Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/15

Rh to Lord Bottetourt for an appointment to a small foundation school in Somersetshire. Probably his change of principles had cut him off from the rest of his family, for they seem to have kept up no connection with him till after his daughter had made herself a name; and he accommodated himself to a position, then viewed as very humble, by marrying a farmer's daughter, who was a good, sensible woman of plain education.

Stapylton, the school which he held, has shared the fate of numerous small grammar schools scattered over the country, and is no more. The room where he taught is now used for parish purposes and absorbed into Fisherton itself, almost a suburb of Bristol, and well known as containing—very appropriately—a Training School for Mistresses, who ought to look back to Hannah More as one of the very first in the path they are to tread.

Between the years 1736 and 1747, five daughters were born to Mr. and Mrs. More—Mary, Elizabeth, Sarah, Hannah, and Martha. Good abilities seem to have been the family heritage; but Hannah was soon acknowledged as the cleverest of the five. When at three years old her mother began to teach her to read, she proved to have already learnt much in play from her sisters; and, a year later, she distinguished herself when catechised in the parish church.

Their nurse had been in the service of Dryden, and