It is sadly to be feared that some of her once very popular works, which undoubtedly accomplished much good in their day, have passed with modern readers into the category of “books which are no books,”--among which Charles Lamb reckoned “court calendars, directories, pocket-books, draught-boards, bound and lettered at the back, ... and generally, all those volumes which ‘no gentleman’s library should be without.’” The whirligig of time brings in new fashions of thought and expression, and “the ways of literature are strewn all over with the shells of books which the public has devoured and forgotten.” But to turn from the works of Mrs. More’s pen and read of the works of her helping hands among the poor, is as though, in some old-time garden where the untrimmed box-borders have grown into sad confusion, and the old flowers with the odd names have ceased to bloom, we came suddenly upon the fresh wild-rose that is never out of fashion. The story of the sturdy struggles of this delicate woman with the squalor, ignorance, and indifference of that barbarous rural England of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, brings her near to us to-day, claiming a respectful admiration which modern taste hardly accords to her writings. * * * * * The following is a list of her principal works: Poems: _The Search After Happiness._ _Sir Eldred of the Bower and the Legend of Sensibility._ _The Bas Bleu._ _Florio._ _Bleeding Rock._ _Bible Rhymes._ Dramas: PERCY, _A Tragedy_, performed at Covent Garden Theatre, 1777. _Fatal Falsehood_, performed in 1779. _The Inflexible Captive._ Prose Works: _Thoughts on the Manners of the Great._ _Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World._ _Strictures on Female Education._ CÆLEBS IN SEARCH OF A WIFE, 1808. _Practical Piety._ _Christian Morals._ _Moral Sketches._ * * * * * [Sidenote: Her childhood.] At an early age she evinced a large aptitude for learning, and a desire for information. When her mother first began to think of teaching her to read, she found Hannah had already made considerable progress, from attending to the instructions bestowed on her elder sisters. Her nurse having lived in the family of Dryden, the inquisitive mind of the intelligent child was incessantly prompting her to ask for stories about the poet; and to her father’s excellent memory she was indebted for long stories from the Greek and Roman histories. Whilst sitting on his knee, he would, to gratify her ear by the sound, repeat speeches of her favorite heroes, in their original language, afterward translating them into English. Mr. More imparted to his daughters the rudiments both of Latin and of the mathematics, and was afterward, it is said, alarmed at the proficiency of his pupils. MRS. ELWOOD: ‘Memoirs of the Literary Ladies of England.’ London: Henry Colburn, 1843. * * * * *