"There is no man who spends his time in more anxious exertion than a conscientious clergyman. There is no fame, no reward to spur him on, for his preferment comes before his duty. He spends his life in a country village perhaps, or at any rate wherever he may be cast, without a chance or an expectation of any further emolument; and what he has is generally a modicum which requires economy to live on it and appear like a gentleman. His duties lie among the poor and the sick, whom he has to instruct and comfort; with the rich he must mix as their equal, and by his example and conduct mend them if he can, and this must be done silently and quietly, or it is unavailing. A man who has thus given up his life to his fellow-creatures hopes, perhaps it is human to do so-that some approbation, some esteem from his fellow-men as well as his God, may follow his honest and noiseless course; and he finds himself stigmatized-as indeed his great Master was before him as a glutton and a wine-bibber,' a grasping, avaricious being, who cares not who suffers if he be enriched. Is it not the way to make men worthless if they are allowed no sort of credit for their virtues? I knew one on whom all this vituperation was heaped till his grey head was bent in sorrow to the grave; yet his youth had been innocent, his manhood spent in ministering to all the wants and woes of his poor neighbors; his old age was hunted down by the Cobbettites, and such as Mr. Fonblanque would set on if he could. He was carried to his grave in the place which had been the scene of his quiet and useful life, and then the delusion was over. A weeping population rushed forth to meet the last remains of the man whose worth they then knew, when they had lost him! I only wish Mr. F. had been there to see it!"-pp. 211,

212.

The mortification and distress she experienced at this epoch, together with other causes, seem to have had a serious effect on her already very delicate health. After struggling with severe illness for some time, she resolved on trying the effect of a winter abroad, and accepted the offer of her faithful friend Sismondi

Her Italian life was a new experience of existence to Miss Cornwallis. She was now forty years of age; her mind was cultivated up to the highest pitch; her memory stored with facts and ideas; her imagination open to every new impression from without; her eagerness for knowledge insatiable. To one so circumstanced, the elemental glow of a southern climate-which soothes the fibres and braces the nervous system long depressed by the chill damps of the north, and by the gnawings of mental and bodily painworks like inspiration itself. Every new object, every unaccustomed sound, the little traits of domestic life, the living accents of a language hitherto only known in books, the realization of scenes viewed as yet only by picture or description, the awaking each morning to the anticipation of unwonted impressions, the reviewing at evening a new treasure of ideas and sympathies,-all this, blended with the unusual sense of physical ease and elasticity, seems to expand the limits of the soul, and endue it with heightened life and Cornwallis used to revert to her Italian afterwards Miss power. Long years life as the happiest period of her existence. Her lettters are more genial, more playful, more self-forgetting at this time than at any other; while her remarks on Italian life and manners evince a spirit of observation singularly keen and discriminating, and a vivid feeling for the picturShe remained esque in life and nature. in Italy a year and a half on this occasion. Subsequently, in 1829-30, she spent another winter there.

During Miss Cornwallis's first absence in Italy her father died. Mrs. Cornwallis survived till 1836. She was a woman, to judge from the eulogiums of Sismondi, as well as from the recollections of surviving friends, of considerable personal attractions, and no ordinary powers of mind. But in religious matters she inclined to the straitest sect of the Evangelicals; and from the views of this party her daughter totally and most emphatically dissented.

Miss Cornwallis continued to reside in her native county of Kent all the remainder of her life, which, in spite of frequent

and alarming attacks of illness and pain, was protracted to the age of seventy-one. She mixed little in general society; but she took delight in forming the minds of younger people, and doing her best to shame her own sex, more especially, out of the frivolities with which the female character is liable to be beset. And her warm and generous interest in the welfare of her self-chosen pupils seems to have been requited with no ordinary strength of attachment on their part. Her older friends and correspondents, with the exception of Sismondi and John Hookham Frere,* were not, as far as we can find, people of high literary note. Her opinions were her own, the fruit of vast reading, close thought, and perhaps, we may add, of too little argument with those who were her equals or superiors in attainment. Her old friend Sismondi, however, was wont to express his dissent from her conclusions pretty freely; and even when the adjustment of woman's true position in the world was the subject of discussion, did not allow his deference for Miss Cornwallis, nor his appreciation of her high capacities, to modify his conclusions as to the female type of character in general.

66 are

"The qualities of the heart," he says, those by which above all others you have the advantage over us. Called on your

part to give being to men, I ascribe very little importance to the truth or falsity of the scientific notions you may implant in them during their first years: I ascribe infinite importance to the sentiments you may develop in them. God preserve the children of mothers who

would fain be men! For such there would

be no more youth, no more enthusiasm, no more self-devotion, perhaps no more compassion."+

Another subject which she had much

*There are no letters in the "Selections" to J. H. Frere himself, but many to his sisters and others of his family, and several references to his conversation and opinions on literary subjects.

Les qualités du cœur sont celles par lesquelles avant toutes les autres vous l'emportez sur nous. Appelée pour votre part à faire des hommes, je ne mets que fort peu d'importance aux notions vraies ou fausses de science que vous pourriez implanter en eux durant leurs premières années; j'en mets une infinie aux sentimens que vous développez en eux. Dieu garde les enfans de mères qui seroient hommes; il n'y auroit plus de jeunesse pour eux, plus d'enthousiasme, plus de dévouement, peut-être plus de pitié."

at heart, and on which also Sismondi differed from her, was her theory of Christianity. Her grand panacea for remedying the sins and follies of the age was the combination of religion with philosophy, the establishing the conviction that divine relation was simply and solely an authoritative enforcement of those moral truths which reason, under the most favorable circumstances, might discover for itself; of which, at all events, when presented to its contemplation in the teaching of Scripture, it was the sole and sufficient test. All theological dogmas which could not be meted to the requirements of man's natural conscience and understanding, she held to be the aftergrowth of human invention, superinduced upon the pure theology of the first two centuries. For, in the ante-Nicene Fathers and Apologists, in the lives and deaths of a Polycarp, a Justin, a Clement, and a Tertullian, in their simple profession of devotion to the person and example of the Saviour, unaccompanied by any doctrinal statements as to the mode and conditions of salvation, she believed the only reliable interpretations of Christ's mission were to be recognized. She did not admit the supposition that a subsequent necessity for doctrinal statement might arise out of tations of men; that, as the echoes of the the wayward, often various, misreprsenfirst Christian teachers faded from men's ears, and the first love began to wax cold, some safeguards might be needed to prevent religion from degenerating, under the influence of sensual pre-possessions tion or wilder antinomianism. or capricious fancies, into wild supersti

Sismondi, in replying to his friend's argument on behalf of primitive Christianity, thus eloquently maintains the superior excellence and beauty of some of its later developments, and sees, in its varied adaptation to the requirements of mankind at different periods and under different aspects of civilization, the most convincing proof of its divine authority. He writes in February, 1840:

what it has become than in what it was at its "I would look for Christianity rather in origin. Whatever may have been those revelations and that divinity over which the long course of ages and the influence of human passions have spread a veil, Christianity is the richer by all the pious meditations, all the re

searches into the human heart, all the purest and most beautiful sentiments with which the love of God has inspired man during successive centuries, and by all the experience afforded by times of prosperity and adversity, of barbarism and of civilization. Such as it is preached in the purest of the Reformed churches, Christianity is the finest embodiment of doctrines and moral teaching which exists. It is there that I love to contemplate it, and that, like all things entrusted to men by God, I hope and believe it will attain still greater development and perfection. While all the endeavors we make to return back wards, to seize hold of it in monuments which themselves have not been exempt from alteration, and which each succeeding age changes more and more by its own interpretations, seem to me to have no other effect than that of diminishing its beauty and its utility."*

Always eager in the pursuit of truth, Miss Cornwallis hailed with vivid interest the first utterances of that school of Biblical Criticism which students of German theology were beginning to extend into England, and of which Dean Milman's History of the Jews was, we believe, the earliest sample in a popular style laid before the British public. This certainly implied no small courage, and a very rare spirit of investigation in a woman, and one brought up, be it remembered, not like Miss Aikin in a school of latitudinarian Dissent, but in a strictly evangelical and otherwise orthodox world of opinion, and herself craving for the confirmation and assurance of that religious faith which was often the only

"Je vais chercher le Christianisme plutôt dans ce qu'il est devenu que dans ce qu'il étoit

à son origine. Quelles qu'aient été les révélations et la divinité sur lesquelles le long cours des âges et l'influence des passions humaines ont étendu un voile, le Christianisme s'est enrichi de toutes les méditations pieuses, de toutes les études sur le cœur humain, de tout ce que l'amour de la divinité a inspiré aux hommes de plus beau et de plus pur, pendant une longue suite de siècles, et avec toute l'expérience que donnent des tems de prospérité et d'adversité, de barbarie, et de civilization. Tel qu'il est prêché dans les églises réformées les plus pures, il est le plus beau corps de doctrines et d'enseignement moral qui existe. C'est là que j'aime à le voir, et que comme toutes les choses confiées aux hommes par la divinité, j'esprère et je crois qu'il se développera et se perfectionnera encore. Tandis que tous les efforts qu'on fait pour retourner en arrière, pour le saisir, dans des monumens qui n'ont point été exempts d'altération, et que chaque siècle a changé et change encore par ses interprétations, me semble n'avoir d'autre effet que de lui ôter de sa beauté et de son utilité."-pp. 480, 481.

thing that saved her morbid temperament from despondency. But where truth led, or seemed to lead, she never shrank from following, nor was she one who could ever rest content with half convictions on so momentous a subject. Though her strong belief in the person and character of Christ, as portrayed in the Gospels, rendered her proof against the seductions of Strauss's theory, the conclusions of Ewald and Bunsen met in great measure with her cordial assent; and at a time when they were little talked of in England, we find her already familiar with those aspects of Neology which have since introduced terror and division into the English church; have made old foes draw together in the dread of a common danger, and have been made a cause of opprobrium, often misplaced and excessive, for the impugners, in whatever degree, of traditional orthodoxy. But then, again, with the odd eclecticism which she managed to preserve in her opinions, she combined this latitudinarianism as to doctrine with High Church leanings in ecclesiastical matters, and seems even to have thought there was divine sanction for the doctrine of apostolic succession. "By principle and rational conviction of the advantage," she writes, "I am an Episcopalian. I believe it was the order of government established, if not by Christ himself, at least by his immediate successors; and I do not feel satisfied that we have the same claims to his promises, as attached to the sacraments, when administered by unauthorized persons, save when Episcopal ordination has been un

attainable."

continually relating, superficially enough, the progress and purport. Miss Cornwallis's discussions, indeed, seem to fit in to the polemics of our present time far more than into the prevailing polemics of the days to which they belong. which they belong. The fact seems to be that the questions as between the Evangelical party and the Puseyites, or between the "high and dry" and the Puseyites, or even as between the "Broad Church" of Arnold and Whately and the Puseyites, had comparatively little interest for her. Her opinions pointed to a different stage of liberalism from that of any parties to this particular strife.

Even those most inclined to condemn her skeptical audacity on doctrinal points, can not deny that her convictions were honest, and her religious feelings very fervent and sincere. "God knows," she said in 1846, when speaking of the series of books she was then publishing, "I never put pen to paper on these momentous subjects without bending in humble prayer that I might be guided myself, and be enabled to guide others, to that true wisdom, without which all learning is but as sounding brass."

There was another subject on which Miss Cornwallis held strong opinions at variance with those commonly received. One of her Small Books was on "Man's Power over Himself to Prevent or Control Insanity." So impressed was she with the belief that such control was possible, that she strongly objected to the legislation which is based on the assumption of the madman's irresponsibility; and in the hot arguments which in conversation she would maintain on this point, she used, as we have heard, to adduce herself as an instance of the power of self-restraint. But for the exercise of strong resolution, she said, she was firmly convinced she should more than once have lost the balance of her mind.

The morbid tendency which this confession indicates was no doubt the secret of much of her unhappiness, as well as of her sometimes wayward talent and temper. She is described by those who remember her personal appearance, as tall and largely built, with marked features, a sarcastic expression of countenance, and a decided manner. Her heart was benevolent and quick to feel for suf

fering and distress, and she concealed beneath a rugged surface a most feminine yearning for sympathy and affection. Generous and warm-hearted, incapable of meanness or hypocrisy herself, impatient of doubt or compromise, she made little allowance for the shortcomings or hesitation of others; nor could she placidly recognize in the moral constitution of the world that interweaving of truth with error, that complexity in the "colors of good and evil," which from of old has baffled the wisest philosophy of man, and which revelation itself does not profess to explain. The struggle to carry reason's powers beyond their allotted province cost her, as she confesses, hours of agony. There is something very touching in her admission of defeat, and in her strong assertion of the religious faith which, whatever its exact texture or hue may have been, kept her from despair; nay, more than that, animated her to the last moment of her life with sincere trust in a world to come, and a longing desire to better the condition of her fellow-creatures in this.

"The childlike confidence with which, when all else that we had thought stable fails us, we throw ourselves on that great power whose existence and attributes become clearer the more all other things appear uncertain. is surely the frame of mind which our Saviour creature of his will; and to this frame of mind inculcated, and which is most becoming the I truly believe that the most decided skepticism does lead. Human passions are roused in the progress of controversy, and ridicule is resorted to when we are angered by opposition or wearied by folly; but I believe that in the silence of his chamber the man becomes again the creature, feels his own bounded powers, and throws himself with the utmost prostration of spirit at the feet of that power in whose hands he feels that he is.”—

p. 168.

6

search into its own nature and prospects; and this research shakes the mortal case shrewd ly. Few can comprehend this, and I who feel it can hardly describe; but I certainly feel that those who eat largely of the tree of knowledge will surely die, and that soon. . . . I sometimes doubt if my course of study and thinking affords happiness; gratification of no ordinary kind attends it sometimes, but it is only sometimes, and there are many hours of weariness when the exhausted mind lies prostrate under the painful sense of its own littleness. . . . I am not a bit well; head aching continually, and every breath of wind makes me shiver, but the sword has worn out the scabbard, and it is too late now to mend it, so I must go on as I can. I could find in my heart to do as I did once when a child, and sit down by my bedside and cry, nobody could tell why. I got a dose of physic for my pains then, and it cured me of crying for ever; but I should fancy my brains were none the better for that force done to nature, and I rather envy those who can open their eyesluices and let off a little of that 'perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart.'"-p. 169. She said herself, that the gloom of the soul was never so deep with her after her experience of life in Italy, as before she "broke prison;" and that the sense of happiness she was then conscious of, as proving to her that happiness was at least a possibility, prevented her from being ever again overwhelmed by the sense of present ennui. Still, existence had no charms to make her love it; and every access of sickness seems to have been welcomed by her in the hope that it might prove a dismissal from the world and its perplexi

ties.

To one of her friends she begins a letter thus, in 1841:

"The glow is bright in the evening sky,
And the evening star is fair;
The buds are breaking,
The flowers are waking,

And sweet is the fresh spring air.

"But there is a brighter glow to come,
And an hour more fair than this;

When, though friends are weeping,
The body lies sleeping,
And the spirit breathes free in bliss.

66 This may be a sort of answer to your inquiries, my dearest Anna, for I would not that you should hear of illness in any other tone. I begin to feel the confident hope that my affairs with this world are drawing to a close. How happy this hope has made me I can not make you comprehend; but at no moment of my life do I recollect to have felt so exhilarated."-p. 228.

And again, a year or two after, when the breaking of an abscess on the lungs had brought her very near the grave :

"I can not, things being as they are, entertain any very great expectation of recovery, though I do not say that it is impossible. Now I am so far revived that I can write, propped up with pillows, in my easy-chair. But, as I have said already, it is in the hands of God; and if an easy mind and pleasure in the thought, rather than dread of death, can keep fever down, and give the constitution a chance of rallying, why, I have that chance.

If death comes, I shall receive it as a boon and a blessing; if not, I shall brace myself again for my pilgrimage, and see how much more I can do that may be useful while I stay here."—p. 246.

Poetical composition was one of her resources, especially in those moods of depression to which she often alludes. The verses printed in this volume are almost all of a sombre, melancholy cast. They have reference chiefly to personal emotion, and evince reflection and sensibility rather than high imaginative power. Among them are many translations from German, a language in which she became a proficient long before it was usual to find English ladies at all acquainted with

it.

But not only was Miss Cornwallis familiar with what we now call the ordinary modern tongues, she was skilled also in the dead languages, Hebrew as well as Latin and Greek; and not only was she well read in the philosophy, poetry, and history of all cultivated ages, but she was versed likewise in many abstruse sciences. When in Italy she made a study of Medicine and Anatomy. Chemistry, and the phenomena of Electricity, occupied much of her attention. Yet with all this she was an adept in woman's accomplishments too; was a skilful musician, both vocal and instrumental, could paint in water-colors and draw caricatures; could model in wax, and sometimes even, like Mrs. Carter, condescend to make a cap or pudding. Ignorance, whether in man or woman, was, in her estimation, as she was never tired of enforcing, the great bane of human existence, and intellectual progress the one sure road to moral happiness and improvement.

* We write some of these personal particulars from the recollections of friends, for the published volume of her letters gives but scant information of the biographical sort.