have been brought about by a romantic fancy rather than by a
tender affection. Mr. Barbauld's mind had been once unhinged; his
protestations were passionate and somewhat dramatic. We are told that
when she was warned by a friend, she only said, 'But surely, if I throw
him over, he will become crazy again;' and from a high-minded sense of
pity, she was faithful, and married him against the wish of her brother
and parents, and not without some misgivings herself. He was a man
perfectly sincere and honourable; but, from his nervous want of
equilibrium, subject all his life to frantic outbursts of ill-temper.
Nobody ever knew what his wife had to endure in secret; her calm and
restrained manner must have effectually hidden the constant anxiety of
her life; nor had she children to warm her heart, and brighten up her
monotonous existence. Little Charles, of the Reading-book, who is bid to
come hither, who counted so nicely, who stroked the pussy cat, and who
deserved to listen to the delightful stories he was told, was not her
own son but her brother's child. When he was born, she wrote to entreat
that he might be given over to her for her own, imploring her brother to
spare him to her, in a pretty and pathetic letter. This was a mother
yearning for a child, not a schoolmistress asking for a pupil, though
perhaps in after times the two were somewhat combined in her. There is a
pretty little description of Charles making great progress in 'climbing
trees and talking nonsense:' 'I have the honour to tell you that our
Charles is the sweetest boy in the world. He is perfectly naturalised in
his new situation; and if I should make any blunders in my letter, I
must beg you to impute it to his standing by me and chattering all the
time.' And how pleasant a record exists of Charles's chatter in that
most charming little book written for him and for the babies of babies
to come! There is a sweet instructive grace in it and appreciation of
childhood which cannot fail to strike those who have to do with children
and with Mrs. Barbauld's books for them: children themselves, those best
critics of all, delight in it.

'Where's Charles?' says a little scholar every morning to the writer of
these few notes.

IV.

Soon after the marriage, there had been some thought of a college for
young ladies, of which Mrs. Barbauld was to be the principal; but she
shrank from the idea, and in a letter to Mrs. Montagu she objects to
the scheme of high