says, 'and catches every
gleam of sunshine. We have pulled down the ivy, except what covers the
coach-house We have planted a vine and a passion-flower, with abundance
of jessamine against the window, and we have scattered roses and
honeysuckle all over the garden. You may smile at me for parading so
over my house and domains.' In May she writes a pleasant letter, in good
spirits, comparing her correspondence with her friend to the flower of
an aloe, which sleeps for a hundred years, and on a sudden pushes out
when least expected. 'But take notice, the life is in the aloe all the
while, and sorry should I be if the life were not in our friendship all
the while, though it so rarely diffuses itself over a sheet of paper.'

She seems to have been no less sociable and friendly at Stoke Newington
than at Hampstead. People used to come up to see her from London. Her
letters, quiet and intimate as they are, give glimpses of most of the
literary people of the day, not in memoirs then, but alive and drinking
tea at one another's houses, or walking all the way to Stoke Newington
to pay their respects to the old lady.

Charles Lamb used to talk of his two _bald_ authoresses, Mrs. Barbauld
being one and Mrs. Inchbald being the other. Crabb Robinson and Rogers
were two faithful links with the outer world. 'Crabb Robinson corresponds
with Madame de Stael, is quite intimate,' she writes, 'has received
I don't know how many letters,' she adds, not without some slight
amusement. Miss Lucy Aikin tells a pretty story of Scott meeting Mrs.
Barbauld at dinner, and telling her that it was to her that he owed his
poetic gift. Some translations of Buerger by Mr. Taylor, of Norwich,
which she had read out at Edinburgh, had struck him so much that they
had determined him to try his own powers in that line.

She often had inmates under her roof. One of them was a beautiful and
charming young girl, the daughter of Mrs. Fletcher, of Edinburgh, whose
early death is recorded in her mother's life. Besides company at home,
Mrs. Barbauld went to visit her friends from time to time--the Estlins
at Bristol, the Edgeworths, whose acquaintance Mr. and Mrs. Barbauld
made about this time, and who seem to have been invaluable friends,
bringing as they did a bright new element of interest and cheerful
friendship into her sad and dimming life. A man must have extraordinarily
good spirits to embark upon four matrimonial ventures as Mr. Edgeworth
did; and as for