[35] It is interesting to note the longevity of many of the women writers of this period. Both Miss Edgeworth and Mrs. Barbauld died in their eighty-second year, while Miss More reached the ripe age of eighty-eight. Mrs. Trimmer, nearing seventy, was thus comparatively young at the time of her death. A glimpse of Miss More at seventy-nine is left in the reminiscences of the original Peter Parley, who visited her, _circa_ 1823, much as a devout pilgrim would make a special journey. He wrote: “She was small and wasted away. Her attire was of dark-red bombazine, made loose like a dressing-gown. Her eyes were black and penetrating, her face glowing with cheerfulness, through a lace-work of wrinkles. Her head-dress was a modification of the coiffure of her earlier days--the hair being slightly frizzled, and lightly powdered, yet the whole group of moderate dimensions.” [36] _Vide_ the lay sermon by Samuel McCord Crothers, “The Colonel in the Theological Seminary.”--_Atlantic_, June, 1907. Also Emerson’s essay on “Spiritual Laws.” [37] _Vide_ Miss Strickland’s “Lives of the Seven Bishops.” [38] For Jane Taylor, _vide_ “Contributions of Q Q;” “Essays in Rhymes on Morals and Planners.” For Ann Taylor, _vide_ “Hymns for Infant Schools.” [39] Frederic Harrison, in his “The Choice of Books,” (Macmillan, 1886) writes: “Poor Lamb has not a little to answer for, in the revived relish for garbage unearthed from old theatrical dung-heaps. Be it just or earnest, I have little patience with the Elia-tic philosophy of the frivolous. Why do we still suffer the traditional hypocrisy about the dignity of literature,--literature I mean, in the gross, which includes about equal parts of what is useful and what is useless? Why are books as books, writers as writers, readers as readers, meritorious, apart from any good in them, or anything that we can get from them?” [40] The reader is referred to “The Moral Instruction of Children,” by Felix Adler, New York: Appleton, 1892. Besides considering the use to be made of fairy tales, fables, and Bible stories, the author discusses fully the elements in the Odyssey and the Iliad which are valuable adjuncts in moral training. IV. CONCERNING NOW AND THEN