Wearisome it is to come in contact with a person of one idea. Mrs. Trimmer naïvely confesses in her journal that she must have worn out the patience of many a visitor with her views upon education. As the years advanced, her opinions became more narrowed and more sectarian. Mrs. Trimmer exhibited piety which was of the emotional, almost of the hysterical kind, yet sincere in its whole-souled acceptance of Bible truths. She questioned nothing; she believed with a simple faith that lacked proportion. One has to view her entirely from the standpoint of this single interest which had her under complete control. In her “Guardian of Education” she dwelt much upon the dangerous matter contained in children’s books; in her “New Plan of Education” she condemned any attempt to extend the scope of education for the poor. Her chief motive in both cases was to keep away from faith any cause of its possible undoing. The earnestness put into her charity work, her untiring devotion to the Sunday-school, a certain gentle charm of conversation won for Mrs. Trimmer wide-spread attention. Her life was guided by the belief in a divine mission; her days were well ordered, from the hours before breakfast, which she reserved for the learning of poetry, to the evenings, when she would give herself up to meditation and prayer. In fact, during twenty-five years, she kept a diary, penned in secret moments of retreat, a curious display of over-welling feeling--pietistical neurasthenia. These pages are hardly to be considered interpretative--they are outpourings, giving one an awful sense of unworthiness, if life consists simply in submitting to biblical strictures and in uttering biblical paraphrases. But Mrs. Trimmer was withal an active little woman, whose three hours, spent every Sunday over her journal, represented meditation only: in her practise of Christianity she was zealous; and her pen was employed in preparing the kind of food to foster a proper feeling among children and cottagers and _servants_. In this latter respect there was a change indeed from Miss Edgeworth, who considered the advisability of separating young people entirely from any possible contact with servants.