put forth the
full powers of her mind in print. Her 'Letters to a Young Man on his
Entrance into Life', and 'De Courcy, or the Rash Promise, a Tale for
Youth', were mere trifles which she had been induced to publish because
they were calculated for popular utility, but they were nothing to what
she had for years had by her in manuscript. Her latest production had
been Six Stanzas, addressed to the Rev. Edgar Tryan, printed on glazed
paper with a neat border, and beginning, 'Forward, young wrestler for the
truth!'

Miss Pratt having kept her brother's house during his long widowhood, his
daughter, Miss Eliza, had had the advantage of being educated by her
aunt, and thus of imbibing a very strong antipathy to all that remarkable
woman's tastes and opinions. The silent handsome girl of two-and-twenty,
who is covering the 'Memoirs of Felix Neff,' is Miss Eliza Pratt; and the
small elderly lady in dowdy clothing, who is also working diligently, is
Mrs. Pettifer, a superior-minded widow, much valued in Milby, being such
a very respectable person to have in the house in case of illness, and of
quite too good a family to receive any money-payment--you could always
send her garden-stuff that would make her ample amends. Miss Pratt has
enough to do in commenting on the heap of volumes before her, feeling it
a responsibility entailed on her by her great powers of mind to leave
nothing without the advantage of her opinion. Whatever was good must be
sprinkled with the chrism of her approval; whatever was evil must be
blighted by her condemnation.

'Upon my word,' she said, in a deliberate high voice, as if she were
dictating to an amanuensis, 'it is a most admirable selection of works
for popular reading, this that our excellent Mr. Tryan has made. I do not
know whether, if the task had been confided to me, I could have made a
selection, combining in a higher degree religious instruction and
edification with a due admixture of the purer species of amusement. This
story of 'Father Clement' is a library in itself on the errors of
Romanism. I have ever considered fiction a suitable form for conveying
moral and religious instruction, as I have shown in my little work 'De
Courcy,' which, as a very clever writer in the Crompton 'Argus' said at
the time of its appearance, is the light vehicle of a weighty moral.'

'One 'ud think,' said Mrs. Linnet, who also had her spectacles on, but
chiefly for the purpose of seeing what the others wer