of London; the Bishop of St. Asaph; and Dr. Home, then Dean
of Canterbury. She became very intimate with Wilberforce and Rev. John
Newton, while she did not give up her friendship for Horace Walpole,
Pepys, and other lights of the social world.

About this time (1785) she retired to Cowslip Green, a pretty cottage
ten miles from Bristol, and spent her time in reading, writing, and
gardening. The country, with its green pastures and still waters, called
her back to those studies and duties which are most ennobling, and which
produce the most lasting pleasure. In this humble retreat she had many
visitors from among her illustrious friends. She became more and more
religious, without entirely giving up society; corresponding with the
eminent men and women she visited, especially Mrs. Montagu, Dr. Porteus,
Mrs. Boscawen, Mr. Pepys, and Rev. John Newton. In the charming
seclusion of Cowslip Green she wrote her treatise on the "Manners of the
Great;" the first of that series in which she rebuked the fashions and
follies of the day. It had an immense circulation, and was published
anonymously. This very popular work was followed, in 1790, by a volume
on an "Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World," which
produced a still deeper sensation among the great, and was much admired.
The Bishop of London (Porteus) was full of its praises; so was John
Newton, although he did not think that any book could wean the worldly
from their pleasures.

Thus far most of the associations of Hannah More had been with the
fashionable world, by which she was petted and flattered. Seeing clearly
its faults, she had sought to reform it by her writings and by her
conversation. But now she turned her attention to another class,--the
poor and ignorant,--and labored for them. She instituted a number of
schools for the poor in her immediate neighborhood, superintended them,
raised money for them, and directed them, as Madame de Maintenon did the
school of St. Cyr; only with this difference,--that while the
Frenchwoman sought to develop the mind and character of a set of
aristocratic girls to offset the practical infidelity that permeated the
upper walks of life, Hannah More desired to make the children of the
poor religious amid the savage profligacy which then marked the peasant
class. The first school she established was at Cheddar, a wild and
sunless hollow, amid yawning caverns, about ten miles from Cowslip
Green,--the resort of pleasure par