ly advised that
the education should be intrusted to her; but, when the latter
required that the _entire_ direction should be given to her charge,
this was thought, by those in power, to be too great a confidence.
They were willing to engage her in a subordinate capacity; but this
she declined, and so the negotiation ended. Her ideas on the subject
were given to the world under the title of "Hints for forming the
Character of a Young Princess"--a book which subsequently was a great
favorite with her for whose benefit it was intended, and doubtless
contributed to the formation of those virtues and principles which
made her death so much lamented.

In the country Miss More had hoped to find retirement. But Barley
Wood--a place to which she had removed, about one mile from Cowslip
Green--was any thing but a hermitage. "Though," she says, "I neither
return visits nor give invitations, except when quite confined by
sickness, I think I never saw more people, known and unknown, in my
gayest days. I never had so many cares and duties imposed upon me as
now in sickness and old age. I know not how to help it. If my guests
are old, I see them out of respect, and in the hope of receiving some
good; if young, I hope I may do them a little good; if they come from
a distance, I feel as if I ought to see them on that account; if near
home, my neighbors would be jealous of my seeing strangers, and
excluding them." Her epistolary labors were enormous. She laid it down
as a rule never to refuse or delay answering any application for
epistolary advice, enduring the incessant interruptions with
indefatigable kindness.

In spite, however, of all the interruptions of company and of
sickness; for, as she tells us, "From early infancy to late old age,
her life was a successive scene of visitation and restoration," she
found time and strength to compose a series of works on "Morals,"--the
last of the three being produced in the seventy-fifth year of her
age.

In 1828, Miss More was subjected to the severest trial, perhaps, of
her life. After the death of her sister Martha, who had been the
manager of the domestic economy of the sisterhood, affairs at Barley
Wood got into sad confusion. Dishonest and dissolute servants wasted
her substance. After trying in vain to correct the evil by mild
remonstrance, she sank quietly under what seemed inevitable, and
determined to take the infliction as a chastisement to which it was
her duty to submit. At