kewise met with much notice and admiration, and
have been several times reprinted. The authors did not think proper to
distinguish their respective contributions, and several of the pieces
have, in consequence, been generally misappropriated. The fragment of
"Sir Bertrand," in particular, though alien from the character of
that brilliant and airy imagination which was never conversant with
terror, and rarely with pity, has been repeatedly ascribed to Mrs.
Barbauld, even in print.

Having thus laid the foundation of a lasting reputation in literature,
Miss Aikin might have been expected to proceed with vigor in rearing
the superstructure; and the world awaited with impatience the result
of her further efforts. But an event, the most important of her life,
was about to subject her to new influences, new duties, to alter her
station, her course of life, and to modify even the bent of her mind.
This event was her marriage, which took place in May, 1774.

Her husband, the Rev. Rochemont Barbauld, was a dissenting minister,
descended from a family of French Protestants, who had taken refuge in
England in the reign of Louis XIV. Mr. Barbauld was educated in the
academy at Warrington, and, at the time of his marriage, had been
recently appointed to the charge of a dissenting congregation at
Palgrave, in Suffolk, near Diss, in Norfolk, where he had announced
his intention of opening a boarding-school for boys. This undertaking
proved speedily successful--a result which must in great part be
attributed, first to the reputation, and afterwards to the active
exertions, of Mrs. Barbauld. She particularly superintended the
departments of geography and English composition, which latter she
taught by a method then unusual, but which has since been brought much
into practice. Her plan, according to the statement of Mr. William
Taylor, of Norwich, one of her first pupils, was, to read a fable, a
short story, or a moral essay, aloud, and then to send them back into
the school-room to write it out on slates in their own words. Each
exercise was separately examined by her: the faults of grammar were
obliterated, the vulgarisms were chastised, the idle epithets were
cancelled, and a distinct reason was always assigned for every
correction, so that the arts of inditing and criticising were in some
degree learnt together. Mrs. Barbauld also instructed the pupils in
the art of declamation; and the pleasing accomplishments of good
reading and