hree of the girls had an aptitude for teaching, and opened a
boarding-school in Bristol when the oldest was only twenty. The school
was a great success, and soon became fashionable, and ultimately famous.
To this school the early labors of Hannah More were devoted; and she
soon attracted attention by her accomplishments, especially in the
modern languages, in which she conversed with great accuracy and
facility. But her talents were more remarkable than her
accomplishments; and eminent men sought her society and friendship, who
in turn introduced her to their own circle of friends, by all of whom
she was admired. Thus she gradually came to know the celebrated Dean
Tucker of Gloucester cathedral; Ferguson the astronomer, then lecturing
at Bristol; the elder Sheridan, also giving lectures on oratory in the
same city; Garrick, on the eve of his retirement from the stage; Dr.
Johnson, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Mrs. Montagu, in whose _salon_ the most
distinguished men of the age assembled as the headquarters of
fashionable society,--Edmund Burke, then member for Bristol in the House
of Commons; Gibbon; Alderman Cadell, the great publisher; Bishop
Porteus; Rev. John Newton; and Sir James Stonehouse, an eminent
physician. With all these stars she was on intimate terms, visiting them
at their houses, received by them all as more than an equal,--for she
was not only beautiful and witty, but had earned considerable reputation
for her poetry. Garrick particularly admired her as a woman of genius,
and performed one of her plays ("Percy") twenty successive nights at
Drury Lane, writing himself both the prologue and the epilogue. It must
be borne in mind that when first admitted to the choicest society of
London,--at the houses not merely of literary men, but of great
statesmen and nobles like Lord Camden, Lord Spencer, the Duke of
Newcastle. Lord Pembroke, Lord Granville, and others,--she was teaching
in a girls' school at Bristol, and was a young lady under thirty
years of age.

It was as a literary woman--when literary women were not so numerous or
ambitious as they now are--that Hannah More had the _entree_ into the
best society under the patronage of the greatest writers of the age. She
was a literary lion before she was twenty-five. She attracted the
attention of Sheridan by her verses when she was scarcely eighteen. Her
"Search after Happiness" went through six editions before the year 1775.
Her tragedy of "Percy" was translated in