minute account of the feudal government and customs, the religions sects and superstitions of the people. The aristocratic distinctions of caste are rigidly preserved, and the chiefs are haughty, debauched, and cruel.
POZZO, ISABELLA DAL,
Was a native of Turin, where, in the church of St. Francesco is a picture painted by her, representing the Virgin and Child with several saints. The date of this piece is 1666, and it is highly esteemed.
PRATT, ANNE,
This lady is a native of Strood. in the county of Kent, where her father held a respectable position; she was born about the year 1811, and brought up under the sole care of an excellent and pious mother, her other parent having died when she was quite young. From this mother she early imbibed a taste for reading, and from her father appears to have inherited a love for botanical study, which developed itself in early life. She was always passionately fond of flowers, and never so happy as when admiring their beauties, and inquiring into the nature and properties of the plants which bore them; no wonder then that she eventually became a good botanist, and wrote books upon floral subjects which are interesting alike to old and young. Anne Pratt was always an acute, sensible child, with plenty of vivacity and kindliness of disposition; she possessed great influence over her schoolfellows, to whom she was accustomed to deliver play lectures upon such recondite subjects as "The ways of the quakers."
She made an early determination to become an author, and this seemed a kind of preparation for it. We do not, however, And that she very quickly carried this determination into effect. She carefully studied the rules of grammar, and the art of composition; but as her knowledge increased, she began to entertain doubts of her capabilities, and it was not until she attained quite a mature age that her first book appeared; this was a pretty little square volume, issued in 1841, by Charles Knight, who was then doing 80 much to popularize good sound literature by his "Penny Magazine" and other publications. This volume was quickly followed by another of a similar character, entitled "Flowers and their Associations;" and after that, at no long intervals, came two or three little books, written, like the above, especially for the instruction of the young; and all excellent alike in their moral tone, and simplicity of style.
In 1855, Miss Pratt was requested by the Religious Tract Society to write some of their monthly volumes, and she produced for this series "Wild Flowers of the Year," "Garden Flowers of the Year," and "Scripture Plants." These books have had a very large sale, the first of them something like forty thousand; it was written while the author was in deep affliction on account of the death of her mother, from whom she had never before been long separated, and to whom she was devotedly attached. This employment of her mind was salutary at such a time, and thenceforward she entered with greater ardour than ever into literary pursuits, producing the little books above named, and others to be presently enumerated, in rapid succession. It should be mentioned that she bad, about the year 1852, written for the Tract Society a small
