Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/147

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE LITERARY LADY
131

towards making English workmen contented with their lot, and might eventually save the country from the terrible bloodshed of France. Was ever higher tribute paid to sustained and triumphant propriety? Look at Mary Wollstonecraft vindicating the rights of woman in sordid poverty, in tears and shame; and look at Hannah More, an object of pious pilgrimage at Cowslip Green. Her sisters were awestruck at finding themselves the guardians of such preeminence. Miss Seward eloquently addressed them as

sweet satellites that gently bear
Your lesser radiance round this beamy star;

and, being the humblest sisters ever known, they seemed to have liked the appellation. They guarded their luminary from common contact with mankind; they spoke of her as "she" (like Mr. Rider Haggard's heroine), and they explained to visitors how good and great she was, and what a condescension it would be on her part to see them, when two peeresses and a bishop had been turned away the day before. "It is an exquisite pleasure," wrote Miss Carter enthusiastically, "to find