proof of it appears in the Ballard MSS., whence | by occupying herself with the education of her almost all that is known of the Elstobs is taken. little daughter. The child discovered an aptiThat he was on intimate terms of friendship tude for learning, and this love of books, she with her is evident, and this friendship was herself tells us, her mother fostered. Dr. shared not only with her husband, but continued Hicks, too, on the occasions of his visits, or to their children, in whose pursuits and welfare by letter, would probably prescribe the little the doctor's correspondence exhibits his active maiden's intellectual pabulum; for in those and unflagging interest. days, though education (so called) was not so common as in our own, where real knowledge and mental cultivation were meant, it was more thorough-at least in the case of women. It was also less conventional, and parents did not leave it wholly to a teacher's system; but thought

Her daughter has described Mrs. Elstob as a woman of piety and studious habits, a great admirer of learning in others—especially in her own sex. From her, in all probability, her little son received his first mental impressions, and her conversation would naturally lead to pre-it of sufficient importance to make it a matter cocity of intellect, and a love of books. Of course the intellectual influence of such a mother would continue to make itself felt, even after he had passed into the hands of masculine teachers; and her maternal supervision and assistance would only cease on his removal to Eton, in 1684, when his little sister had seen but one birthday, and he himself was only eleven years of age. A year later, the merchant's brother Charles was appointed a prebendary of Canterbury Cathedral, where we shall have to return to him by-and-bye.

66

Thus far the Elstob family are sailing with the wind. The "merchant adventurer" (both as a citizen and an individual) has received the highest honours in the power of his fellowtownsmen to bestow, at an age when many men in commercial life have not yet rounded the Cape of Storms," which is henceforth to be the Cape of Good Hope to them. He is happy in his home and children, and prospering in business, which incidentally we find the shrievalty has not interfered with; for in the record of local cases tried before the Mayor of Newcastle, under the date of May 2nd, 1687, an apprentice is fined for abusing "a master craftsman and a soldier in Mr. Elstob's shoppe," where the latter was probably engaged in buying cloth.* The honour of serving as Sheriff, however, had, in all probability, proved an expensive one. A man cannot wear the gold chain of office without other corresponding splendours in equipage and hospitality. At any rate, when twelve months later (April 13th, 1688), Ralph Elstob, Esq., passed out of the mystery of life to the deeper mystery of death at the early age of thirty-nine years, he left his family but slenderly provided for.

There is a little talk of " genteel for tune," but nothing is said of wealth, if we except a passing expression long years afterwards in Elizabeth's memoir of her brother, with regard to the conduct of his guardian, their uncle Charles, who withdrew the lad from Eton twelve months after his father's death, and entered him at "Catherine Hall," Cambridge, "in a station below his birth and fortune." Probably as a sizer. At this season of sorrow and trial the widowed mother seems to have endeavoured to wean her thoughts from the premature grave of her husband, in St. Nicholas,

*"Notes and Queries."

of consideration to their relatives and friends when they possessed learned or clever ones, and took counsel with them as to matter and methods-an old-fashioned idea, as we may learn from the letters of Pliny, the younger, who was not unfrequently consulted thereon. One day, not more than three years after her father's death, the little girl closed her book at her mother's side, and her lessons there were all ended. Mrs. Elstob, like her husband, died young (1691-2), leaving Elizabeth, then eight years of age, to the guardianship of her uncle, Charles Elstob, who, as a prebend of the cathedral, appears to have resided at Canterbury, till his patron, Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset (to whom he was chaplain), on becoming Chancellor of the University, preferred him to the living of Tellington, in Sussex, where he subsequently resided, except when obliged to visit Canterbury.

To a girl at any age the loss of such a parent as we imagine Mrs. Elstob to have been, is the greatest misfortune that can befall her; and in this light Elizabeth Elstob never ceased to regard her mother's death. There had been not only the tie of the most tender relationship between them, but, as far as it could exist in persons of such a different age, a similarity of taste and inclination; and it is natural to believe that the widow, in her loneliness and desire to fill the place of "father and mother both," had made their companionship one of such perfect sympathy as no other's could be to her child.

Mrs. Elstob's own love of learning had been so in harmony with the little girl's predilections, and these again so in unison with her aspirations for her, that though at the period of her death, Elizabeth had only just finished her accidence of grammar, the rudiments of her extraordinary education had been acquired, and the bias given to her mental faculties.

In this true story "Uncle Charles" does not play a much more sympathetic part than that usually ascribed to guardians in melo-drama; his moral temperament seems to have been like that of his native county, which Defoe describes as hard and old; and having placed his elder ward, her brother William, in the lowest and cheapest grade of his college, and, "being no friend to woman's learning," he commences his rule by at once putting his veto on Elizabeth's course of education, and especially interdicted the learning of any language but her own. We

hear nothing of the prebend's personal scholarly | indelible impressions on such a child. One attainments, and he obviously has not much joy we know she had during the first year of interest in the encouragement of learning in her sojourn with Uncle Charles, in the birth of others. His own, and Dr. Hicks's opinions her cousin Elizabeth, whose baptism in the upon these matters do not run in the same November of 1692 is recorded to have taken groove, and he meets the lingual cravings of his place at the cathedral. All little girls find a precocious little niece with the threadbare delight in babies, and this event must have fustian of the Miltonic school, of one tongue helped to lighten her early troubles, throughout being sufficient for a woman, and ruthlessly, but which she had neither the companionship or I have no doubt with what he considered great sympathy of her brother, of whom indeed at good sense, adds to the child's loss of parent this period, she could have known very little. and teacher, the loss of her beloved studies also. But then we must remember that in those days, to quote the language of Macaulay, "ignorance and frivolity were thought less unbecoming in a lady than the slightest tinge of pedantry."

There is something truly pitiable in the condition of the child at this early period of her orphanhood. The old home and all familiar things left behind, with the graves of her parents at Newcastle, alone with strange faces and uncomprehending hearts, her grief made more poignant by her premature intelligence; and forbidden even the solace of those tasks in continuing which she was carrying out the wishes of her beloved mother. In regarding Elizabeth Elstob, even at this age, we must not measure her sensibilities and impressions by the standard of ordinary child-nature. She was older than her years, as all children are who are brought up in the companionship of grown-up people a small, quiet, quaintly-serious child. We could imagine her fond of poring over books and pictures, and taking a silent interest in subjects usually thought too dry and difficult for the comprehension of boys or girls of her age. Those were the days when children and young persons in the presence of their elders, were expected to be seen and not heard," and we do not think that the little Elizabeth was likely to break the rule, while she was precisely the child to benefit by it, by unconsciously storing such crumbs of information as her uncle's visitors let fall.

Archeology and antiquities were at this period engrossing much of the attention of clergymen and scholars, and the conversation of visitors to Canterbury and its cathedral, must naturally have involved such subjects; even the old prebendal house within the precincts of the cathedral close, with its venerable surroundings and the adjacent (and at that time comparatively undevastated ruins) of St. Augusta's monastery, must have fed the natural bias of her mind for ancient lore and the love of antiquity, which she subsequently developed. Her very play hours were spent amongst these objects, and we can fancy her peeping down the "dark entry" and vaulted passages, and trying to discover the mystery of half-buried dooways, closed arches, and stairs channelled in the walls, while the traditions of the cathedral itself, the old world curfew bell still solemnly sounding the edict of the Conqueror, the very wheeling and cawing of the jacks and daws above bell Harry's steeple, and its own sonorous pealing, must have made

A mere infant when he had left home for Eton, her opportunities of seeing him during the five years he remained there, must have been limited to his visits at vacation time, and since then he had been at Cambridge, with few opportunities of undertaking the long, hazardous and expensive journey to the north. Probably the first heartfelt recognition of their near kindred revealed itself to them on the occasion of their mother's funeral, when their mutual tears mingled perchance above the still form which had embodied so much solicitude and tenderness for them both. At any rate, however much the affectionate and gentle heart of the youth might have felt and suffered for the desolation of his child sister, he was utterly unable to influence or interfere with his uncle's plans for her.

His own situation at this period was not without its trials. He was consumptive, and the damp air of fenny Cambridge was as little agreeable to his constitution as his position was to his inclinations; his studious, sedentary life increased his tendency to disease, till at length it was necessary to remove him, and through the interest of his uncle, and probably Dr. Hicks, this was effected, and he exchanged the banks of the Cam for those of the Isis, and was entered a commoner of Queen's College, Oxford. Here he remained for some years, engrossed in those studies which have made him famous as a scholar, and which added to his modest manners; and amiability of disposition procured him the friendship of the masters, Dr. Charlett, Dr. Hudson, and others, through whom he was elected in 1696 Fellow of University College. During the latter portion, if not the whole of this time, it is probable that instead of accompanying her uncle's family to the Sussex parsonage, Elizabeth remained at school in Canterbury, in one of the stately old "pensions" patronized by the county families, and the fame of which had not departed in our grandmother's days.

We gather indirectly that her education proceeded in the interim, upon the then usual model for young ladies of good birth and circumstances, a scheme much more liberal than we imagine a country village like Tellington could have afforded, and she kept up in after years an intercourse with families in the ancient city and its neighbourhood, which looks like the maintain. ance of old associations and acquaintances. But instead of those lingual exercises for which she longed, (for we are told that from an early age

"Uncle Charles's." No longer debarred the privilege of learning, or proscribed the study of languages, she found her love of them encouraged, and their attainment rendered comparatively easy by her brother's assistance. Henceforth it is impossible to separate the story of the lives of the brother and sister. They lived topink-gether, and, did we not know that such an arrangement would be contrary to collegiate discipline, there is an expression of Rowe More's

of the community, that a man of peace had not
only to be upon his guard in passing through the
streets, but, out of his own set, to count his
words before uttering them in coffee-houses or
taverns, lest he should have a quarrel fathered
on him by some one or other of these warlike
gentry, just to enable him to settle a question of
practical skill in the use of his weapon,
ing" especially being just then in the very
bloom of fashion.

Other adventures, just as little to the taste of a shy, grave man of studious habits, offered themselves on every hand-for the gaities and galantries of the upper classes of society permeated all grades of it, and city maidens and 'city madams," in adopting the sacque and mask of the ladies of fashion west of Temple Bar, adopted the easy morals, which, according to some scandalous writers on these articles of dress, occasioned the wearing of them.

66

It is true that neither Oxford nor Cambridge affected exemption from the prevailing vices of the times; but William Elstob's rooms in the ancient college-whose foundation, according to De Foe, is lost in the darkness of ageswere to the student what the walls of his cell were to the anchorite of old, and as effectually separated him from all but the world of thought and letters. Heavier in heart than heretofore, by the remembrance of his brother's wilful folly, but otherwise glad to regain the sanctuary of his study, and the society of his books and learned friends, William Elstob returned to Oxford. Queen's College, where he had graduated, was in this year (1698), according to Nichols, "a nest of Saxonists," who, with all the enthusiasm of antiquaries and the interest of scholars, were busy in resuscitating from the dead language in which they had been buried from times prior to the Norman Conquest, the writings of the Latin fathers of the Saxon Church. Drs. Hicks, Rawlinson, Warnley, Brome, Thwaits, &c., were amongst the most earnest of these septentrional scholars of whom William Elstob was one.

who knew and visited them-that would almost induce us to imagine that she resided in his college-rooms; for he tells us that she shared his studies, and was (not speaking, of course, in the academical sense) "a female student in the University." This phrase, an Oxford friend suggests, means simply that she entered deeply into the learned pursuits of the place, attended lectures, &c., as many of the wives and sisters and daughters of members William Elstob took lodgings sufficiently near of the University do now. Most likely his college to enable him to attend chapel, and dine at the Fellows' table, while his sister suhome, and under his guidance and encouragperintended the arrangements of their mutual ment set herself earnestly to those studies which made her for a brief period the wonder of her own times, and in industry and resolution an ensamplar for our own. His ten years' seniority and in addition to his learning, which she venemust have dignified the relation between them, rated, and his amiability, which she adored, have endowed him with a tender influence as her companion, teacher, and protector, while it ennobled and enlarged their sympathetic attachment, which is outlined in that of the brother annals of literature, save that of Mary and and sister Scudery, but has no parallel in the

Charles Lamb.

spring must have been the whisking of the It is pleasant to think how like a breath of young girl's garments in the student's rooms. How her presence must have brightened them, and her pretty womanly ways have comforted and gladdened the even then ailing scholar. How their understandings must have re-acted on each other; how helpful even to the man the clear sharp mother-wit and sprightly comprehension of the girl! Here, then, she began to live in earnest, her mind fed and strengthened not only by this fraternal nurture and acquaintance with the treasures of the Bodleian, amongst which her own works were one day to be counted; but by daily intercourse with such men as Drs. Charlett, Wotton, Hudson, Hicks, and many others, who were her

Into the midst of this band of grave and learned men came Elizabeth Elstob, in all her girlish bloom and girlish eagerness for acquisition. The old love of philology had not diminished while improving her French, by reading Mademoiselle Scudery's novels, which were then at the height of their reputation. On the contrary, it is probable that the erudition displayed by the clever and indefatigable Frenchwoman (whom her countrymen were wont to rank next to Madame Dacier) acted as an incentive to the develop-brother's frequent visitors; and amongst whom ment of the young reader's talents, and innate desire for literary exercises. At Oxford a new life to that which she had had in the quaint cathedral town of Canterbury, or at her guardian's parsonage at Tellington-a new life of congenial and delightful contrast opened for her. Her brother's ideas on the education of women appear to have been diametrically opposite to

he had long since been admitted not only to the intimacy of their studies, but into the very heart of their friendship.

At this time William Elstob was employing the comparative leisure which his fellowship afforded him, in the study of Runic rhymes, and in the preparation of his translation of the Saxon Homily of Lupus, into Latin, with notes,

whch he had undertaken for Dr. Hickes |
Elizabeth looks on at his work, is interested in
it, and bringing pencils and paint-box, delights
herself in re-producing and colouring the orna-
mental and symbolical initial letters with which
the original manuscript is adorned. By-and-
bye we find her familiar with the characters,
interested in the literature embalmed in them,
and finally taking up the study of Saxon as ear-
nestly as any of the learned men at "Queen's."

Nor is Saxon her only lingual study. What order she pursued in the acquirement of lan-united?) into high and low church-titles as exguages we are not told; but that she must have had an organized plan is evident; for in a few years we find her mistress of Latin and six other languages beside her own. Yet her understanding was not, it is said, of a rapidly acquisitive character, but steadily and slowly progressive; it had the more reliable quality of retaining what it grasped.