Not all the Quaker quietism which was "drawn away from the simplicity could be brought to bear upon her of the faith." Perhaps they had heard could quench in Amelia Opie her fas-that the Saint Simoniennes were anxcinated interest in revolutions, and it is ious to beguile the distinguished Enmost amusingly characteristic to find glishwoman to their meetings. "What her starting off to Paris in 1830 alone, a triumph it would be to them," a and telling nobody of her resolution Frenchman introduced by Cuvier said until she had started. On crossing to Mrs. Opie, "to get off that little the Place Royale she heard with in- cap and exchange it for a large black tense delight some young men singing hat and feathers!"—which, with a Casimir de la Vigne's "New National blue gown, formed the uniform of their Song: " sect.

Pour briser leurs masses profondes,

Qui conduit nos drapeaux sanglants? C'est la liberté des deux mondes

Despite somewhat of severity in her quick blue eye, her manner and appearance were extremely prepossessing. . . . Her carriage was erect, her step firm and rapid, her manner decided, her voice low and sweet in tone, her smile perfect sunshine. She "flirted" a fan with the ease and grace of a Spanish donna, and if her bright, inquiring, and restless eyes made one rather nervous at a first interview, the charm of her smile and the winning grace of her nature placed one at ease after a few minutes' conversation. Still the incessant sparkling of those quick blue eyes told that

breezes might ruffle the flower sometimes."

C'est La Fayette, en cheveux blancs! The name of La Fayette was like a greeting from a friend, and added to the "extraordinary elevation of spirit" the adventure gave her. The memorable "three days were of course long over before her arrival, and she was astonished to find how many of their traces had already been removed. In fact, but for the tricolor waving over the Tuileries, she might have doubted whether any revolution could have so recently taken place. Mrs. Opie vis-"e'en in the tranquillest climes, light ited Mme. de Genlis, "a really pretty old woman of eighty-seven, very unaffected, with nothing of smartness or state about her," who, on parting, embraced Mrs. Opie, exclaiming: "Je vous aime!" and at La Fayette's receptions saw crowds of celebrities who drew from her the very natural wish that they could "be ticketed" for the enlightenment of strangers. A few weeks after Mrs. Opie's arrival in Paris there were mutterings of a gathering storm-cordons formed round certain streets, the générale beating, National Guards bivouacking before the Tuileries and in the Place Vendôme.

Her Quaker friends at home, how

ever,

If a little of the old leaven of love of beautiful adornment clung to the dainty delicacy and becoming arrangement of Mrs. Opie's Quaker cap and kerchief, she was true to the principles of her new sect in curbing her imagination. Mr. Hall (of course) asked her for a story for the "Amulet: "

Thou knowest, or thou ought to know [she replied] that since I became a Friend I am not free to what is called make a story. I will write a fact for thy Annual, or any little matters of history, or truth, or a poem if thou wishest, but I must not lye, and say such and such a thing took place when it did not: dost thou understand me?1

looked jealously at these little It would be difficult by means of social and political excitements, includ- extracts to give any idea of the olding a quiet "seventh day" evening world charm which still pervades Mrs. spent with Queen Marie Amélie and Opie's writings, as the odor of pot the Duchesse d'Orléans, and told her pourri clings to a china jar. It lies in she had better come back before she

the easy dialogue, the knowledge of human nature, the talent, as one of her critics says, "for perceiving truth with

1 Book of Memories. Virtue & Co. 1871. P. 169. 4306

out the process of reasoning," rather | pleasure, certainly, and those who do this than in any detachable passage. Some have something at least that was in Christ of her "Tales from Real Life" can be Jesus. read with interest in days in which the aspect of life is widely altered; especially "Lady Anne and Lady Jane," for its sharp and well-defined contrast often drawn at more length and with less skill by later novelists between the shallow, selfish, fascinating cousin Jane, who charms in spite of her faults, and the generous, high-principled, sharp-tongued cousin Anne, whose uncompromising honesty often prevents her pleasing even when she most desires to do so.

A recent book of recollections gives the only unpleasing account of Mrs. Opie on record :

Her next expedition was to Cornwall, to see the remaining members of her husband's family and the spots associated with his early life. The fiue scenery and air so raised her elastic spirits that a too tender conscience was wounded. "I sometimes reprove myself for the happiness I feel," she writes, "and my health so perfect!" Her crowning joy was a visit to the castle of St. Michael's Mount, of which she writes:

The housekeeper said she wished me to stay a week, but thought she would in her heart be very glad to get rid of a crazy old gentlewoman, who came to look at the I was taken one day while young to pay moon from the ramparts of the castle, as if a visit to Mrs. Opie. . . . The house was she had no moon in her own country; and of large and imposing dimensions, one of I don't doubt but she fancied me moonthose ancient and magnificent mansions in struck, which idea was, I dare say, conLincoln Inn Fields now let in offices and firmed by her catching me drawing the faces occupied chiefly by lawyers. I thought her and figures I saw in the fire, a new but, I very gentle and amiable. She appeared to assure thee, a very amusing occupation. me elderly even at that time, yet she lived. The sea is close round this magnificent many years after, dying only in 1865, but mountain, with its masses of rock frowning she had then reached ninety-three. No one midway down its verdant sides. And such could see Mrs. Opie without being impressed by her calm, quiet, self-possessed manner. She seemed the personification of repose and unaffected dignity. . . . Mrs. Opie was a musician and sang well, but she was apt to expect to be asked to sing whenever in society, and would then overdo matters by singing noisy bravura songs which did not always please. She also made enemies among her lady acquaintances by manifesting a disposition to take undue precedence of others on such occasions.1

No sectarian feeling could chill or narrow Mrs. Opie's generous appreciation of character. On reading the life of Sir James Mackintosh, she says (after acknowledging the justice of his strictures on her life of her husband, already quoted):

He [Mackintosh] was no daring sceptic, but a seeker to the last, and fully do I believe he found and was accepted in the Redeemer. And he was kind to every one -oh, so truly kind! He loved to give Vol. ii., p. 480.

1 Gossip of the Century.

date and age are incorrect.

The

...

a sea as it is in winter! They are shipless waters, for no vessel could live in them, and I did enjoy to see the waves of the Atlantic rolling proudly in on one side of the castle, telling of greater and more fearful power beyond, where my eye could not penetrate. . . Next night I sat up till the moon rose, and, leaning on the balcony, witnessed her fight with the wind and the rain, and her ultimate victory. Such was the roughness of the sea that the white foam made "the darkness light about it" without the aid of the moon. But where she did not shine on their jutting points, dark as Erebus were the turrets, the ramparts, and the walls of the castle; while the little town at the foot of the mountain, and the more distant town beyond, lay in a sort of half tint of moonshine, and the noble rocks over which I leaned were softened into beauty by the mellowing rays that rested on them.

After seven months in Cornwall, during which she wrote most of her Lays for the Dead," and arranged them for publication, Mrs. Opie returned to Norwich, and met Dr. Chalmers at the house of the Gurneys. In his Me

A long tour in Scotland, and a yet longer one through Belgium and up the Rhine, furnished charming material for her letters and diaries; her enthusiasm for natural beauty, and her keen sympathy with all aspects of humanity continuing undiminished by advancing age and one or two sharp illnesses. In

LONDON, March 15th.

Poets are

moirs" Dr. Chalmers speaks of his One thousand, eight hundred and thirty-seven. pleasure in meeting the writer of "the Thanks, dearest dear friend, for your most exquisite feminine tales," and also cordial letter. Yes, thank God, 91 is well the difficulty of identifying the plain- in health, and if my beloved friends enlooking Quakeress Amelia with the ac-joyed the same blessing would be perfectly complished novelist Mrs. Opie, until content in mind. . . Oh, why do you not they talked together while strolling on come to town earlier in the season? There the lawn after dinner, and he felt the are many of your playfellows. Yesterday charm of her "rich and interesting dined with me Rogers, Sydney Smith, conversation." Granby, and more wits and worthies such as you would relish. . . . The picture of Hannah More is by Gainsborough; I think it a little like her. When she was young she could not afford to have very fine, long diamond earrings nor were they the fashion when I saw her flirting with Garrick. However, all the connoisseurs agree that it is an excellent painting. N.B.-There is a ring on the wedding finger which does 1835 she was re-established in "the not resemble blessed Hannah. Castle Meadow House, Norwich," where Opie's portraits of herself, her father, and their most intimate friends adorned the walls, and one of the windows was fitted with a frame containing prisms, for which she had, says her biographer, "a sort of passion." "Oh, the exquisite beauty of the prisms on my ceiling just now!" she writes; "it is a pleasure to exist only to look at it. I think green parrots and macaws flying about in their native woods, must look like that." Flowers, too, "were her constant companions; she luxuriated in them; filled her windowsills with stands of them, and her tables with bouquets. Light, heat, and fragrance were indispensable to her enjoy

ment."

springing up like mushrooms, but the novels are sad trash. . . . Yours more than words can express, says –

OLD M. CORK. When Mrs. Opie did go up to town a dinner with Lord she describes Brougham at Miss Berry's Twickenham cottage; sitting to poor Haydon (who called her "that delightful creature") for his great picture of the "Meeting of the Anti-Slavery Convention; " Rogers's famous breakfasts; a dinner with Sydney Smith; a "friendship struck up with Sam Slick;" and gives some most entertaining reminiscences of poor Hogg, unfortunately too long to quote.

Her delight in oratory wherever it could be heard, and especially with the dramatic surroundings of the Assize Courts, never abated. judges humored her. seated on the bench beside Judge Gould in 1785. In 1844 she writes:

A succession of
We saw ber

Hospitality and correspondence occupied a large portion of her time; every visitor to Norwich who could find an introduction or a pretext sought her out; and she calculated that the letters she wrote (excluding notes) averaged The other evening, while Baron Alderson six a day. How many of these were and the High Sheriff and I were talking toanswers to appeals for help, advice, gether in the Judges' Room, Sir Edward and charity was only known by the Williams asked me how I was going home, piles of grateful acknowledgments dis-on which the High Sheriff, seizing my covered after her death. She used to say that if she had not enjoyed the occupation so much, her epitaph must have been "died of letter-writing." Lady Cork was still among her correspondents; her last letter, written two years later, was very characteristic :

hand, said, "Oh, she shall go with us; we will take her home!" I drew back, of course, not believing he could be in earnest; but the Judge said, "Yes, let us take her," and Edward pulled me on, saying, "Come, Brother Opie !" as he tucked me under his arm. The High Sheriff led the way, and into the carriage I jumped,

ashamed but pleased. I sat by my cousin, | mer, and felt her old delight in watchand the astonished chaplain opposite the ing the rising and falling of the tides, Judge, wondering and laughing. . . . Little did I think I should ever ride behind four horses and two outriders with trumpets, etc. . . . So much for the escapade of a grave Judge and High Sheriff.

And, may we not add, a demure Quakeress of seventy-four?

though now compelled to do so only from the windows of her room. On her return home she was carried upstairs in a basket-chair, "never to go down again." Her incurable malady, her severe and repeated attacks of rheumatic gout, and her extreme weakNine happy and peaceful years she ness, rapidly increased. But her pawas still to spend in Norwich. Her tience and grateful love for those who sight perfect, her hearing little im- unweariedly watched by her never paired, her carriage erect ever. ceased; and almost her last connected "Never, perhaps," says her biogra- utterances before her death on the 2nd pher, "were so many young and fair December, 1853, were "all is peace," faces seen clustering round an old one and "all is mercy.” as were to be found in her room week after week; they went to confide in her, secure of friendly comprehension; attracted, too, by "her love of fun, her merry laugh, her ready repartee" and yet more, perhaps, by the wonderful charity and humility which would see faults in no one but herself.

Mrs. Opie still visited London now and then, on one occasion going to Claremont, oppressed by the thought of the changes in Louis Philippe's family since she had seen them last; Marie Amélie's greeting was, "Ma chère, bonne Opie, que vous êtes bonne de venir me voir!" and her farewell, 66 Souvenez-vous, et écrivez encore, écrivez toujours!" At Sir J. Boileau's she met Guizot, with whom she was "charmed. His manners are very simple, and he played at jeux de société with us young people at night, and enjoyed it as much as we did."

She visited the Great Exhibition of 1851, being one of the few persons admitted in bath chairs an hour before the general public. Another of these privileged ones was Miss Berry, who, looking with admiration at her friend's conveyance, which had some superiority of make, exclaimed, "Where did you get that chair, Mrs. Opie? I quite envy it"-on which Mrs. Opie pro

posed a race!

In the following year she records a visit from Fanny Kemble, during which she was "denied to every one, as I had much to say to her. I much enjoyed her conversation." She went to Cro

Miss Mitford exclaims, sans phrase, with reference to Mrs. Opie's becoming a Quakeress "what a miserable hash she made of her own existence!" And Miss Kavanagh, at the end of an admirable summary of her character and writings, says:

She joined the Society of Friends conscientiously, she adhered to it with perfect fidelity, and she never repented. But it was the work of influence of zealous friends, and it changed little in her life. . . . It was a sacrifice, no doubt, but it was not made in the fervent and productive years; hence it never worked any of those radical changes which give so much significance to renunciation.1

Looking back on the record of Mrs. Opie's life, one hesitates to agree with either judgment. There was, indeed, as we have seen, a period during which, with the hyper-sensitiveness of a convert, she felt agonies of contrition for venial faults, and indulged with remorse in very harmless pleasures. But this soon passed, and beyond the renunciation of novel writing (in which it is probable that her best work was done, for her imaginative vein neither deep nor strong), her creed does not seem to have entailed any sacrifice of dear affection or reasonable enjoyment. On the other hand, it is impossible not to recognize, in comparing her earlier and later years, the increased activity in every form of be

was

1 English Women of Letters, by Julia Kavanagh. Edit. 1862. P. 288.

nevolence and helpfulness to which it impelled her. She had a temperament both excitable and indolent, and essentially pleasure-loving. With a sufficient income, absolute independence and leisure, many flatterers, and no close home ties or duties, she might easily have drifted into aimless self-indulgence in the world où l'on s'amuse, had she been without the restraints of deepened religious feeling, and a creed which especially enjoined temperance, moderation, and quietness.

From The Nineteenth Century. AN INCIDENT IN THE CAREER OF THE

REV. LUKE TREMAIN.

THEY often talk of him at Rampton even to this day. He has become a mythical personage, though it is only about fifty years since he dropped down from the clouds among us, and there are a score of people who remember him still; some of them were grown men and women when he came, and some were boys and girls, who have but a faint recollection of him and his ways. They call him sometimes the 'Vangelist, but more often the Wrastler in their dialect. Why they should call him the 'Vangelist is easy enough to understand, though even "thereby hangs a tale," but why they should call him the Wrastler is not to be guessed until you know a little more about him and his prowess.

Now it came to pass that in the late summer of 1844 the fayver broke out at Rampton. There was a row of squalid hovels belonging to a small proprietor in the parish-twelve of them in all -about as ghastly places as any man need wish to set his eyes on. They were almost all horribly crowded, the water was poisonous, the sewage was thrown out into the ditch on the other side of the road, and the habits of the people were indescribably filthy, reckless, and desperate. Everybody drank as much bad beer as he could get; the White Hart over the way was delightfully convenient, and was kept open through more than half the night; the children were shoeless and ragged, untaught, unkempt, uncared for. There were three or four of the men who were habitual poachers, and one or two of them who were never sober except when they were training for a raid upon the hares and pheasants in the preserves of some neighboring squire. The saying used to be, "Decent folks don't come from Rampton 'xcept it's arter dark."

When the fayver broke out among this wild community it did not spare them. Old and young men, women, and children were stricken down. "That was a purple-spotted fayver, I tell 'ee," says one. "I'd ought to know, for I had it mysel'. I was a young chap then, and there was seven on us down at once, and we was three in a bed, and father and my sister Jane and her baby died on it, and I was off my head for a matter of ten days, as I've heerd tell."

In the year 1844 the rector of Rampton was a pluralist, and held another living, at which he resided half the year; and as that was a pleasant vil- You may read the entries in the parlage by the seaside, it is hardly to be ish register if you like; there they are, wondered at if he only gave the sum- thirteen funerals in July and August. mer and autumn to Rampton and spent | Gaunt men and tottering women, the winter and spring in his marine ragged, hollow-eyed, and wan, stagresidence. As he grew older the rector gered out to do the harvest that year, spent less and less of his time at Ramp- and how they got it in Heaven only ton, and his curate, a worthy good soul, knows! but very poor, occupied the rectory house with his wife and a single servant, and as the people say, "that was a piggy sort of a place, you may depend on, by the time as he'd had it for six or eight months or more."

Patient, feeble curate Blackie — himself and wife half fed - did what he could- a timid, silent man, but godly and kind withal. He went among the sick and dying in a helpless, perplexed sort of way, showed he was not afraid