Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/13



may be reckoned as standing at the parting point of two periods, the one ending at the days when clergymen and schoolmasters were considered to be an inferior class; the other beginning at the time when their position had become a high one. Again, she was at first a brilliant member of the Bas Bleu Society, the faint English reflection of the Hotel de Rambouillet; and afterwards shared with Mrs. Trimmer the honour of making English ladies the foremost agents in the religious education of the poor. A writer at first of the plays and poems which were the fashion of the Eighteenth Century, she afterwards devoted her talents to the lighter forms of religious literature for the masses, and again was a pioneer; and lastly, she wrote treatises on education, morals, 1