nd a few hundreds were distributed, and sung with
the effect, they say, mentioned above--a fresh proof by what weak
instruments evils are now and then prevented. The leading tract for
the next month is the bad economy of the poor. You, my dear madam,
will smile to see your friend figuring away in the new character of a
cook furnishing receipts for cheap dishes. It is not, indeed; a very
brilliant career; but I feel that the value of a thing lies so much
more in its usefulness than its splendor, that I think I should derive
more gratification from being able to lower the price of bread, than
from having written the Iliad."

That Miss More's efforts in behalf of virtue should be opposed by
those against whom they were aimed, will not surprise us. But she
was attacked from a quarter whence she had a right to expect sympathy
and support. The nature of the attack will be learned from a letter
written some years afterwards: "I will say, in a few words, that
two Jacobin and infidel curates, poor and ambitious, formed the
design of attracting notice and getting preferment by attacking some
charity schools--which, with no small labor, I have carried on in
this country for near twenty years--as seminaries of vice, sedition,
and disaffection. At this distance of time,--for it is now ended in
their disgrace and shame,--it will make you smile when I tell you a
few of the charges brought against me, viz., that I hired two men
to assassinate one of these clergymen; that I was actually taken
up for seditious practices; that I was with Hadfield in his attack
on the king's life. At the same time they declared--mark the
consistency--that I was in the pay of the government, and the grand
instigator of the war, by my mischievous pamphlets. That wicked men
should invent this, is not so strange as that they should have found
magazines, reviews, and pamphleteers, to support them. My declared
resolution never to defend myself certainly encouraged them to go on.
How thankful am I that I kept that resolution! though the grief and
astonishment excited by the combination against me nearly cost me my
life."

There is not space to go at large into an account of this persecution,
which was continued for several years. The most inveterate of her
enemies was the curate of her own parish, who was named Bere, and the
most distressing result to herself was being obliged to discontinue
the school at that place. But, whilst laboring so earnestly for the
p