In 1737, the first volume, a large folio, came out under the following title, "A Curious Herbal, containing 500 Cuts of the most useful Plants which are now used in the Practice of Physic. Engraved in Folio Copperplates, after Drawings by Eliz. Blackwell." The profits which Mrs Blackwell received from this work enabled her to relieve her husband from prison. The adventures of Blackwell after his release are well known. Having devoted much of his attention to agricultural science, he obtained for some time a lucrative employment from the Duke of Chandos. He was subsequently invited to Sweden on account of a work he had published on agriculture. He went there, leaving his wife in England. He was received with honour at the court of Stockholm, where he lived with the prime minister, in the enjoyment of a salary from the government. During this period of prosperity he had continued to send large sums of money to his wife, who was now making arrangements to leave England with her only child and join her husband. But heaven, which often brings human histories to a very different conclusion from what readers of romances are disposed to acquiesce in, for the wise end of impressing men with the most solemn conviction of the reality of another world, which is the appointed place of rest and reward for goodness, saw fit to remove from this noble woman the husband whom she had loved so ardently, and for whom she had wrought a work of such singular piety, and to take him from the world by a melancholy and frightful death. A conspiracy against the constitution of Sweden was formed by Count Tessin; and Blackwell, it is believed innocently, was suspected of being concerned in the plot. He was seized and put to the torture. He was beheaded in July 1747. LAETITIA BARBAULD. [BORN 1743. DIED 1825.] JOHNSTONE. The only daughter of Dr John Aikin, a Dissenting minister. Her youth was spent in entire seclusion, and her education was entirely domestic. At two years of age, it is stated on the authority of her mother, she could read with tolerable ease, and, at two years and a half, as well "as most women." It is at least certain that, from the instructions of her father, Miss Aikin acquired a competent knowledge of Latin; and that she was not indebted, for even a single lesson, either to professional female tuition, or to the teachers of the fashionable accomplishments, considered so important in forming the minds and manners of young ladies. Dr Aikin became a teacher at the Dissenting academy in Warrington, in Lancashire, when his daughter was about fifteen. This seminary enjoyed high celebrity. The teachers were all men of distinguished talents. Dr Priestley and Dr Enfield were of their number. In such a society the genius of Miss Aikin was fostered and animated; and her poems, published in 1773, rose into immediate popularity. Verse had the quality of comparative rarity in those days, and a female poet had a clear and unoccupied field.