Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/45

 Rh history, and in this most difficult of all fields won for herself a hearing. Her "Life of Anne Boleyn," and her "Memoirs of Mary, Queen of Scots," were read in many an English schoolroom; their propriety and Protestantism making them acceptable to the anxious parental mind. A single sentence from "Anne Boleyn" will suffice to show the ease of Miss Benger's mental attitude, and the comfortable nature of her views:—

"It would be ungrateful to forget that the mother of Queen Elizabeth was the early and zealous advocate of the Reformation, and that, by her efforts to dispel the gloom of ignorance and superstition, she conferred on the English people a benefit of which, in the present advanced state of knowledge and civilization, it would be difficult to conceive or to appreciate the real value and importance."

The "active and judicious Harriet" would have listened to this with as much complacence as to Hume.

In "La Belle Assemblée" for April, 1823, there is an engraving of Miss Smirke's portrait of Miss Benger. She is painted in an