Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/75

Rh notice and success had turned the poor woman's head, and, with the suspicion that at that time often characterized the peasantry, she thought herself wronged by not having the whole sum placed in her hands, and even spread a report that Miss More was purchasing an estate for herself with it. Such was the general ignorance that it is extremely probable that she really thought so; and when the Duchess of Devonshire sent her a copy of Bell's British poets, and they were kept at Cowslip Green till shelves could be found to put them on, she wrote to the Duchess that they were detained from her. The proceeds of the subscription were put into the hands of a lawyer, then of a merchant, and finally Mrs. Yearsley set up a circulating library at the Hot Wells, so that she could not have been so utterly improvident and dissipated as was imagined in the first pangs excited by her ingratitude. In fact, there was in those days much more ignorant distrust of the upper classes than there is at present; and, likewise, far less experience than there has since been, of the exceeding difficulty of fostering talent in the uneducated without exciting unreasonable expectations in excitable unbalanced temperaments. "Had she turned out well," wrote Miss More, "I should have had my reward. I have my trial. Perhaps I was too elated at my success, and in counting over the money (almost £200) might have thought, Is not this great Babylon which I