatal explanations, for which no reader will ever forgive her, she never loses her hold on the mind. The very economy with which she avails herself of the talisman of terror preserves its power to the last undiminished, if not increased. She merely hints at some fearful thought, and leaves the excited fancy surrounded by night and silence to give it colour and form.

Of all the passions, that of fear is the only one which Mrs Radcliffe can be properly said to have painted. More wearisome beings than her heroines, and anything "more tolerable and not to be endured" than her love tales, Calprenede or Scuderi never invented. As little have the sterner passions of jealousy or hatred, or the dark shades of envious and malignant feeling, formed the subjects of her analysis. Within the circle of these passions, indeed, she did not feel that she could walk with security; but her quick perception showed where there was still an opening in a region of obscurity and twilight as yet all but untrodden. To that, as to the sphere pointed out to her by nature, she at once addressed herself; from that, as from a central point, she surveyed the provinces of passion and imagination, and was content if, without venturing into their labyrinths, she could render their leading and more palpable features available to set off and to brighten, by their variety, the solemnity and gloom of the department which she had chosen.

MISS EDGEWORTH.

[BORN 1767. DIED 1849.] JEFFREY.

ISS Edgeworth is the great modern mistress in the useful school of true philosophy, and has eclipsed, we think, the fame of all her predecessors. By her many excellent tracts on education, she has conferred a benefit on the whole mass of the population, and discharged, with exemplary patience as well as extraordinary judgment, a task which superficial spirits may perhaps mistake for an humble and easy one. By her popular tales, she has rendered an invaluable service to the middling and lower classes of the people; and, by her novels, has made a great and meritorious effort to promote the happiness and respectability of the higher classes.

There are two great sources of unhappiness to those whom fortune and nature seem to have placed above the reach of ordinary miseries. The one is ennui, that stagnation of life and feeling which results from the absence of all motives to exertion, and by which the justice of Providence has so fully compensated the partiality of fortune, that it may be fairly doubted whether upon the whole the race of beggars is not happier than the race of lords, and whether those vulgar wants that are sometimes so importunate are not in this world the chief ministers of enjoyment. This is a plague that infects all indolent persons that can live on in the rank in which they were born, without the necessity of working; but in a free country it rarely occurs in any great degree of virulence, except among those who are already at the summit of human felicity. Below this there is room for ambition, and envy, and emulation, and all the feverish movements of aspiring vanity and unresisting selfishness, which act as prophylactics against this more dark and deadly distemper. It is the canker which corrodes the full-blown flower of human felicity—the pestilence which smites at the bright hour of noon.

The other curse of the happy has a range more wide and indiscriminate. It, too, tortures only the comparatively rich and fortunate, but is most active among the least distinguished, and abates in malignity as we ascend to the lofty regions of pure ennui. This is the desire of being fashionable, the restless and insatiable passion to pass for creatures a little more distinguished than we really are, with the mortification of frequent failure, and the humiliating consciousness of being perpetually exposed to it. Among those who are secure of "meat, clothes, and fire," and are thus above the chief evils of existence, we do believe that this is a more prolific source of unhappiness than guilt, disease, or wounded affection; and that more positive misery is created, and more true enjoyment excluded, by the eternal fretting and straining of this pitiful ambition, than by all the ravages of passion, the desolations of war, or the accidents of mortality. This may appear a strong statement, but we make it deliberately, and are deeply convinced of its truth. The wretchedness which it produces may not be so intense, but it is of much longer duration, and spreads over a far wider circle. It is quite dreadful indeed to think what a sweep this pest has taken among the comforts of our prosperous population. To be thought fashionable—that is, to be thought more opulent and tasteful, and on a footing of intimacy with a greater number of distinguished persons than they really are,—is the great and laborious pursuit of four families out of five, the members of which are exempted from the necessity of daily industry.

These are the giant curses of fashionable life; and Miss Edgeworth has accordingly dedicated her two best tales to the delineation of their symptoms. The history of Lord Glenthorn is a fine picture of ennui; that of Almeria, an instructive representation of the miseries of aspirations after fashion. The moral use of these narratives, therefore, must consist in warning us against the first approaches of evils which can never afterwards be resisted. To some readers her tales may seem to want the fairy colouring of high fancy and romantic tenderness; and it is very true that they are not poetical love tales, any more than they are anecdotes of scandal. We have great respect for the admirers of Rousseau and Petrarca, and we have no doubt that Miss Edgeworth has great respect for them; but the world, both high and low, which she is labouring to mend, have no sympathy with this respect. They laugh at these things, and do not understand them; and, therefore, the solid sense which she possesses presses perhaps rather too closely upon them, and, though it permits of relief from wit and direct pathos, really could not be combined with the more luxuriant ornaments of an ardent and tender imagination.

CHARLOTTE CORDAY.

[BORN 1768. DIED 1793.] CARLYLE.

MID which dim ferment of Caen and the world, history specially notices one thing. In the lobby of the Mansion de l'Intendance, where busy deputies are coming and going, a young lady, with an aged valet, taking grave, graceful leave of Deputy Barbaroux. She is of stately Norman figure, in her twenty-fifth year, of beautiful still countenance; her name is Charlotte Corday, heretofore styled D'Armans, while nobility still was. Barbaroux has given her a note to Deputy Duperret, him who once drew his sword in the effervescence. Apparently, she will to Paris on some errand. "She was a republican before the Revolution, and never wanted energy." A completeness, a decision is in this fair figure: "by energy she means the spirit that will prompt one to sacrifice himself for his country." What if she, this fair young Charlotte, had emerged from her secluded stillness suddenly like a star; to gleam for a moment, and in a moment to be extinguished; to be held in memory, so bright complete was she, through long centuries! Quitting Cimmerian coalitions without, and the dim-simmering twenty-five millions within, history will look fixedly at this one fair apparition of a Charlotte Corday; will note whither Charlotte moves, how the little life burns forth so radiant, then vanishes, swallowed of the night.

With Barbaroux's note of introduction, and slight stock of luggage, we see Charlotte on Tuesday, the 9th of July, seated in the Caen diligence, with a place for Paris. None takes farewell of her, wishes her good journey; her father will find a line left, signifying that she is gone to England, that he must pardon her and forget her. The drowsy diligence lumbers along, amid drowsy talk of politics and praise of the Mountain, in which she mingles not; all night, all day, and again all night. On Thursday, not long before noon, we are at the bridge of Neuilly. Here is Paris, with her thousand black domes—the goal and purpose of thy journey! Arrived at the Inn de la Providence, in the Rue des Vieux Augustins, Charlotte demands a room, hastens to bed, sleeps all afternoon and night, till the morrow morning.

On the morrow morning she delivers her note to Duperret. It relates to certain family papers which are in the Minister of the Interior's hands, which a nun at Caen, an old convent-friend of Charlotte's, has need of, which Duperret shall assist her in getting: this, then, was Charlotte's errand to Paris? She has finished this in the course of Friday, yet says nothing of returning. She has seen and silently investigated several things. The Convention, in bodily reality, she has seen; what the Mountain is like. The living physiognomy of Marat she could not see; he is sick at present, and confined to home.

About eight o'clock on the Saturday morning she purchases a large sheath-knife in the Palais-Royal; then straightway, in the Place de Victoires, takes a hackney-coach. "To the Rue de l'Ecole de Médicine, No. 44." It is the residence of the Citoyen Marat! The Citoyen Marat is ill, and cannot be seen, which seems to disappoint her much. Her business is with Marat, then? Hapless, beautiful Charlotte—hapless, squalid Marat! From Caen in the utmost west, from Neuchâtel in the utmost east, they two are drawing nigh each other; they two have, very strangely, business together. Charlotte returning to her inn, despatches a short note to Marat, signifying that she is from Caen; that she desires earnestly to see him, and "will put it in his power to do France a great service." No answer. Charlotte writes another note, still more pressing; sets out with it by coach, about seven in the evening, herself.