her return to Warrington.

'Dr. Enfield's face,' she declares, 'is grown half a foot longer since I
saw him, with studying mathematics, and for want of a game of romps; for
there are positively none now at Warrington but grave matrons. I who
have but half assumed the character, was ashamed of the levity of my
behaviour.'

It says well indeed for the natural brightness of the lady's disposition
that with sixteen boarders and a satisfactory usher to look after, she
should be prepared for a game of romps with Dr. Enfield.

On another occasion, in 1777, she takes little Charles away with her.
'He has indeed been an excellent traveller,' she says; 'and though, like
his great ancestor, some natural tears he shed, like him, too, he wiped
them soon. He had a long sound sleep last night, and has been very busy
to-day hunting the puss and the chickens. And now, my dear brother and
sister, let me again thank you for this precious gift, the value of which
we are both more and more sensible of as we become better acquainted with
his sweet disposition and winning manners.'

She winds up this letter with a postscript:--

'Everybody here asks, "Pray, is Dr. Dodd really to be executed?" as if
we knew the more for having been at Warrington.'

Dr. Aikin, Mrs. Barbauld's brother, the father of little Charles and of
Lucy Aikin, whose name is well known in literature, was himself a man of
great parts, industry, and ability, working hard to support his family.
He alternated between medicine and literature all his life. When his
health failed he gave up medicine, and settled at Stoke Newington, and
busied himself with periodic literature; meanwhile, whatever his own
pursuits may have been, he never ceased to take an interest in his
sister's work and to encourage her in every way.

It is noteworthy that few of Mrs. Barbauld's earlier productions
equalled what she wrote at the very end of her life. She seems to have
been one of those who ripen with age, growing wider in spirit with
increasing years. Perhaps, too, she may have been influenced by the
change of manners, the reaction against formalism, which was growing up
as her own days were ending. Prim she may have been in manner, but she
was not a formalist by nature; and even at eighty was ready to learn to
submit to accept the new gospel that Wordsworth and his disciples had
given to the world, and to shake off the stiffness of early training.

It is idle to speculate on what might ha