es and country justices. The difficulty and expense of conveying
large packets from place to place was so great, that an extensive work
was longer in making its way from Paternoster Row to Devonshire or
Lancashire than it now is in reaching Kentucky. How scantily a rural
parsonage was then furnished, even with books the most necessary to a
theologian, has already been remarked. The houses of the gentry were
not more plentifully supplied. Few knights of the shire had libraries so
good as may now perpetually be found in a servants' hall or in the back
parlour of a small shopkeeper. An esquire passed among his neighbours
for a great scholar, if Hudibras and Baker's Chronicle, Tarlton's Jests
and the Seven Champions of Christendom, lay in his hall window among
the fishing rods and fowling pieces. No circulating library, no book
society, then existed even in the capital: but in the capital those
students who could not afford to purchase largely had a resource. The
shops of the great booksellers, near Saint Paul's Churchyard, were
crowded every day and all day long with readers; and a known customer
was often permitted to carry a volume home. In the country there was
no such accommodation; and every man was under the necessity of buying
whatever he wished to read. [169]

As to the lady of the manor and her daughters, their literary stores
generally consisted of a prayer book and receipt book. But in truth
they lost little by living in rural seclusion. For, even in the highest
ranks, and in those situations which afforded the greatest facilities
for mental improvement, the English women of that generation were
decidedly worse educated than they have been at any other time since
the revival of learning. At an early period they had studied the
masterpieces of ancient genius. In the present day they seldom bestow
much attention on the dead languages; but they are familiar with the
tongue of Pascal and Moliere, with the tongue of Dante and Tasso,
with the tongue of Goethe and Schiller; nor is there any purer or more
graceful English than that which accomplished women now speak and write.
But, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, the culture
of the female mind seems to have been almost entirely neglected. If
a damsel had the least smattering of literature she was regarded as a
prodigy. Ladies highly born, highly bred, and naturally quick witted,
were unable to write a line in their mother tongue without solecisms
and