It was not until his twenty-first birthday that William's indentures were out, and as he was still unable to make up his mind about a profession—it must be remembered that the law, the church, the army and navy were all closed to a Quaker—he spent the next seven years at home, angling in the streams like his favourite hero, Isaac Walton, and striving, by dint of hard study, to make up the many deficiencies in his education. He taught himself Latin, French, and Italian, besides working at botany, chemistry, and the dispensing of medicines. It was during these seven years of uncertainty and experiment that William read Washington Irving's Sketches of Geoffrey Crayon, which produced a strong impression on his mind. With the inspiration of this book hot upon him, he made a tour on foot through the Peak country, and afterwards wrote an account of his adventures in what he fondly believed to be the style of Geoffrey Crayon. The paper was printed in a local journal under the title of A Pedestrian Pilgrimage through the Peak, by Wilfrid Wendle. This was not William Howitt's first literary essay, some stanzas of his on Spring, written when he was only thirteen, having been printed in the Monthly Magazine, with his name and age attached.

With the prospect of marriage it was thought desirable that William should have some regular calling. Without, so far as appears, passing any examinations or obtaining any certificates, he bought the business of a chemist and druggist in Hanley, and thither, though with no intention of settling permanently in the Potteries, he took his bride as soon as the honeymoon was over. Only seven months were spent at Hanley, and in December, 1821, the couple were preparing to move to Nottingham, where William had bought the good-will of another chemist's business. But before settling down in their new home, the Howitts undertook a long pedestrian tour through Scotland and the north of England, in the course of which they explored the Rob Roy country, rambled through Fife, made acquaintance with the beauties of Edinburgh, looked in upon Robert Owen's model factories at New Lanark, got a glimpse of Walter Scott at Melrose, were mistaken for a runaway couple at Gretna Green, gazed reverently on Rydal Mount, and tramped in all no less than five hundred miles. An account of the tour was contributed to a Staffordshire paper under the title of A Scottish Ramble in the Spring of 1822, by Wilfrid and Wilfreda Wendle.

It was not until August, 1822, that the pair established themselves in a little house at Nottingham. Of the chemist's business we hear practically nothing in Mary's narrative, but a great deal about the literary enterprises in which husband and wife collaborated. They began by collecting the poems, of which each had a large number ready written, and, in fear and trembling, prepared to submit them to the verdict of critics and public. 'It seems strange to me,' wrote Mary, when she informed her sister of this modest venture, 'and I cannot reconcile myself to the thought of seeing my own name staring me in the face in every bookseller's window, or being pointed at and peeped after as a writer of verses.' In April, 1823, The Forest Minstrel and other Poems, by William and Mary Howitt, made its appearance in a not particularly appreciative world. The verses were chiefly descriptive of country sights and sounds, and had been produced, as stated in the Preface, 'not for the sake of writing, but for the indulgence of our own overflowing feelings.' The little book created no sensation, but it was kindly noticed, and seems to have attracted a few quiet readers who, like the writers, were lovers of nature and simplicity.

During these early years at Nottingham the Howitts kept up, as far as their opportunities allowed, with the thought and literature of their day, and never relaxed their anxious efforts after 'mental improvement.' William's brother, Richard, himself a budding poet, was at this time an inmate of the little household, which was increased in 1824 by the birth of a daughter, Anna Mary. Although the couple still remained in the Quaker fold, they were gradually discarding the peculiar dress and speech of the 'plain' Friends. They were evidently regarded as terribly 'advanced' young people in their own circle, and shocked many of their old acquaintances by the catholicity of their views, by their admiration of Byron and Shelley, and by the liberal tone of their own productions. Like most of the lesser writers of that day, they found their way into the popular Keepsakes and Annuals, which Mary accurately describes as 'a chaffy, frivolous, and unsatisfactory style of publication, that only serves to keep a young author in the mind of the public, and to bring in a little cash.' In 1826 Mrs. Howitt was preparing for the press a new volume of poems by herself and her husband, The Desolation of Eyam, and in a letter to her sister, now transformed into Mrs. Daniel Wilson, she describes her sensations while awaiting the ordeal of critical judgment, and expresses her not very flattering opinion of the contemporary reviewer.

'Nobody that has not published,' she observes, 'can tell the almost painful excitement which the first opinions occasion. Really, for some days I was quite nervous. William boasted of possessing his mind in wise passivity, and truly his imperturbable patience was quite an annoyance; I therefore got Rogers's beautiful poem on Italy to read, and so diverted my thoughts. Everything in the literary world is done by favour and connections. It is a miracle to me how our former volume, when we were quite unknown, got favourably noticed. In many cases a book is reviewed which has never been read, or even seen externally.'

By this time the young authors who, to use Mary's own phrase, hungered and thirsted after acquaintances who were highly gifted in mind or profound in knowledge, had acquired one or two literary friends and correspondents, among them Mrs. Hemans, Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, and the Alaric Watts's of Keepsake fame. An occasional notice of the Howitts and their little household may be found in contemporary works by forgotten writers. For example, Sir Richard Phillips, in the section devoted to Nottingham of his quaintly-worded Personal Tour through the United Kingdom (1828), observes: 'Of Messrs. Howitt, husband and wife, conjugal in love and poetry, it would be vain for me to speak. Their tasteful productions belong to the nation as well as to Nottingham. As a man of taste Mr. Howitt married a lady of taste; and with rare amiability they have jointly cultivated the Muses, and produced some volumes of poetry, consisting of pieces under their separate names. The circumstance afforded a topic for ridicule to some of those anonymous critics who abuse the press and disgrace literature; but no one ventured to assail their productions.' Spencer Hall, a fellow-townsman, became acquainted with the Howitts in 1829, and in his Reminiscences describes William as a bright, neat, quick, dapper man of medium height, with a light complexion, blue eyes, and brisk, cheery speech. Mary, he tells us; was always neatly dressed, but with nothing prim or sectarian in her style. 'Her expression was frank and free, yet very modest, and she was blessed with an affectionate, sociable spirit.'

A presentation copy of The Desolation of Eyam was sent to the Howitts' favourite poet, Wordsworth, who, in acknowledging their 'elegant volume,' declared that, though he had only had time to turn over the leaves, he had found several poems which had already afforded him no small gratification. The harmless little book was denounced by the Eclectic Review as 'anti-Quakerish, atheistical, and licentious in style and sentiment, 'but the authors were consoled by a charming little notice of their contributions to the Annuals in the Noctes Ambrosianae for November, 1828. 'Who are these three brothers and sisters, the Howitts, sir?' asks the Shepherd of Christopher North, in the course of a discussion of the Christmas gift-books, 'whose names I see in the adverteesements?'

North. I don't know, James. It runs in my head that they are Quakers. Richard and William seem amiable and ingenious men, and Sister Mary writes beautifully.

Shepherd. What do you mean by beautifully? That's vague.

North. Her language is chaste and simple, her feelings tender and pure, and her observation of nature accurate and intense. Her 'Sketches from Natural History' in the Christmas Box have much of the moral—nay, rather the religious spirit—that permeates all Wordsworth's smaller poems, however light and slight the subject, and show that Mary Howitt is not only well-read in the book of Bewick, but also in the book from which Bewick has borrowed all—glorious plagiarist—and every other inspired zoologist—

Shepherd. The Book o' Natur'.'

The great event of 1829 for the Howitts was a visit to London, where they were the guests of Alaric and Zillah Watts, with whom they had long maintained a paper friendship. 'What wilt thou say, dear Anna,' writes Mary in December, 'when I tell thee that William and I set out for London the day after to-morrow. I half dread it. I shall wish twenty times for our quiet fireside, where day by day we read and talk by ourselves, and nobody looks in upon us. I keep reasoning with myself that the people we shall see in London are but men and women, and perhaps, after all, no better than ourselves. If we could but divest our minds of self, as our dear father used to say we should do, it would be better and more comfortable for us. Yet it is one of the faults peculiar to us Bothams that, with all the desire there was to make us regardless of self, we never had confidence and proper self-respect instilled into us, and the want of this gives us a depressing feeling, though I hope it is less seen by others than by ourselves.... We do not intend to stay more than a week, and thou may believe we shall have enough to do. We have to make special calls on the Carter Halls, Dr. Bowring, and the Pringles, and are to be introduced to their ramifications of acquaintance. Allan Cunningham, L. E. L., and Thomas Roscoe we are sure to see.'

In Miss Landon's now forgotten novel, Romance and Reality, there is a little sketch of Mary Howitt as she appeared at a literary soiree, during her brief visit to London. The heroine, Miss Arundel, is being initiated into the mysteries of the writing world by her friend, Mrs. Sullivan, when her attention is arrested by the sight of 'a female in a Quaker's dress—the quiet, dark silk dress—the hair simply parted on the forehead—the small, close cap—the placid, subdued expression of the face, were all in strong contrast to the crimsons, yellows, and blues around. The general character of the large, soft eyes seemed sweetness; but they were now lighted up with an expression of intelligent observation—that clear, animated, and comprehensive glance which shows it analyses what it observes. You looked at her with something of the sensation with which, while travelling along a dusty road, the eye fixes on some green field, where the hour flings its sunshine and the tree its shadow, as if its pure fresh beauty was a thing apart from the soil and tumult of the highway. "You see," said Mrs. Sullivan, "one who, in a brief interview, gave me more the idea of a poet than most of our modern votaries of the lute.... She is as creative in her imaginary poems as she is touching and true in her simpler ones."'

Though there were still giants upon the earth in those far-off days, the general standard of literary taste was by no means exalted, a fact which Mary Howitt could hardly be expected to realise. She seems to have taken the praises lavished on her simple verses over-seriously, and to have imagined herself in very truth a poet. She was more clear-sighted where the work of her fellow-scribes was concerned, and in a letter written about this time, she descants upon the dearth of good literature in a somewhat disillusioned vein. After expressing her desire that some mighty spirit would rise up and give an impulse to poetry, she continues: 'I am tired of Sir Walter Scott and his imitators, and I am sickened of Mrs. Hemans's luscious poetry, and all her tribe of copyists. The libraries set in array one school against another, and hurry out the trashy volumes before the ink of the manuscript is fairly dry. Dost thou remember the days when Byron's poems first came out, now one and then another, at sufficient intervals to allow of digesting them? And dost thou remember our first reading of Lalla Rookh? It was on a washing-day. We read and clapped our clear-starching, read and clapped, and read again, and all the time our souls were not on this earth.'

There was one book then in course of preparation which Mary thought worthy to have been read, even in those literary clear-starching days. 'Thou hast no idea,' she assures her sister, 'how very interesting William's work, now called A Book of the Seasons, has become. It contains original sketches on every month, with every characteristic of the season, and a garden department which will fill thy heart brimful of all garden delights, greenness, and boweriness. Mountain scenery and lake scenery, meadows and woods, hamlets, farms, halls, storm and sunshine—all are in this most delicious book, grouped into a most harmonious whole.' Unfortunately, publishers were hard to convince of the merits of the new work, the first of William Howitt's rural series, and it was declined by four houses in turn. The author at last suggested that a stone should be tied to the unlucky manuscript, and that it should be flung over London Bridge; but his wife was not so easily disheartened. She was certain that the book was a worthy book, and only needed to be made a little more 'personable' to find favour in the eyes of a publisher. Accordingly, blotted sheets were hastily re-copied, new articles introduced, and passages of dubious interest omitted, husband and wife working together at this remodelling until their fingers ached and their eyes were as dim as an owl's in sunshine. Their labours were rewarded by the acceptance of the work by Bentley and Colburn, and its triumphant success with both critics and public, seven editions being called for in the first few months of its career.

'Prig it and pocket it,' says Christopher North, alluding to the Book of the Seasons in the Noctes for April, 1831. ''Tis a jewel.'

'Is Nottingham far intil England, sir?' asks the simple Shepherd, to whom the above advice is given. 'For I would really like to pay the Hooits a visit this simmer. Thae Quakers are what we micht scarcely opine frae first principles, a maist poetical Christian seck.... The twa married Hooits I love just excessively, sir. What they write canna fail o' being poetry, even the most middlin' o't, for it's aye wi' them the ebullition o' their ain feeling and their ain fancy, and whenever that's the case, a bonny word or twa will drap itself intil ilka stanzy, and a sweet stanzy or twa intil ilka pome, and sae they touch, and sae they win a body's heart.'

The year 1831 was rendered memorable to the Howitts, not only by their first literary success, but also by an unexpected visit from their poetical idol, Mr. Wordsworth. The poet, his wife and daughter, were on their way home from London when Mrs. Wordsworth was suddenly taken ill, and was unable to proceed farther than Nottingham. Her husband, in great perplexity, came to ask advice of the Howitts, who insisted that the invalid should be removed to their house, where she remained for ten days before she was able to continue her journey. Wordsworth himself was only able to stay one night, but in that short time he made a very favourable impression upon his host and hostess. 'He is worthy of being the author of The Excursion, Ruth, and those sweet poems so full of human sympathy,' writes Mary. 'He is a kind man, full of strong feeling and sound judgment. My greatest delight was that he seemed so pleased with William's conversation. They seemed quite in their element, pouring out their eloquent sentiments on the future prospects of society, and on all subjects connected with poetry and the interests of man. Nor are we less pleased with Mrs. Wordsworth and her lovely daughter, Dora. They are the most grateful people; everything that we do for them is right, and the very best it can be.'

During the next two or three years Mary produced a volume of dramatic sketches, called The Seven Temptations, which she always regarded as her best and most original work, but which was damned by the critics and neglected by the public; a little book of natural history for children; and a novel in three volumes, called Wood Leighton, which seems to have had some success. The Seven Temptations, it must be owned, is a rather lugubrious production, probably inspired by Joanna Baillie's Plays on the Passions. The scene of Wood Leighton is laid at Uttoxeter, and the book is not so much a connected tale as a series of sketches descriptive of scenes and characters in and about the author's early home. It is evident that Mrs. Botham and Sister Anna looked somewhat disapprovingly upon so much literary work for the mistress of a household, since we find Mary writing in eager defence of her chosen calling.

'I want to make thee, and more particularly dear mother, see,' she explains, 'that I am not out of my line of duty in devoting myself so much to literary occupation. Just lately things were sadly against us. Dear William could not sleep at night, and the days were dark and gloomy. Altogether, I was at my wits' end. I turned over in my mind what I could do next, for till William's Rural Life was finished we had nothing available. Then I bethought myself of all those little verses and prose tales that for years I had written for the juvenile Annuals. It seemed probable I might turn them to some account. In about a week I had nearly all the poetry copied; and then who should come to Nottingham but John Darton [a Quaker publisher]. He fell into the idea immediately, took what I had copied up to London with him, and I am to have a hundred and fifty guineas for them. Have I not reason to feel that in thus writing I was fulfilling a duty?'

In 1833 William Hewitt's History of Priestcraft appeared, a work which was publicly denounced at the Friends' yearly meeting, all good Quakers being cautioned not to read it. William hitherto had lived in great retirement at Nottingham, but he was now claimed by the Radical and Nonconformist members of the community as their spokesman and champion. In January, 1834, he and Joseph Gilbert (husband of Ann Gilbert of Original Poems fame) were deputed to present to the Prime Minister, Lord Grey, a petition from Nottingham for the disestablishment of the Church of England. The Premier regretted that he could not give his support to such a sweeping measure, which would embarrass the Ministry, alarm both Houses of Parliament, and startle the nation. He declared his intention of standing by the Church to the best of his ability, believing it to be the sacred duty of Government to maintain an establishment of religion. To which sturdy William Howitt replied that to establish one sect in preference to another was to establish a party and not a religion.

Civic duties, together with the excitements of local politics, proved a sad hindrance to literary work, and in 1836 the Howitts, who had long been yearning for a wider intellectual sphere, decided to give up the chemist's business, and settle in the neighbourhood of London. Their friends, the Alaric Watts's, who were living at Thames Ditton, found them a pretty little house at Esher, where they would be able to enjoy the woods and heaths of rural Surrey, and yet be within easy reach of publishers and editors in town. Before settling down in their new home, the Howitts made a three months' tour in the north, with a view to gathering materials for William's book on Rural England. They explored the Yorkshire dales, stayed with the Wordsworths at Rydal, and made a pilgrimage to the haunts of their favourite, Thomas Bewick, in Northumberland. Crossing the Border they paid a delightful visit to Edinburgh, where they were made much of by the three literary cliques of the city, the Blackwood and Wilson set, the Tait set, and the Chambers set.

'Immediately after our arrival,' relates Mary, 'a public dinner was given to Campbell the poet, at which the committee requested my husband's attendance, and that he would take a share in the proceedings of the evening by proposing as a toast, "Wordsworth, Southey, and Moore." This was our first introduction to Professor Wilson (Christopher North) and his family. I sat in the gallery with Mrs. Wilson and her daughters, one of whom was engaged to Professor Ferrier. We could not but remark the wonderful difference, not only in the outer man, but in the whole character of mind and manner, between Professor Wilson and Campbell—the one so hearty, outspoken, and joyous, the other so petty and trivial.'

Robert Chambers constituted himself the Hewitts' cicerone in Edinburgh, showing them every place of interest, and presenting them to every person of note, including Mrs. Maclehose (the Clarinda of Burns), and William Miller, the Quaker artist and engraver, as intense a nature-worshipper as themselves. From Edinburgh they went to Glasgow, where they took ship for the Western Isles. Their adventures at Staffa and Iona, their voyage up the Caledonian Canal, and the remainder of their experiences on this tour, were afterwards described by William Howitt in his Visits to Remarkable Places.



PART II

In September, 1836, the Howitts took possession of their Surrey home, West End Cottage, an old-fashioned dwelling, with a large garden, an orchard, a meadow by the river Mole, and the right of boating and fishing to the extent of seven miles. The new life opened with good prospects of literary and journalistic employment, William Howitt's political writings having already attracted attention from several persons of power and influence in the newspaper world. On December 3 of this year, Mary wrote to inform her sister that, 'In consequence of an article that William wrote on Dymond's Christian Morality, Joseph Hume, the member for Middlesex, wrote to him, and has opened a most promising connection for him with a new Radical newspaper, The Constitutional. O'Connell seems determined to make him the editor of the Dublin Review, and wrote him a most kind letter, which has naturally promoted his interest with the party. I cannot but see the hand of Providence in our leaving Nottingham. All has turned out admirably.'

Unfortunately for these sanguine anticipations, the newspaper connections on which the Howitts depended for a livelihood, now that the despised chemist's business had been given up, proved but hollow supports. O'Connell had overlooked the trifling fact that a Quaker editor was hardly fitted to conduct a journal that was emphatically and polemically Catholic; and though he considered that William Howitt was admirably adapted to deal with literary and political topics, he was obliged to withdraw his offer of the editorship. A more crushing disappointment arose out of the engagement on The Constitutional. Mr. Howitt, according to his wife, did more for the paper than any other member of the staff. 'He worked and wrote like any slave,' she tells her sister. 'In the end, after a series of the most harassing and vexatious conduct on the part of the newspaper company, he was swindled out of every farthing. Oh, it was a most mortifying and humiliating thing to see men professing liberal and honest principles act so badly. A month ago, when in the very depths of discouragement and low spirits, I set about a little volume for Darton, to be called Birds and Flowers, and have pretty nearly finished it. William, in the mean time, has finished his Rural Life, and sold the first edition to Longman's.'

The manager of the unlucky paper was Major Carmichael Smith, who, when matters grew desperate, sent for his step-son, Thackeray, then acting as Paris correspondent for a London daily. 'Just as I was going out of the office one day,' writes William, 'I met on the stairs a tall, thin young man, in a dark blue coat, and with a nose that seemed to have had a blow that had flattened the bridge. I turned back, and had some conversation with him, being anxious to know how he proposed to carry on a paper which was without any funds, and already deeply in debt. He did not seem to know any more than I did. I thought to myself that his step-father had not done him much service in taking him from a profitable post for the vain business of endeavouring to buoy up a desperate speculation. How much longer The Constitutional struggled on, I know not. That was the first time I ever saw or heard of William Makepeace Thackeray.'

The Howitts were somewhat consoled for their journalistic losses by the triumphant success of Rural Life in England. The reading public which, during the previous century, had swallowed mock pastorals, made in Fleet Street, with perfect serenity, was now, thanks to the slowly-working influence of Wordsworth and the other Lake poets, prepared for a renaissance of nature and simplicity in prose. Miss Mitford's exquisite work had given them a distaste for the 'jewelled turf,' the 'silver streams,' and 'smiling valleys' which constituted the rustic stock-in-trade of the average novelist; and they eagerly welcomed a book that treated with accuracy and observation of the real country. William Howitt's straightforward, undistinguished style was acceptable enough in an age when even men of genius seem to have written fine prose without knowing it, and tripped up not infrequently over the subtleties of English grammar. His lack of imagination and humour was more than atoned for, in the uncritical eyes of the 'thirties,' by the easy loquacity of his rural gossip, and the varied information with which he crammed his pages. The Nature of those days was a simple, transparent creature, with but small resemblance to the lady of moods, mystery, and passion who is so overworked in our modern literature. No one dreamt of going into hysterics over the veining of a leaf, or penning a rhapsody on the outline of a rain-cloud; nor could it yet be said that, 'if everybody must needs blab of the favours that have been done him by roadside, and river-brink, and woodland walk, as if to kiss and tell were no longer treachery, it will soon be a positive refreshment to meet a man who is as superbly indifferent to Nature as she is to him.' [Footnote: Lowell]

The Howitts took great delight in the pleasant Surrey country, so different from the dreary scenery around Nottingham, and Mary's letters contain many descriptions of the woods and commons and shady lanes through which the family made long expeditions in a little carriage drawn by Peg, their venerable pony. Driving one day to Hook, they met Charles Dickens, then best known as 'Boz,' in one of his long tramps, with Harrison Ainsworth as his companion. When Dickens's next work, Master Humphrey's Clock, appeared, the Howitts were amused to see that their stout and wilful Peg had not escaped the novelist's keen eye, but had been pressed into service for Mr. Garland's chaise.

On another occasion, in July 1841, William, while driving with a friend, was attacked by two handsome, dark-eyed girls, dressed in gipsy costume, who ran one on each side of the carriage, begging that the kind gentleman would give them sixpence, as they were poor strangers who had taken nothing all day. Mr. Howitt, who had made a special study of the gipsy tribe, perceived in an instant that these were only sham Romanys. He paid no attention to their pleading, but observed that he hoped they would enjoy their frolic, and only wished that he were as rich as they. Subsequently, he discovered that the mock-gipsies, who had been unable to coax a sixpence out of him, were none other than the beautiful Sheridan sisters, the Duchess of Somerset, and Mrs. Blackwood (afterwards Lady Dufferin), whose husband had lately taken Bookham Lodge.

During the four years spent at Esher, Mary seems to have been too much occupied with the cares of a young family to use her pen to much purpose. She produced little, except a volume of Hymns and Fireside Verses, but she frequently assisted her husband in his work. William, industrious as ever, published, besides a large number of newspaper articles, his Boys' Country Book, the best work of the kind ever written, according to the Quarterly Review; and his History of Colonisation and Christianity, in which he took a rapid survey of the behaviour of the Christian nations of Europe to the inhabitants of the countries they conquered in all parts of the world. It was the reading of this book that led Mr. Joseph Pease to establish the British India Society, which issued, in a separate form, the portion of the work that related to India. Mr. Howitt next set to work upon another topographical volume, his Visits to Remarkable Places, in which he turned to good account the materials collected in his pedestrian rambles about the country.

In 1840 the question of education for the elder children became urgent, and the Howitts, who had heard much of the advantages of a residence in Germany from their friends, Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Jameson, and Henry Chorley, decided to give up their cottage at Esher, and spend two or three years at Heidelberg. Letters of introduction from Mrs. Jameson gave them the entree into German society, which they found more to their taste than that of their native land. 'For the sake of our children,' writes Mary, 'we sought German acquaintances, we read German, we followed German customs. The life seemed to me easier, the customs simpler and less expensive than in England. There was not the same feverish thirst after wealth as with us; there was more calm appreciation of nature, of music, of social enjoyment.' In their home on the Neckar, the Howitts, most adaptable of couples, found new pleasures and new amusements with each season of the year. In the spring and summer they explored the surrounding country, wandered through the deep valleys and woods, where the grass was purple with bilberries, visited quaint, half-timbered homesteads, standing in the midst of ancient orchards, or followed the swift-flowing streams, on whose banks the peasant girls in their picturesque costumes were washing and drying linen. In the autumn the whole family turned out on the first day of the vintage, and worked like their neighbours. 'It was like something Arcadian,' wrote Mary when recalling the scene. 'The tubs and baskets piled up with enormous clusters, the men and women carrying them away on their heads to the place where they were being crushed; the laughter, the merriment, the feasting, the firing—for they make as much noise as they can—all was delightful, to say nothing of the masquerading and dancing in the evening, which we saw, though we did not take part in it.' In the winter the strangers were introduced to the Christmas Tree, which had not yet become a British institution: while with the first snow came the joys of sleighing, when wheel-barrows, tubs, baskets, everything that could be put on runners, were turned into sledges, and the boys were in their glory.

During the three years that were spent at Heidelberg, William Howitt wrote his Student Life in Germany, German Experiences, and Rural and Domestic Life in Germany, works which contain a great deal of more or less valuable information about the country and the people, presented in a homely, unpretentious style. Mary was no less industrious, having struck a new literary vein, the success of which was far to surpass her modest anticipations. 'I have been very busy,' she writes in 1842, 'translating the first volume of a charming work by Frederica Bremer, a Swedish writer; and if any publisher will give me encouragement to go on with it, I will soon complete the work. It is one of a series of stories of everyday life in Sweden—a beautiful book, full of the noblest moral lessons for every man and woman.' In the summer of 1841 the Howitts, accompanied by their elder daughter, Anna, made a long tour through Germany and Austria, in the course of which they collected materials for fresh works, and visited the celebrities, literary and artistic, of the various cities that lay in their route. At Stuttgart they called on Gustav Schwab, the poet, and visited Dannecker's studio; at Tuebingen they made the acquaintance of Uhland, and at Munich that of Kaulbach, then at the height of his fame. By way of Vienna and Prague they travelled to Dresden, where, through the good offices of Mrs. Jameson, they were received by Moritz Retzsch, whose Outlines they had long admired. At Berlin they made friends with Tieck, on whom the king had bestowed a pension and a house at Potsdam; while at Weimar they were entertained by Frau von Goethe, whose son, Wolfgang, had been one of their earliest acquaintances at Heidelberg. This interesting tour is described at length in the Rural and Domestic Life of Germany.

Another year was spent at Heidelberg, but the difficulties of arranging the business details of their work at such a distance from publishers and editors, brought the industrious couple back to London in the spring of 1843. 'On our return to England,' writes Mary, 'I was full of energy and hope. Glowing with aspiration, and in enjoyment of great domestic happiness, I was anticipating a busy, perhaps overburdened, but, nevertheless, congenial life. It was to be one of darkness, perplexity, discouragement.' The Howitts had scarcely entered into possession of a new house that they had taken at Clapton, when news came from Heidelberg, where the elder children had been left at school, that their second son, Claude, had developed alarming symptoms of disease in the knee-joint. It was known that he had been slightly injured in play a few weeks before, but no danger had been anticipated. Mr. Howitt at once set out for Heidelberg, and returned with the invalid, on whose case Liston was consulted. The great surgeon counselled amputation, but to this the parents refused their consent, except as a last resource. Various less heroic modes of treatment were tried, but poor Claude faded away, and died in March, 1844, aged only ten years and a half. This was the heaviest trial that the husband and wife had yet experienced, for Claude had been a boy of brilliant promise, whom they regarded as the flower of their flock. Only a few months before his accident his mother had written in the pride of her heart: 'Claude is the naughtiest of all the children, and yet the most gifted. He learns anything at a glance. Claude is born to be fortunate; he is one that will make the family distinguished in the next generation. He has an extraordinary faculty for telling stories, either of his own invention or of what he reads.'

A lesser cause of trouble and anxiety arose out of the translation of Miss Bremer's novels. 'When we first translated The Neighbours,' writes Mary, 'there was not a house in London that would undertake its publication. We published it and the other Bremer novels at our own risk, but such became the rage for them that our translations were seized by a publisher, altered, and reissued as new ones.' The success of these books was said to be greater than that of any series since the first appearance of the Waverley novels. Cheap editions were multiplied in the United States, and even the boys who hawked the books about the streets were to be seen deep in The Home or The H. Family. In a letter to her sister written about this time, Mary expatiates on the annoyance and loss caused by these piracies. 'It is very mortifying,' she observes, 'because no one knew of these Swedish novels till we introduced them. It obliges us to hurry in all we do, and we must work almost day and night to get ours out in order that we may have some little chance.... We have embarked a great deal of money in the publication, and the interference of the upstart London publisher is most annoying. Mlle. Bremer, however, has written a new novel, and sends it to us before publication. We began its translation this week, and hope to be able to publish it about the time it will appear in Sweden and Germany.'

In addition to her translating work, Mrs. Howitt was engaged at this time upon a series of little books, called Tales for the People and their Children, which had been commissioned by a cheap publisher. These stories, each of which illustrated a domestic virtue, were punctually paid for: and though they were never advertised, they passed swiftly through innumerable editions, and have been popular with a certain public down to quite recent times. Perhaps the most attractive is the Autobiography of a Child, in which Mary told the story of her own early days in her pretty, simple style, with the many little quaint touches that gave all her juvenile stories an atmosphere of truth and reality. Her quick sympathy with young people, and her knowledge of what most appealed to the childish mind, was probably due to her vivid remembrance of her own youthful days, and to her affectionate study of the 'little ways' of her own children. Many are the original traits and sayings that she reports to her sister, more especially those of her youngest boy, Charlton, who had inherited his parents' naturalistic tastes in a pronounced form, and preferred the Quakers' meeting-house to any other church or chapel, because there was a dog-kennel on the premises!

About a year after her return to England, Mrs. Howitt turned her attention to Danish literature, finding that, with her knowledge of Swedish and German, the language presented few difficulties. In 1845 she translated Hans Andersen's Impromsatore, greatly to the satisfaction of the author, who begged that she would continue to translate his works, till he was as well known and loved in England as he was on the Continent. Appreciation, fame, and joy, declared the complacent poet, followed his footsteps wherever he went, and his whole life was full of sunshine, like a beautiful fairy-tale. Mary translated his Only a Fiddler; O. T., or Life in Denmark; The True Story of My Life; and several of the Wonderful Stories for Children. The Improvisatore was the only one that went into a second edition, the other works scarcely paying the cost of publication. Hans Andersen, however, being assured that Mrs. Howitt was making a fortune of the translations, came to England in 1847 to arrange for a share of the profits. Though disappointed in his hope of gain, he begged Mrs. Howitt to translate the whole of his fairy-tales, which had just been brought out in a beautifully-illustrated German edition. Much to her after regret, she was then too much engrossed by other work to be able to accede to his proposal. The relations between Hans Andersen and his translator were marred, we are told, by the extreme sensitiveness and egoism of the Dane. Mrs. Howitt narrates, as an example of his childish vanity, the following little incident which occurred during his visit to England in the summer of 1847:—

'We had taken him, as a pleasant rural experience, to the annual hay-making at Hillside, Highgate, thus introducing him to an English home, full of poetry and art, sincerity, and affection. The ladies of Hillside—Miss Mary and Margaret Gillies, the one an embodiment of peace and an admirable writer, whose talent, like the violet, kept in the shade; the other, the warm-hearted painter—made him welcome.... Immediately after our arrival, the assembled children, loving his delightful fairy-tales, clustered round him in the hay-field, and watched him make them a pretty device of flowers; then, feeling somehow that the stiff, silent foreigner was not kindred to themselves, stole off to an American, Henry Clarke Wright, whose admirable little book, A Kiss for a Blow, some of them knew. He, without any suggestion of condescension or difference of age, entered heart and soul into their glee, laughed, shouted, and played with them, thus unconsciously evincing the gift which had made him earlier the exclusive pastor of six hundred children in Boston. Soon poor Andersen, perceiving himself neglected, complained of headache, and insisted on going indoors, whither Mary Gillies and I, both anxious to efface any disagreeable impression, accompanied him; but he remained irritable and out of sorts.'

It was in 1845 or 1846 that the Howitts made the acquaintance of Tennyson, whose poetry they had long admired. 'The retiring and meditative young poet, Alfred Tennyson, visited us,' relates Mary, 'and cheered our seclusion by the recitation of his exquisite poetry. He spent a Sunday night at our house, when we sat talking together till three in the morning. All the next day he remained with us in constant converse. We seemed to have known him for years. So in fact we had, for his poetry was himself. He hailed all attempts at heralding a grander, more liberal state of public opinion, and consequently sweeter, nobler modes of living. He wished that we Englanders could dress up our affections in more poetical costume; real warmth of heart would gain rather than lose by it. As it was, our manners were as cold as the walls of our churches.' Another new friend was gained through William Howitt's book, Visits to Remarkable Places. When the work was announced as 'in preparation,' the author received a letter, signed E. C. Gaskell, drawing his attention to a beautiful old house, Clopton Hall, near Stratford-on-Avon. The letter described in such admirable style the writer's visit to the house as a schoolgirl, that William wrote to suggest that she ought to use her pen for the public benefit. This timely encouragement led to the production of Mary Barton, the first volume of which was sent in manuscript for Mr. Howitt's verdict. A few months later Mrs. Gaskell came as a guest to the little house at Clopton, bringing with her the completed work.

In 1846 William Howitt took part in a new journalistic venture, his wife, as usual, sharing his labours and anxieties. He became first contributor, and afterwards editor and part-proprietor of the People's Journal, a cheap weekly, through the medium of which he hoped to improve the moral and intellectual condition of the working classes. 'The bearing of its contents,' wrote Mary, in answer to some adverse criticism of the new paper, 'is love to God and man. There is no attempt to set the poor against the rich, but, on the contrary, to induce them to be careful, prudent, sober and independent; above all, to be satisfied to be workers, and to regard labour as a privilege rather than as a penalty, which is quite our view of the matter.' The combination of business and philanthropy seldom answers, and the Howitts, despite the excellence of their intentions, were unlucky in their newspaper speculations. At the end of a few months it was discovered that the manager of the People's Journal kept no books, and that the affairs of the paper were in hopeless confusion. William Howitt, finding himself responsible for the losses on the venture, tried to cure the evil by a hair of the dog that had bitten him. He withdrew from the People's Journal, and, with Samuel Smiles as his assistant, started a rival paper on the same lines, called Howitts Journal. But, as Ebenezer Elliott, the shrewd old Quaker, remarked, apropos of the apathy of the working-class public: 'Men engaged in a death struggle for bread will pay for amusement when they will not for instruction. They woo laughter to unscare them, that they may forget their perils, their wrongs, and their oppressors. If you were able and willing to fill the journal with fun, it would pay.' The failure of his paper spelt ruin to its promoter; his copyrights, as well as those of his wife, were sacrificed, and he was obliged to begin the world anew.

The Howitts seem to have kept up their spirits bravely under this reverse, and never for a moment relaxed in their untiring industry. They moved into a small house in Avenue Road, St. John's Wood, and looked around them for new subjects upon which to exercise their well-worn pens. Mary hoped to get employment from the Religious Tract Society, which had invited her to send in a specimen story, but she feared that her work would hardly be considered sufficiently orthodox, though she had introduced one of the 'death-bed scenes,' which were then in so much request. As she anticipated, the story was returned as quite unsuitable, and thereupon she writes to her sister in some depression: 'Times are so bad that publishers will not speculate in books; and when I have finished the work I am now engaged on, I have nothing else certain to go on with.' However, writers so popular with the public as the Howitts were not likely to be left long without employment. Mary seems to have been the greater favourite of the two, and the vogue of her volume of collected Poems and Ballads, which appeared in 1847, strikes the modern reader with amazement. Some idea of the estimation in which she was then held is proved by Allan Cunningham's dictum that 'Mary Howitt has shown herself mistress of every string of the minstrel's lyre, save that which sounds of broil and bloodshed. There is more of the old ballad simplicity in her composition than can be found in the strains of any living poet besides.' Another critic compared Mrs. Hewitt's ballads to those of Lord Macaulay, while Mrs. Alaric Watts, in her capacity of Annual editor, wrote to assure her old friend and contributor that, 'In thy simplest poetry there are sometimes turns so exquisite as to bring the tears to my eyes. Thou hast as much poetry in thee as would set up half-a-dozen writers.' The one dissentient voice among admiring contemporaries is that of Miss Mitford, who writes in 1852: 'I am for my sins so fidgety respecting style that I have the bad habit of expecting a book that pretends to be written in our language to be English; therefore I cannot read Miss Strickland, or the Howitts, or Carlyle, or Emerson, or the serious parts of Dickens.' It must be owned that the Howitts are condemned in fairly good company.

The work of both husband and wife suffered from the inevitable defects of self-education, and also from the narrowness and seclusion of their early lives. Mary possessed more imagination and a lighter touch than her husband, but her attempts at adult fiction were hampered by her ignorance of the world, while her technique, both in prose and verse, left something to be desired. It is evident that the publishers and editors of the period were less critical than Miss Mitford, for, in 1848, we find that Mrs. Howitt was invited to write the opening volume of Bradshaw's series of Railway novels, while in February 1850, came a request from Charles Dickens for contributions to Household Words. 'You may have seen,' he writes, 'the first dim announcements of the new, cheap literary journal I am about to start. Frankly, I want to say to you that if you would write for it, you would delight me, and I should consider myself very fortunate indeed in enlisting your services.... I hope any connection with the enterprise would be satisfactory and agreeable to you in all respects, as I should most earnestly endeavour to make it. If I wrote a book I could say no more than I mean to suggest to you in these few lines. All that I leave unsaid, I leave to your generous understanding.'

The Howitts were keenly interested in the gradual awakening of the long-dormant, artistic instincts of the nation, the first signs of which became faintly visible about the end of the forties. 'Down to that time,' observes Mary, 'the taste of the English people had been for what appealed to the mind rather than to the eye, and the general public were almost wholly uneducated in art. By 1849 the improvement due to the exertions of the Prince Consort, the Society of Arts, and other powers began to be felt; while a wonderful impulse to human taste and ingenuity was being given in the preparation of exhibits for the World's Fair.' The gentle Quakeress who, in her youth, had modelled Wedgwood figures in paper pulp, and clapped her clear-starching to the rhythm of Lalla Rookh, was, in middle life, one of the staunchest supporters of the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren, and that at a time when the President of the Royal Academy had announced his intention of hanging no more of their 'outrageous productions.' Through their friend, Edward La Trobe Bateman, the Howitts had been introduced into the Pre-Raphaelite circle, and familiarised with the then new and startling idea that artistic principles might be carried out in furniture and house-decoration. Less than three-quarters of a century before, Mary's father had been sternly rebuked by her grandfather for painting a series of lines in black and grey above the parlour fireplace to represent a cornice. This primitive attempt at decoration was regarded as a sinful indulgence of the lust of the eye! With the simple charity that was characteristic of them, William and Mary saw only the best side of their new friends, the shadows of Bohemian life being entirely hidden from them. 'Earnest and severe in their principles of art,' observes Mrs. Howitt naively, 'the young reformers indulged in much jocundity when the day's work was done. They were wont to meet at ten, cut jokes, talk slang, smoke, read poetry, and discuss art till three A.M.'

The couple had by this time renounced their membership of the Society of Friends, but they had not joined any other religious sect, though they seem to have been attracted by Unitarian doctrines. 'Mere creeds,' wrote Mary to her sister, 'matter nothing to me. I could go one Sunday to the Church of England, another to a Catholic chapel, a third to the Unitarian, and so on; and in each of them find my heart warmed with Christian love to my fellow-creatures, and lifted up with gratitude and praise to God.' For many years the house in Avenue Road was, we are told, a meeting-place for all that was best and brightest in the world of modern thought and art. William Howitt was always ready to lend an attentive and unbiassed ear to the newest theory, or even the newest fad, while Mary possessed in the fullest degree the gift of companionableness, and her inexhaustible sympathy drew from others an instant confidence. Her arduous literary labours never impaired her vigorous powers of mind or body, and she often wrote till late into the night without appearing to suffer in either health or spirits. She is described as a careful and energetic housewife; indeed, her husband was accustomed to say that he would challenge any woman who never wrote a line, to match his own good woman in the management of a large household.

In 1851 came the first tidings of the discovery of gold in Australia, and nothing was talked of but this new Eldorado and the wonderful inducements held out to emigrants. William Howitt, who felt that he needed a change from brain-work, suddenly resolved on a trip with his two sons to this new world, where he would see his youngest brother, Dr. Godfrey Howitt, who had settled at Melbourne. He was also anxious to ascertain what openings in the country there might be for his boys, both of whom had active, outdoor tastes, which there seemed little chance of their being able to gratify in England. In June, 1852, the three male members of the family, accompanied by La Trobe Bateman, sailed for Australia, while Mary and her two daughters, the elder of whom had just returned from a year in Kaulbach's studio at Munich, moved into a cottage called the Hermitage, at Highgate, which belonged to Mr. Bateman, and had formerly been occupied by Rossetti. Here they lived quietly for upwards of two years, working at their literary or artistic occupations, and seeing a few intimate friends. Mary kept her husband posted up in the events that were taking place in England, and we learn from her letters what were the chief topics of town talk in the early fifties.

'Now, I must think over what news there is,' she writes in April, 1853. 'In the political world, the proposed new scheme of Property and Income Tax, which would make everybody pay something; and the proposal for paying off a portion of the National Debt with Australian gold. In the literary world, the International Copyright, which some expect will be in force in three months. In society in general, the strange circumstantial rumour of the Queen's death, which, being set afloat on Easter Monday, when no business was doing, was not the offspring of the money market. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean, who were here the other day, spoke of it, saying truly that for the moment it seemed to paralyse the very heart of England.... [May 4th.] The great talk now is Mrs. Beecher Stowe and spirit-rapping, both of which have arrived in England. The universality of the latter phenomena renders it a curious study. A feeling seems pervading all classes and all sects that the world stands on the brink of some great spiritual revelation. It meets one in books, in newspapers, on the lips of members of the Church of England, Unitarians, and even Freethinkers. Poor old Robert Owen, the philanthropist, has been converted, and made a confession of faith in public. One cannot but respect a man who, in his old age, has the boldness to declare himself as having been blinded and mistaken through life.'

In December, 1854, William Howitt returned from his travels without any gold in his pockets, but with the materials for his History of Discovery in Australia and New Zealand. Thanks to what he used to call his four great doctors, Temperance, Exercise, Good Air, and Good Hours, he had displayed wonderful powers of activity and endurance during his exploration of some almost untracked regions of the new world. At sixty years of age he had marched twenty miles a day under a blazing sun for weeks at a time, worked at digging gold for twelve hours a day, waded through rivers, slept under trees, baked his own bread, washed his own clothes, and now returned in the pink of condition, with his passion for wandering only intensified by his three years of an adventurous life. The family experiences were diversified thenceforward by frequent change of scene, for William was always ready and willing to start off at a moment's notice to the mountains, the seaside, or the Continent. But whether the Howitts were at home or abroad, they continued their making of many books, so that it becomes difficult for the biographer to keep pace with their literary output. Together or separately they produced a History of Scandinavian Literature, The Homes and Haunts of the Poets, a Popular History of England, which was published in weekly parts, a Year-Book of the Country, a Popular History of the United States, a History of the Supernatural, the Northern Heights of London, and an abridged edition of Sir Charles Grandison, besides several tales for young people, and contributions to magazines and newspapers.

Even increasing age had no power to narrow their point of view, or to blunt their sympathy with every movement that seemed to make for the relief of the oppressed, the welfare of the nation, or the advancement of the human race. Just as in youth they had championed the cause of Catholic Emancipation and of political Reform, so in later years we find them advocating the Repeal of the Corn Laws, taking part in the Anti-Slavery agitation, working for improvement in the laws that affected women and children, and supporting the Bill for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. A more debatable subject—that of spiritualism—was investigated by them in a friendly but impartial spirit. 'In the spring of 1856, 'writes Mrs. Howitt, 'we had become acquainted with several most ardent and honest spirit mediums. It seemed right to my husband and myself to try and understand the nature of these phenomena in which our new acquaintance so firmly believed. In the month of April I was invited to attend a seance at Professor de Morgan's, and was much astonished and affected by communications purporting to come to me from my dear son Claude. With constant prayer for enlightenment and guidance, we experimented at home. The teachings that seemed given us from the spirit-world were often akin to those of the gospel; at other times they were more obviously emanations of evil. I felt thankful for the assurance thus gained of an invisible world, but resolved to neglect none of my common duties for spiritualism.' Among the Hewitts' fellow-converts were Robert Chambers, Robert Owen, the Carter Halls and the Alaric Watts's; while Sir David Brewster and Lord Brougham were earnest inquirers into these forms of psychical phenomena.

In 1865 William Howitt was granted a pension by Government, and a year later the couple moved from Highgate to a cottage called the Orchard, near their former residence at Esher. Of their four surviving children, only Margaret, the youngest, was left at home. Anna, already the author of a very interesting book, An Art Student at Munich, had, as her mother observes, taken her place among the successful artists and writers of her day, 'when, in the spring of 1856, a severe private censure of one of her oil-paintings by a king among critics so crushed her sensitive nature, as to make her yield to her bias for the supernatural, and withdraw from the arena of the fine arts.' In 1857 Anna became the wife of Alfred Watts, the son of her parents' old friends, Alaric and Zillah Watts. The two boys, Alfred and Charlton, born explorers and naturalists, both settled in Australia. Alfred, early in the sixties, had explored the district of Lake Torrens, a land of parched deserts, dry-water-courses, and soda-springs, whose waters effervesced tartaric acid; and had opened up for the Victorian Government the mountainous district of Gippsland, with the famous gold-field of the Crooked River. In 1861 he had been employed to head the relief-party that went in search of the discoverer, Robert O'Hara Burke, and his companions, and a year later he brought back the remains of the ill-fated explorers to Melbourne for public burial. Later in life he was successfully employed in various Government enterprises, and published, in collaboration with a friend, a learned work on the aborigines of Australia.

Charlton Howitt, the younger son, after five years' uncongenial work in a London office, emigrated to Australia in 1860. His quality was quickly recognised by the Provincial Government, which, in 1862, appointed him to command an expedition to examine the rivers in the province of Canterbury, with a view to ascertaining whether they contained gold. So admirably was the work accomplished that, on his return to Christchurch, he was intrusted with the task of opening up communications between the Canterbury plains and the newly-discovered gold and coal district on the west coast. 'This duty was faithfully performed, under constant hardships and discouragement,' relates his mother. 'But a few miles of road remained to be cut, when, at the end of June, 1863, after personally rescuing other pioneers and wanderers from drowning and starvation in that watery, inhospitable forest region, Charlton, with two of his men, went down in the deep waters of Lake Brunner; a fatal accident which deprived the Government of a valued servant, and saddened the hearts of all who knew him.'

After four peaceful years at Esher, the Wanderlust, that gipsy spirit, which not even the burden of years could tame, took possession of William and Mary once more, and they suddenly decided that they must see Italy before they died. In May, 1870, they let the Orchard, and, aged seventy-seven and seventy-one respectively, set out on their last long flight into the world. The summer was spent on the Lake of Lucerne, where the old-world couple came across that modern of the moderns, Richard Wagner, and his family. By way of the Italian Lakes and Venice they travelled, in leisurely fashion, to Rome, where they celebrated their golden wedding in April, 1871. The Eternal City threw its glamour around these ancient pilgrims, who found both life and climate exactly suited to the needs of old age. 'I prized in Rome,' writes Mrs. Howitt, 'the many kind and sympathetic friends that were given to us, the ease of social existence, the poetry, the classic grace, the peculiar and deep pathos diffused around; above all, the stirring and affecting historic memories.... From the period of arrival in Rome, I may truly say that the promise in Scripture, "At evening time there shall be light," was, in our case, fulfilled.'

The simple, homely life of the aged couple continued unbroken amid their new surroundings. William interested himself in the planting of Eucalyptus in the Campagna, as a preventive against malaria, and had seeds of different varieties sent over from Australia, which he presented to the Trappist monks of the Tre Fontani. He helped to establish a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, and struck up a friendship with the gardeners and custodians of the Pincio, to whom he gave expert advice on the subject of the creatures under their charge. The summer months were always spent in the Tyrol, where the Howitts had permanent quarters in an old mansion near Bruneck, called Mayr-am-Hof. Here William was able to indulge in his favourite occupation of gardening. He dug indefatigably in a field allotment with his English spade, a unique instrument in that land of clumsy husbandry, and was amazed at the growth of the New Zealand spinach, the widespread rhubarb, the exuberant tomatoes, and towering spikes of Indian corn. Thanks to the four great doctors before mentioned, he remained hale and hearty up to December, 1878, in which month he celebrated his eighty-seventh birthday. A few weeks later he was attacked by bronchitis, which, owing to an unsuspected weakness of the heart, he was unable to throw off. He died in his house on the Via Sistina, close to his favourite Pincio, on March 3, 1879.

Mrs. Howitt now finally gave up the idea of returning to end her days in England. Her husband and companion of more than fifty years was buried in the Protestant Cemetery at Home, and when her time came, she desired to be laid by his side. The grant of a small pension added to the comfort of her last years, and was a source of much innocent pride and gratification, for, as she tells her daughter Anna, 'It was so readily given, so kindly, so graciously, for my literary merits, by Lord Beaconsfield, without the solicitation or interference of any friend or well-wisher.' In May, 1880, she writes to a friend from Meran about 'a project, which seems to have grown up in a wonderful way by itself, or as if invisible hands had been arranging it; that we should have a little home of our own im heiligen Land Tirol. This really is a very great mercy, seeing that the Tyrol is so beautiful, the climate so beneficial to health, and the people, taken as a whole, so very honest and devout. Our little nest of love, which we shall call "Marienruhe," will be perched on a hill with beautiful views, surrounded by a small garden.' On September 29, 1881, Mrs. Howitt and her daughter, Margaret, slept, for the first time, in their romantically-situated new home near Meran.

At Marienruhe, the greater portion of the last seven years of Mary Howitt's life was spent in peace and contentment. Here she amused herself with writing her 'Reminiscences' for Good Words, which were afterwards incorporated in her Autobiography. Age had no power to blunt her interest in the events of the day, political or literary, and at eighty-seven we find her reading with keen enjoyment Froude's Oceana and Besant's All Sorts and Conditions of Men, books that dealt with questions which she and her husband had had at heart for the best part of a lifetime, and for which they had worked with untiring zeal. Of the first she writes to a friend: 'We much approve of his (Froude's) very strong desire that our colonies should, like good, faithful, well-trained children, be staunch in love and service to old Mother England. How deeply we feel on this subject I cannot tell you; and I hope and trust that you join strongly in this truly English sentiment.' Of the second she writes to Mrs. Leigh Smith: 'I am more interested than I can tell you in All Sorts and Conditions of Men. It affects me like the perfected fruit of some glorious tree which my dear husband and I had a dim dream of planting more than thirty years ago, and which we did, in our ignorance and incapacity, attempt to plant in soil not properly prepared, and far too early in the season. I cannot tell you how it has recalled the hopes and dreams of a time which, by the overruling Providence of God, was so disastrous to us. It is a beautiful essay on the dignity of labour.'

The last few years of Mary Howitt's life were saddened by the deaths of her beloved sister, Anna, and her elder daughter, Mrs. Watts, but such blows are softened for aged persons by the consciousness that their own race is nearly run. Mary had, moreover, one great spiritual consolation in her conversion, at the age of eighty-three, to the doctrines of Roman Catholicism In spite of her oft-repeated protestations against the likelihood of her 'going over,' in spite of her declaration, openly expressed as late as 1871, that she firmly believed in the anti-Christianity of the Papacy, and that she and her husband were watching with interest the progress of events which, they trusted, would bring about its downfall, Mrs. Howitt was baptized into the Roman Church in May, 1882. Her new faith was a source of intense happiness to the naturally religious woman, who had found no refuge in any sectarian fold since her renunciation of her childish creed. In 1888, the year of the Papal Jubilee, though her strength was already failing, she was well enough to join the deputation of English pilgrims, who, on January 10, were presented to the Pope by the Duke of Norfolk. In describing the scene, the last public ceremony in which she took part, she writes: 'A serene happiness, almost joy, filled my whole being as I found myself on my knees before the Vicar of Christ. My wish was to kiss his foot, but it was withdrawn, and his hand given to me. You may think with what fervour I kissed the ring. In the meantime he had been told my age and my late conversion. His hands were laid on my shoulders, and, again and again, his right hand in blessing on my head, whilst he spoke to me of Paradise.'

Having thus achieved her heart's desire, it seemed as if the last tie which bound the aged convert to earth was broken. A few days later she was attacked by bronchitis, and, after a short illness, passed away in her sleep on January 30, 1888, having nearly completed her eighty-ninth year. To the last, we are told, Mary Howitt's sympathy was as warm, her intelligence as keen as in the full vigour of life, while her rare physical strength and pliant temper preserved her in unabated enjoyment of existence to the verge of ninety. Although many of her books were out of print at the time of her death, it was said that if every copy had been destroyed, most of her ballads and minor poems could have been collected from the memories of her admirers, who had them—very literally—by heart.

William and Mary Howitt, it may be observed in conclusion, though not leaders, were brave soldiers in the army of workers for humanity, and if now they seem likely to share the common lot of the rank and file—oblivion—it must be remembered that they were among those favoured of the gods who are crowned with gratitude, love, and admiration by their contemporaries. To them, asleep in their Roman grave, the neglect of posterity brings no more pain than the homage of modern critics brings triumph to the slighted poet who shares their last resting-place.

THE END