HANNAH MORE, quiet and attentive, and endeavoured zealously to learn the simple things imparted. Reading, sewing, knitting, and learning some primary doctrines of religious truth were all they were asked to do. But a new difficulty was speedily raised by some persons adverse to the scheme ; the parents were told that if the ladies continued their instructions, at the end of seven years they would acquire a right to ship all the children off to the Colonies ! This strange rumour exposed Hannah More, as the leader of the plan, to the danger of personal violence, but her gentle, persuasive manner disarmed the suspicions of the wild, rude peasants whom she was exerting herself so sedulously to benefit ; and in a year from the time the schools were set on foot, all active opposition had ceased. But amid her arduous duties, Hannah found leisure, in 1790, to publish a second ethical volume -"An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World, " -in which she specially reprehended the way in which Sunday was treated by the higher classes. This work was received with the same applause as its predecessor, the " Thoughts on the Manners of the Great ;" Dr. Porteus, the Bishop of London, among others, wrote her a most compli- mentary letter on its appearance ; it was read with avidity, and within two years from its publication it reached a fifth edition. Two mining villages at the summit of Mendip were so noted for the ferocity and ignorance of their 35
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