(1845), A Woman's Story (1857), Can Wrong be Right? (1862), The Fight of Faith (1868–69). To her husband's Art Journal Mrs Hall contributed many picturesque sketches, some of which were reissued as Pilgrimages to English Shrines and The Book of the Thames. She also produced some pleasing children's books. Her humour is not so broad or racy as Lady Morgan's, nor her observation so acute and profound as Miss Edgeworth's. Her husband, Samuel Carter Hall (1800-89), who was born near Waterford, the son of an English officer, came to London in 1831, reported and wrote for various papers, sub-edited the John Bull, and founded (1839) and edited the Art Journal. The works written and edited by him and his wife, alone or often conjointly, exceed five hundred volumes; of these his Retrospect of a Long Life (2 vols. 1883) is a series of jottings, not a set autobiography. Both husband and wife are buried at Addlestone, Surrey. From 'Sketches of Irish Character.' Shane Thurlough [is] 'as dacent a boy,' and Shane's wife as 'clane-skinned a girl,' as any in the world. There is Shane, an active handsome-looking fellow, leaning over the half-door of his cottage, kicking a hole in the wall with his brogue, and picking up all the large gravel within his reach to pelt the ducks with-those useful Irish scavengers. Let us speak to him. 'Good-morrow, Shane! Och! the bright bames of heaven on ye every day! and kindly welcome, my lady; and won't ye step in and rest?-it's powerful hot, and a beautiful summer, sure the Lord be praised!' 'Thank you, Shane. I thought you were going to cut the hay-field to-day; if a heavy shower comes it will be spoiled; it has been fit for the scythe these two days.' 'Sure it's all owing to that thief o' the world, Tom Parrel, my lady. Didn't he promise me the loan of his scythe? and, by the same token, I was to pay him for it; and depinding on that, I didn't buy one, which I have been threatening to do for the last two years.' 'But why don't you go to Carrick and purchase one?' 'To Carrick! Och ! 'tis a good step to Carrick, and my toes are on the groundsaving your presence-for I depinded on Tim Jarvis to tell Andy Cappler, the brogue-maker, to do my shoes; and, bad luck to him, the spalpeen! he forgot it.' 'Where's your pretty wife, Shane?' 'She's in all the woe o' the world, ma'am dear. And she puts the blame of it on me, though I'm not in the faut this time anyhow. The child's taken the smallpox, and she depinded on me to tell the doctor to cut it for the cowpox, and I depinded on Kitty Cackle, the limmer, to tell the doctor's own man, and thought she would not forget it, becase the boy's her bachelor; but out o' sight, out o' mindthe never a word she tould him about it, and the babby has got it nataral, and the woman's in heart trouble-to say nothing o' myself-and it the first, and all.' 'I am very sorry indeed, for you have got a much better wife than most men.' 'That's a true word, my lady; only she's fidgety-like sometimes, and says I don't hit the nail on the head quick enough; and she takes a dale more trouble than she need about many a thing.' 'I do not think I ever saw Ellen's wheel without flax before, Shane.' 'Bad cess to the wheel!-I got it this morning about that too. I depinded on John Williams to bring the flax from O'Flaherty's this day week, and he forgot it; and she says I ought to have brought it myself, and I close to the spot. "But where's the good?" says I; "sure he'll bring it next time." "I suppose, Shane, you will soon move into the new cottage at Clurn Hill? I passed it to-day, and it looked so cheerful; and when you get there you must take Ellen's advice, and depend solely on yourself.' 'Och, ma'am dear, don't mintion it; sure it's that makes me so down in the mouth this very minit. Sure I saw that born blackguard, Jack Waddy, and he comes in here quite innocent-like: "Shane, you've an eye to squire's new lodge," says he. "Maybe I have," says I. "I'm yer man," says he. How so?" says I. "Sure I'm as good as married to my lady's maid," said he ; "and I'll spake to the squire for you my own self." "The blessing be about you," says I, quite grateful-and we took a strong cup on the strength of it and, depinding on him, I thought all safe. And what d'ye think, my lady? Why, himself stalks into the place-talked the squire over, to be sure-and without so much as by yer lave, sates himself and his new wife on the laase in the house; and I may go whistle.' 'It was a great pity, Shane, that you didn't go yourself to Mr Clurn.' 'That's a true word for ye, ma'am dear; but it's hard if a poor man can't have a frind to depind on.' Miss Agnes Strickland (1796-1874) was a daughter of Thomas Strickland of Reydon Hall in Suffolk, originally a dock manager at Norwich, who after his retirement from business took entire charge of his daughters' education. Agnes soon took to writing, producing a poetical narrative, Worcester Field, or the Cavalier; a series of historic scenes and stories for children; and in 1835 The Pilgrims of Walsingham, somewhat on the plan of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims. She then, aided by her sister Elizabeth (17941875), entered upon her copious and elaborate Lives of the Queens of England from the Norman Conquest (12 vols. 1840-48; new ed., 6 vols., 1864– 1865). The Times said this work possessed 'the fascination of a romance united to the integrity of a history,' while other critics more justly complained of its feebleness of thought and poverty of style. The method is wholly uncritical; but the volumes give, nevertheless, vivid pictures of court ceremonial and domestic life, and were largely based on unpublished documents in the public offices and in private mansions. More than a dozen of the Lives were the sole work of the elder sister, who preferred not to have her share in the enterprise acknowledged on the title-page of any of the joint-works. The English history. was followed by Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princesses connected with the Regal Succession of Great Britain (8 vols. 1850-59), also written by the sisters jointly. Miss Strickland was a strong partisan of the Stuarts; and her Life of Mary Queen of Scots (originally in the Queens, but separately published in 1873) is written with great fullness of detail and illustration, many new facts having been added by study of the papers in the Register House, Edinburgh, and documents in the possession of the Earl of Moray and the representatives of other ancient families. Other works by Agnes (in some cases with help from Elizabeth) were Lives of the Seven Bishops, Lives of the Tudor Princesses, The Last Four Stuart Princesses, and Bachelor Kings of England. It need hardly be said that the following story of Moray's deceit and Lindsay's ferocity, from the Queens of Scotland, must not be accepted as historical truth. Mary of Scotland at Lochleven. The conspirators, calling themselves the Lords of Secret Council, having completed their arrangements for the long-meditated project of depriving her of her crown, summoned Lord Lindsay to Edinburgh, and on the 23rd of July delivered to him and Sir Robert Melville three deeds, to which they were instructed to obtain her signature, either by flattering words or absolute force. The first contained a declaration, as if from herself, 'that, being in infirm health and worn out with the cares of government, she had taken purpose voluntarily to resign her crown and office to her dearest son, James, Prince of Scotland.' In the second, her trusty brother James, Earl of Moray, was constituted regent for the prince her son, during the minority of the royal infant.' The third appointed a provisional council of regency, consisting of Morton and the other Lords of Secret Council, to carry on the government till Moray's return; or, in case of his refusing to accept it, till the prince arrived at the legal age for exercising it himself. Aware that Mary would not easily be induced to execute such instruments, Sir Robert Melville was especially employed to cajole her into this political suicide. That ungrateful courtier, who had been employed and trusted by his unfortunate sovereign ever since her return from France, and had received nothing but benefits from her, undertook this office. Having obtained a private interview with her, he deceitfully entreated her to sign certain deeds that would be presented to her by Lindsay, as the only means of preserving her life, which, he assured her, was in the most imminent danger.' Then he gave her a turquoise ring, telling her 'it was sent to her from the Earls of Argyle, Huntly, and Athole, Secretary Lethington, and the Laird of Grange, who loved her Majesty, and had by that token accredited him to exhort her to avert the peril to which she would be exposed if she ventured to refuse the requisition of the Lords of Secret Council, whose designs, they well knew, were to take her life, either secretly or by a mock-trial among themselves.' Finding the queen impatient of this insidious advice, he produced a letter from the English ambassador Throckmorton, out of the scabbard of his sword, telling her he had concealed it there at peril of his own life, in order to convey it to her '-a paltry piece of acting, worthy of the parties by whom it had been devised, for the letter had been written for the express purpose of inducing Mary to accede to the demission of her regal dignity, telling her, as if in confidence, that it was the queen of England's sisterly advice that she should not irritate those who had her in their power by refusing the only concession that could save her life, and observing that nothing that was done under her present circumstances could be of any force when she regained her freedom.' Mary, however, resolutely refused to sign the deeds; declaring, with truly royal courage, that she would not make herself a party to the treason of her own subjects by acceding to their lawless requisition, which, as she truly alleged, 'proceeded only of the ambition of a few, and was far from the desire of her people.' The fair-spoken Melville having reported his ill success to his coadjutor Lord Lindsay, Moray's brotherin-law, the bully of the party, who had been selected for the honourable office of extorting by force from the royal captive the concession she denied, that brutal ruffian burst rudely into her presence, and, flinging the deeds violently on the table before her, told her to sign them without delay, or worse would befall her. 'What!' exclaimed Mary, shall I set my hand to a deliberate falsehood, and, to gratify the ambition of my nobles, relinquish the office God hath given to me, to my son, an infant little more than a year old, incapable of governing the realm, that my brother Moray may reign in his name?' She was proceeding to demonstrate the unreasonableness of what was required of her, but Lindsay contemptuously interrupted her with scornful laughter; then, scowling ferociously upon her, he swore with a deep oath, that if she would not sign those instruments, he would do it with her heart's blood, and cast her into the lake to feed the fishes.' Full well did the defenceless woman know how capable he was of performing his threat, having seen his rapier reeking with human blood shed in her presence, when he assisted at the butchery of her unfortunate secretary. The ink was scarcely dry of her royal signature to the remission she had granted to him for that outrage; but, reckless of the fact that he owed his life, his forfeit lands, yea, the very power of injuring her, to her generous clemency, he thus requited the grace she had, in evil hour for herself, accorded to him. Her heart was too full to continue the unequal contest. 'I am not yet five-and-twenty,' she pathetically observed; somewhat more she would have said, but her utterance failed her, and she began to weep with hysterical emotion. Sir Robert Melville, affecting an air of the deepest concern, whispered in her ear an earnest entreaty for her to save her life by signing the papers,' reiterating that whatever she did would be invalid because extorted by force.' Mary's tears continued to flow, but sign she would not, till Lindsay, infuriated by her resolute resistance, swore that, having begun the matter, he would also finish it then and there,' forced the pen into her reluc tant hand, and, according to the popular version of this scene of lawless violence, grasped her arm in the struggle so rudely as to leave the prints of his mailclad fingers visibly impressed. In an access of pain and terror, with streaming eyes and averted head, she affixed her regal signature to the three deeds, without once looking upon them. Sir Walter Scott alludes to Lindsay's barbarous treatment of his hapless queen in these nervous lines: 'And haggard Lindsay's iron eye, George Douglas, the youngest son of the evil lady of Lochleven, being present, indignantly remonstrated with his savage brother-in-law, Lindsay, for his misconduct; and though hitherto employed as one of the persons whose office it was to keep guard over her, he His became from that hour the most devoted of her friends and champions, and the contriver of her escape. elder brother, Sir William Douglas, the castellan, absolutely refused to be present; entered a protest against the wrong that had been perpetrated under his roof; and besought the queen to give him a letter of exoneration, certifying that he had nothing to do with it, and that it was against his consent-which letter she gave him. William and Mary Howitt, like-minded helpmates and fellow - labourers, were amiable, earnest, and industrious compilers and authors, with a sincere love for letters, and the secret of a charm which secured them popularity in their own days, though now little of their work is remembered but a few of Mary's verses. William Howitt (1792-1879) was born at Heanor, Derbyshire, and educated at Ackworth and Tamworth ; and he served a four years' apprenticeship to a builder and carpenter, but meanwhile wrote poems and an account of a country excursion. In 1821 he married Mary Botham (1799-1888; born at Coleford, Gloucestershire, and brought up at Uttoxeter); they settled at Hanley to conduct a chemist's business, whence they removed in 1823 to Nottingham for twelve years of successful literary industry. Later places of abode were Esher in Surrey, London, Heidelberg, and Rome. In 1852-54, at the height of the gold-fever, William Howitt, with two sons, spent two years in Australia. Husband and wife quitted the Society of Friends in 1847, and later became believers in spiritualism; Mary in 1882 joined the Catholic communion. Both died at Rome. The widow enjoyed a public pension of £100 a year from the time of her husband's death. Mary Howitt wrote from her earliest years, translated Frederika Bremer and Hans Andersen, and contributed poems, stories, essays, to the People's Journal, Howitt's Journal, Chambers's Journal, &c. Joint productions of husband and wife were The Forest Minstrel (poems, 1827), Desolation of Eyam (1827), The Book of the Seasons (1831), Stories of English Life (1853), and Ruined Abbeys and Castles of Great Britain. Among Mary's works (over a hundred, if translations and books edited by her are included) were Wood Leighton, or a Year in the Country; a history of the United States; a threevolume novel called The Cost of Caergwyn; and several volumes of poetry, 'tales in verse,' and books for children. Of the husband's fifty works, among the chief were a History of Priestcraft (1833); Rural Life in England (1837); Visits to Remarkable Places (1838-41); Colonisation and Christianity (1838); The Boy's Country Book (1839); The Student Life of Germany (1841); Homes and Haunts of the Poets (1847); Land, Labour, and Gold (1855); Illustrated History of England (1856-61); History of the Supernatural (1863); Discovery in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand (1865); and The Mad War Planet and other Poems (1871). His books on Germany and German life were regarded by Germans as about the most intelligent and sympathetic written by any foreigner. See Mary's Autobiography, edited by her daughter (1889). Mountain Children. By MARY HOWITT. Dwellers by lake and hill! Go gladly forth and drink of joy your fill, No crowd impedes your way, No city wall impedes your further bounds; Where the wild flock can wander, ye may stray The long day through, 'mid summer sights and sounds. The sunshine and the flowers, And the old trees that cast a solemn shade; The pleasant evening, the fresh dewy hours, And the green hills whereon your fathers played. The gray and ancient peaks These are your joys! Go forth- For in His spirit God has clothed the earth, The voice of hidden rills Its quiet way into your spirits finds; Ye sit upon the earth Twining its flowers, and shouting full of glee; Hence is it that the lands Of storm and mountain have the noblest sons, Children of pleasant song Are taught within the mountain solitudes; For hoary legends to your wilds belong, And yours are haunts where inspiration broods. Then go forth-earth and sky To you are tributary; joys are spread Profusely, like the summer flowers that lie In the green path, beneath your gamesome tread! From 'The Rural Life of England.' When you leave [the shepherds of Salisbury Plain], plunge into the New Forest in Hampshire. There is a region where a summer month might be whiled away as in a fairy-land. There, in the very heart of that old forest, you find the spot where Rufus fell by the bolt of Tyrell, looking very much as it might look then. All around you lie forest and moorland for many a mile. The fallow and red deer in thousands herd there as of old. The squirrels gambol in the oaks above you; the swine rove in the thick fern and the deep glades of the forest as in a state of nature. The dull tinkle of the cattle-bell comes through the wood; and ever and anon, as you wander forward, you catch the blue smoke of some hidden abode, curling over the tree-tops; and come to sylvan bowers and little bough-overshadowed cottages, as primitive as any that the reign of the Conqueror himself could have shown. What haunts are in these glades for poets! what streams flow through their bosky banks, to soothe at once the ear and eye enamoured of peace and beauty! What endless groupings and colourings for the painter! At Boldre you may find a spot worth seeing, for it is the parsonage once MARY HOWITT. From a Photograph. inhabited by the venerable William Gilpin-the descendant of Barnard Gilpin, the apostle of the norththe author of Forest Scenery; and near it is the school which he built and endowed for the poor from the sale of his drawings. Not very distant from this stands the rural dwelling of one of England's truest-hearted women, Caroline Bowles; and not far off you have the woods of Netley Abbey, the Isle of Wight, the Solent, and the open sea. But still move on through the fair fields of Dorset and Somerset, to the enchanted land of Devon. If you want stern grandeur, follow its north-western coast; if peaceful beauty, look down into some one of its rich vales, green as an emerald, and pastured by its herds of red cattle; if all the summer loveliness of woods and rivers, you may ascend the Tamar or the Tavy, or many another stream; or you may stroll on through valleys that for glorious solitudes, or fair English homes amid their woods and hills, shall leave you nothing to desire. If you want sternness and loneliness, you may pass into Dartmoor. There are wastes and wilds, crags of granite, views into far-off districts, and the sounds of waters hurrying away over their rocky beds, enough to satisfy the largest hungering and thirsting after poetical delight. . ... But even there you need not rest; there lies a land of gray antiquity, of desolate beauty, still before you Cornwall. It is a land almost without a tree. That is, all its high and wild plains are destitute of them, and the bulk of its surface is of this character. Some sweet and sheltered vales it has, filled with noble wood, as that of Tresillian near Truro; but over a great portion of it extend gray heaths. It is a land where the wild furze seems never to have been rooted up, and where the huge masses of stone that lie about its hills and valleys are clad with the lichen of centuries. And yet how does this bare and barren land fasten on your imagination! It is a country that seems to have retained its ancient attachments longer than any other. The British tongue here lingered till lately-as the ruins of King Arthur's palace still crown the stormy steep of Tintagel; and the saints that succeeded the heroic race seem to have left their names on almost every town and village. Hugh Miller (1802-56), a self-taught man of science with a marvellous command of a good English style, surpassed all his predecessors as an expositor of geology. A native of Cromarty, he came of a race of seafaring men, of Scandinavian descent and well-to-do in the world, who owned coasting-vessels and built houses in their native town. One of them had done a little in the way of buccaneering on the Spanish Main; most of them perished at sea, including Hugh's father, lost in a storm in 1807. His mother was greatgranddaughter of a Celtic seer, Donald Ross. From boyhood Hugh was a keen observer, given to collecting shells and stones, and at first selfwilled, wild, and somewhat intractable. By the aid of two maternal uncles he received the common education of a Scottish country-school, and at seventeen was by his own desire apprenticed to a stone-mason. In the opening chapters of his work on the Old Red Sandstone he has vividly recorded his geological discoveries made while toiling at his craft in the Cromarty quarries; the necessity that had made him a quarrier taught him also to be a geologist.' Towards the end of 1822 his apprenticeship was completed; and he went to Edinburgh for a year (1824-25), where the strongest impression he experienced was from the preaching of Dr Thomas M'Crie. Back in the north again, Miller ventured on the publication of a volume of Poems, written in the Leisure Hours of a Journeyman Mason (1829); but though the pieces contain many passable things, his prose has more real poetry than his verse. About this time he made the acquaintance of his lifelong friend, Dr Carruthers, collaborator with Robert Chambers in the first edition of this work, who had printed in the Inverness Courier some admirably written letters of his on the fisherman's life at sea. Miller had been a diligent student of the best English authors, and was already nice in his choice of language. This very remarkable mason was now too conspicuous to be much longer employed in hewing jambs, or even cutting inscriptions on tombstones, a department in which (like Telford the engineer in his early days) he greatly excelled. He carried on his geological studies and researches on the coast-lines of the Moray Firth; and the ancient deposits of the lias, with their mollusca, belemnites, ammonites, and nautili, involved a study of nomenclature very different from poetical diction. Theological controversy also claimed his attention; and as Miller was always a stout polemic, and quite sufficiently pugnacious, he mingled freely in local Church disputes, forerunners of the great national ecclesiastical struggle in which he was also to take a prominent part. The Reform Bill gave fresh scope for activity, and Miller was zealous on the popular side. Even before this he had become deeply attached to an accomplished girl in a higher social circle than his own; the course of true love was not quite smooth, but the devotion of the lovers triumphed, and they were married in 1837. Meanwhile Miller had been drawn away from his handicraft; in 1834 he began work as accountant in a Cromarty bank; and the year after he published Scenes and Legends in the North of Scotland, or the Traditional History of Cromarty-a book as remarkable for the variety of its traditional lore as for its admirable style. He was also a contributor to 'Tales of the Borders' and Chambers's Journal, producing stories almost always of a pensive or tragic cast. Fifteen years a stone-mason and about six years a bank-accountant, Miller was next moved into the post in which he spent the rest of his life. The ecclesiastical party in Scotland then known as the 'Non-Intrusionists' or Free Church party projected a newspaper to advocate their views; Miller's sympathies drew him in the same direction, and he had sufficiently shown his literary talents and his zeal in the cause by his letter to Lord Brougham on the Auchterarder case in 1839. By Dr Candlish and other leaders he was now invited to Edinburgh, and in 1840 he entered upon his duties as editor of The Witness, a twice-a-week paper. Diffident at first, he soon stamped his personality upon his paper, and made a deep and permanent impression upon the Scottish people. As Dr Chalmers put it, Miller took a long time to load, but was a great gun when he did go off. He elaborated his leading articles with great care, so that they have been described as 'complete journalistic essays, symmetrical in plan, finished in execution, and of sustained and splendid ability.' Sir Archibald Geikie described Miller as he knew him at this time as 'a man of good height and broad shoulders, clad in a suit of rough tweed, with a shepherd's plaid across his chest and a stout stick in his hand. His locks of sandycoloured hair escaped from under a soft felt hat; his blue eyes, either fixed on the ground or gazing dreamily ahead, seemed to take no heed of their surroundings. His rugged features wore an expression of earnest gravity, softening sometimes into a smile and often suffused with a look of wistful sadness, while the firmly compressed lips betokened strength and determination of character. The springy, elastic step with which he moved swiftly along the crowded pavement was that of the mountaineer rather than that of the native of a populous city.' During the remaining fifteen years of his life, besides contributing largely to his paper Miller wrote his work on The Old Red Sandstone (1841), part of which appeared originally in Chambers's Journal and part in the Witness. Professor Huxley wrote twenty years afterwards: "The more I study the fishes of the "Old Red" the more I am struck with the patience and sagacity manifested in Hugh Miller's researches and by the natural insight, which in his case seems to have supplied the place of special anatomical knowledge.' A long-projected visit to England in 1845 furnished material for his First Impressions of England and its People (1847). Then followed Footprints of the Creator, or the Asterolepis of Stromness (1850), a reply to the Vestiges of Creation, and a strenuous denial of the development theory; My |