Elizabeth Isabella Spence was the daughter of a Durham physician, and the granddaughter of Dr. Fordyce. She was early orphaned, and was brought up in London by an uncle and aunt. On their death the literary tastes which had already made her a contributor to the press became useful in the gaining of a subsistence. She wrote nine novels or collections of stories, and three works of inland travel, devoted respectively to the North Highlands, Scotland, England, and Wales. She “lodged for the greater part of her life in a retired street at the west end of the town”—Weymouth Street, that is. Amongst her friends were the Benthams, Lady Margaret Bland Burges, Lady Anne Barnard (the authoress of “Auld Robin Gray”), Sir Humphrey Davy, L. E. L., and the venerable Mary Knowles, one of the few ladies who met Dr. Johnson on equal terms in argument, and could even claim a victory over that doughty champion. Miss Spence died on the 27th July, 1832. Her impressions of the manufacturing district were not of a favourable kind. The inns of Warrington did not please her, and “the dirtiness of the people here exceeds,” she says, “what I could have believed in any part of this kingdom.” From Bolton she writes: “The apparel of the women in some of the villages we passed through was scarcely decent, and all the children were without shoes and stockings.” At Wigan she mentions the “celebrated spa” and the “cannel coal,” which was made into ornaments. “I have heard a dinner service was once made out of this coal, which, after the entertainment, was demolished in the fire.” Bolton she found to be situated on “a dreary moor,” but there was some compensation in “an extensive view of a fine open country.” The next stay was at Stand Hall, a mansion of which the beautiful situation and the hospitality of her friends, who were its inmates, made her pardon even the rainfall. Her host, “Mr. J——,” was Mr. John Johnson, steward for Lord Derby in the Bury district. “The large town of Manchester,” she says, “spreads along the valley in front of the house at some miles’ distance, and the less one of Bury is seen distinctly to the left, surrounded by villages with simple cottages dispersed along the plain. The hills of Lancashire, Derbyshire, Cheshire, and Yorkshire, rising in succession, spread in a vast amphitheatre till lost in the immensity of space; while the rugged tops of the Welsh mountains, which I gazed upon as old friends, hide their heads in the clouds, of which they seem to form a part. The dialect of this country is peculiarly unharmonious to the ear, and when spoken by the peasantry is scarcely to be understood. All the lower orders of the people are employed in the manufactories, and the dress worn by the women is a long bed-gown, black stockings, and a mob-cap hanging open from the ears.” The fidelity of her description of the former dress of the people will be recognised.