Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/125

Rh to their being barefoot, as destroying self-respect. Altogether the tale is an idyll of religious content and frugality.

Wilberforce said (not to the author) that he would rather present himself before Heaven with the Shepherd in his hand than with Peveril of The Peak, which was in fact contrasting the choicest work of one author with the least choice of the other. When, in 1795, Hannah went to London, she found that it had made quite as much sensation as her large books; but the loss was so heavy on these tracts, Cadell told her, "he would not stand in her shoes for £500 over and above the subscription"; nay, according to another calculation, £1000 would not cover the expenses at any rate.

Everyone was reading the tracts. The Duchess of Gloucester, to whom Hannah was presented by Lady Waldegrave, quoted the Shepherd three times, and told how she had desired one of her ladies to stop an orangewoman and ask her if she ever sold ballads. "No indeed," said the woman, "I don't do anything so mean, I don't even sell apples!" However, she condescended to take some of the tracts, and presently came back with two shillings gained by them.

On the other hand, Horace Walpole, now become Earl of Orford, rallied Miss More, she says, "on what he calls the ill-natured strictness of my tracts; and talked foolishly enough of the cruelty of making the poor spend so much time in reading books and depriving