taking, but she lacked the judicial temper and critical mind necessary for dealing in the right spirit with original authorities. This, in conjunction with her extraordinary devotion to Mary Queen of Scots and her strong tory prejudices, detract, from the value of her conclusions. Her literary style is weak, and the popularity of her books is in great measure due to their trivial gossip and domestic details. Yet in her extracts from contemporary authorities she amassed much valuable material, and her works contain pictures of the court, of society, and of domestic life not to be found elsewhere (cf. Letters of Mary Russell Mitford, ed. Chorley, 2nd ser. ii. 25–6).
Miss Strickland took her work and her reputation very seriously. On one occasion she wrote to the ‘Times’ to complain of the plagiarisms of Lord Campbell in his ‘Lives of the Chancellors,’ and on another gave emphatic expression, also in the ‘Times,’ to her indignation at Froude's description of the death of Mary Queen of Scots. She was a welcome guest in the houses of many distinguished persons, and her warm heart and conversational powers won for her many friends. With the exception of Jane Porter, whom she visited at Bristol, and with whom she carried on a frequent correspondence, and a casual meeting with Macaulay, whom she found uncongenial, she came little in contact with the authors of her day.
Miss Strickland's portrait was painted in June 1846 by J. Hayes. By her will she bequeathed the picture to the nation, and it is now in the National Portrait Gallery. It is a three-quarter length representing a woman of handsome appearance and intelligent expression, with pale complexion and black hair and eyes. The painting was engraved by S. C. Lewis, and forms the frontispiece to ‘Historic Scenes and Poetic Fancies’ (1850), and to the 1851 edition of the ‘Lives of the Queens of England.’ It was again engraved in 1857 by John Sartain of Philadelphia for the New York ‘Eclectic Magazine’ (vol. xlii.). There is another engraved portrait in the ‘Life’ by her sister, Jane Margaret Strickland (1887), which may be from the half-length in watercolour by Cruikshank mentioned in that book. A miniature painted by her cousin and a bust by Bailey are also referred to there.
Other works by Agnes Strickland are: 1. ‘Floral Sketches, Fables, and other Poems,’ 1836; 2nd edit. 1861. 2. ‘Old Friends and New Acquaintances,’ 1860; 2nd ser. 1861. She also edited Fisher's ‘Juvenile Scrap-Book,’ in conjunction with Bernard Barton, from 1837 to 1839, and contributed two tales to the ‘Pic-nic Papers,’ edited by Charles Dickens (1841).
Miss Strickland's brother, Samuel Strickland (1809–1867), born in England in 1809, emigrated in 1825 to Canada, where he became connected with the Canada Company and obtained the commission of major in the militia. His experiences are recorded in ‘Twenty-seven Years in Canada’ (2 vols. 1853), edited by Agnes. He died at Lakefield in Canada on 3 Jan. 1867. He was thrice married, and left many children.
Another sister, Jane Margaret Strickland (1800–1888), was born 18 April 1800. She died at Park Lane Cottage, Southwold, 14 June 1888, and was buried in the churchyard there beside her sister Agnes. Her chief work was ‘Rome, Republican and Regal: a Family History of Rome.’ It was edited by Agnes, and published in two volumes in 1854. She wrote some insignificant books for children, and a biography of her sister Agnes, published in 1887.
[Allibone's Dictionary, ii. 2284–5; supplement, ii. 1401; Life by her sister, Jane Margaret Strickland (1887); Mrs. Traill's Pearls and Pebbles, 1894; private information.]
STRICKLAND, HUGH EDWIN (1811–1853), naturalist, second son of Henry Eustatius Strickland of Apperley, Gloucestershire, by his wife Mary, daughter of Edmund Cartwright, D.D. [q. v.], inventor of the power-loom, and grandson of Sir George Strickland, bart., of Boynton, was born at Righton in the East Riding of Yorkshire on 2 March 1811. In 1827 he was sent as a pupil to Dr. Thomas Arnold (1795–1842) [q. v.], a family connection, then living at Laleham. He began to collect fossils when about fifteen, and soon afterwards shells, about the same time writing his first paper, a letter to the ‘Mechanics' Magazine’ (vii. 264) describing a combined wind-gauge and weathercock, with two dials of his own invention. On 29 May 1828 he matriculated from Oriel College, Oxford, entering in February 1829, and at once attending Buckland's lectures on geology. During vacation visits to Paris and the Isle of Wight, and at home in the Vale of Evesham, where railways were then being begun, he showed a remarkable power of rapidly seizing the main geological features of a district. He graduated B.A. in 1832, proceeding M.A. in 1835. He furnished geological information to George Bellas Greenough [q. v.] on the map of Worcestershire; and, in conjunction with Edwin Lees, made the first geological map of the county for Sir Charles Hastings's ‘Illustrations of the Natural History of Worcestershire,’ 1834. Hastings introduced
