After Miss More had heard them say their texts and had gone to bed, their day began. They gave parties to the servants and tradespeople of the vicinity (pleasing word), and at last, in mere superfluity of naughtiness, hired a large room a mile off and issued invitations to a great ball. This undid them. There happened to be at Barley Wood on the very night of the dance a vigilant visitor who had her suspicions, and who accordingly kept watch and ward. She heard the texts, but she did not go to bed, and from her window she saw the whole household, under cover of night, steal off to their promiscuous friskings, leaving behind them poor Miss Sally only, whose sad duty it was to let them in the next morning, which she duly performed. Friends were called in, and grave consultations held, and in the end Miss More was told how she had been wounded in her own household. It was sore news; she bore it well, wisely determined to quit Barley Wood once and for ever, and live, as a decent old lady should, in a terrace in Clifton. The wicked servants were not told of this resolve until the actual moment of departure had arrived, when they were summoned into the drawing-room, where they found their mistress, and a company of friends. In feeling tones Miss Hannah More upbraided them for their unfaithfulness. ‘You have driven me,’ said she, ‘from my own home, and forced me to seek a refuge among strangers.’ So saying, she stepped into her carriage and was driven away. There is surely something Miltonic about this scene, which is, at all events, better than anything in Akenside’s ‘Pleasures of Imagination.’ The old lady was of course much happier at No. 4, Windsor Terrace, Clifton, than she had been at Barley Wood. She was eighty-three years of age when she took up house there, and eighty-nine when she died, which she did on the 1st of September, 1833. I am indebted for these melancholy--and, I believe, veracious--particulars to that amusing book of Joseph Cottle’s called ‘Early Recollections, chiefly relating to the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge during his long residence in Bristol.’ I still maintain that Hannah More’s works in nineteen volumes are worth eight shillings and sixpence. MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF.