ed in vice beyond comprehension
for persons so young. Hannah More's schemes were regarded by many
as visionary and impracticable, and received opposition from sources
where sympathy and helpfulness were to be expected. Gradually,
however, her school work was extended until it covered an area of
twenty-eight miles.

In the Sunday schools the children received religious instruction,
and in the day schools they were taught to spin flax and wool. No
missionary bishop travelled more constantly, no Methodist itinerant
cultivated his circuit district more assiduously, than did Hannah and
her sister Patty More their lay diocese. The many difficulties which
had to be overcome by them cannot be appreciated by workers among the
destitute to-day, with all the appliances and books and methods which
represent a century's experience in such lines. Nothing of the sort
was to hand for these sisters; but Hannah More was an author as well
as a philanthropist, and the tales for the interest and instruction of
the children she wrote herself.

While Hannah More lived and worked in the eighteenth century, her
life's service extended over into the nineteenth century also. She was
a contemporary of Miss Mitford, Mary Carpenter, Mrs. Summerville, and
Maria Edgeworth. The eighteenth century brought forth the women who
were to carry into the nineteenth century the elements of service for
society, which were to be like the seed sown in good ground and to
bring forth the maximum fold of fruitage.

The national system of education had not been developed in the
eighteenth century, making the acquirement of an education somewhat
dependent upon individual circumstances as affected by personal
ambitions. There was nothing in the way of general education for
women. But the dawn of better things intellectually was shown by
the development of a group of women of literary comprehension and
productivity, who formed a set apart and yet were in a real sense
prophets in a wilderness, proclaiming the democracy of letters. Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu writes very bitterly of the low esteem in which
was held the intellectuality of the sex, and in speaking of the study
of classics, says: "My sex is usually forbid studies of this nature,
and folly reckoned so much our proper sphere we are sooner pardoned
any excesses of that, than the least pretensions to reading or
good sense.... Our minds are entirely neglected, and, by disuse of
reflections, filled with nothing b