Anna Maria Porter, the youngest of the group, was the first to appear in print. At the age of fifteen, she published a little volume called _Artless Tales_. From this time until her death, at least every two years a new book from her pen was announced. She wrote a large number of historical romances, which were widely read and translated into many languages. This kind of story, in the hands of Sophia Lee, was tame and uninteresting. Anna Porter increased its scope and its popularity. Her plots are well worked out with many thrilling adventures. Her imagination, however, had been quickened by reading, not by observation, and although her scenes cover many countries of Europe and many periods of history, they differ but little in pictorial detail, and her characters are lifeless. Her style of writing is, moreover, so inflated that it gives an air of unreality to her books. She thus describes the Hungarian brothers: "They were, indeed, perfect specimens of the loveliness of youth and the magnificence of manhood." This novel, dealing with the French Revolution, was one of the most popular of all her stories. It went through several editions both in England and on the continent. Superlative expressions seem to have been fashionable in that age which was still encumbered by much that was artificial in dress and manners. Miss Porter with proper formality thus writes of her heroine as she was recovering from a fainting fit: "With a blissful shiver, Ippolita slowly unclosed her eyes, and turning them round, with such a look as we may imagine blessed angels cast, when awakening amid the raptures of another world, she met those of her sweet and gracious uncle." Some of her society novels are witty and have a lively style, which suggests the truth of Mr. S. C. Hall's description of the sisters. Anna, a blonde, handsome and gay, he named L'Allegro, in contrast to Jane, a brunette, equally handsome, but with the dignified manners of the heroines of her own romances, whom he styled Il Penseroso. * * * * *