Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/83

Rh The influences which had freshly come into Miss More's life, and the yearnings for higher things that had always been hers, led her to devote her talent to something more serious than the playful and complimentary, or even ironical, verses which had hitherto been her forte.

Living as she did for half the year among the most select and superior, though not perhaps the most fashionable, society in London, and numbering among her acquaintance and friends many persons of high rank, she necessarily saw a great deal of the habits of the upper classes, and of their effects on others. Much that passed before her eyes was painful to her better judgment, and though sometimes she spoke out, she felt that her silence tolerated many customs that she disapproved, and that her conscience would not allow her to sanction.

She therefore devoted herself to writing a book, called Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society. George the Third had just put forth a Royal Proclamation against Vice and Immorality, and this gave her a good opportunity for publishing her thoughts anonymously.

The treatise was well thought out, and the well-balanced sentences put to shame the careless slip-slop of our own day. "The Sunday Woman," true to herself, begins with explaining that her object is to dwell "on the less obvious offences that are in general