In 1767, she accepted the addresses of Edward Turner, Esq., of Belmont, a man of large fortune, good character, and liberal education, but of a gloomy and capricious temper, and almost double her own age. She resigned her partnership in the school, and spared no expense in fitting herself out to be his wife. Three times in the course of six years the wedding-day was fixed, and as often postponed by her affianced husband. Miss Hannah More’s health and spirits failed; she could see no rational prospect of happiness with a man who could so trifle with her feelings, and at last found resolution to terminate the anxious and painful treaty. His mind, however, was ill at ease till he was allowed to settle upon her an annuity of £200, having offered three times that sum. At his death he also bequeathed her £1000. Her hand was again solicited, but refused. Possibly her experience prompted her sisters to spend their days in single blessedness. One of the most important events in the life of Miss Hannah More, was her first visit to London, in 1773. At that time, neither the habits of people deemed religious, nor the scruples of her own mind, interdicted her from visiting the theatre, and listening to Shakespeare speaking in the person of that consummate actor, David Garrick. The character in which she first saw him was Lear, and having written her opinion of that wonderful impersonation to a mutual friend, who showed it to him, the scenic hero called upon her at her lodgings in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. He was delighted with his new acquaintance, and took a pride and pleasure in introducing her to the splendid circle in which he moved. In six weeks she became intimate with the rank and talent of the time. One of the two sprightly sisters who accompanied her to London, graphically describes her first interview with the great moralist of the eighteenth century. Miss Reynolds telling the doctor of the rapturous exclamations of the sisters on the road, and Johnson shaking his scientific head at Miss Hannah, and calling her “a silly thing!” she seating herself in the lexicographer’s great chair, hoping to catch a little ray of his genius, and he laughing heartily, and assuring her that it was a chair in which he never sat. Miss Hannah More’s quickness of repartee, aptness of quotation, and kindliness of heart, won the favour of the leaders of society. But in the glittering saloons of fashion, when senators and peers paid her homage, she stood quiet and self-possessed. In 1775, while the first rich bloom still rested on the fruits of her London experience, she remarks: “The more I see of the honoured, famed, and great, the more I see of the bitterness, the unsatisfactoriness, of all created good, and that no earthly pleasure can fill up the wants of the immortal principle within.” None could more thoroughly weigh popular acclaim, and more firmly pronounce it the hosannas of a drivelling generation than this young school-mistress.