THE LATE MISS EMILY TAYLOR.
TO those who complain that women have not their proper rank and just influence in English society, we know no better answer than to point to the host of Englishwomen who have in our own times exercised a large and beneficial power over the intellectual and moral culture of the nation, derived from no other source than the range of their own mental gifts and the conscien- tious dignity of their own lives. Belonging for the most part to the middle classes ; possessing no brilliant feminine attractions ; leading the retired, we might almost, say secluded, lives of the rural parsonage or farm-house ; generally unmarried ; frequently debarred by ill-health or infirmity from the more active pursuits of life ; these remarkable women have sought and found in the cultivation of their own powers of mind a compensation for the sterility of outward fortune ; and the result has been, that they have themselves in turn put forth a power and an influence which have been of incalculable benefit to society. Why should we name Miss Edgeworth, Miss Martineau, Miss Aikin and her more illustrious aunt Mrs. Barbauld, Miss Mitford, Miss Cornwallis, the Bronte sisters, the Taylors of Ongar, or the great authoress generally known as George Eliot, when so many other names will occur to the reader, and so many other women, who although they anay not have attained to literary celebrity, have nevertheless fol- dowed in the same track, and shared the same beneficent and honour- able labours? In this sisterhood, a place, humble but not quite un- distinguished, may, we think, fairly be awarded to the lady whose name stands at the head of this notice, and whose death her friends (have recently had occasion to deplore. Miss Emily Taylor had no claim to the power or originality of literary genius which belongs to the leading authoresses of her day. Her books were for the most part written for children, and have passed away with the generation of 'boys and girls who were amused and instructed by them. Her most important poem, "The Vision of Las Casas," published in 1825, was suggested by those generous feelings of sympathy with the African race which have subsided since negro slavery it- self is abolished. But she retained throughout a long life a singular hold on many of the most cultivated minds of the age, by the exquisite refinement of her literary taste, by her insatiable interest in the progress of thought, by the clear and elevated moral judgment she brought to bear on all questions, and by the zeal with which, in spite of great impediments, she served the cause of education, both of the lower and the middle- classes. The influence and the respect which surrounded her through life, and increased in her later years, were no ordinary homage to her intellect and to her virtues ; and we shall venture to devote a few lines to the story of her uneventful life.
Emily Taylor was born at Banham, in Norfolk, on the 8th April, 1795. Her father, who was the youngest grandson of Dr. John Taylor, of Norwich, held a farm in the parish. He belonged to one of those sturdy middle-class families which had played its part on the side of the English Presbyterians in the great struggle of the seventeenth century, which had suffered proscription on the Restoration of Charles II., and which throughout the eighteenth cen- tury were the backbone of the Nonconformist resistance to Tory reaction. They were Unitarians in religion and Whigs in politics, to which they added a remarkable degree of literary cultivation and an equally strong taste for music. The Bonham. farmer had four or five sons and two daughters. One of the sons, Edgar Taylor, rose to distinction as a London solicitor, and kept up the literary traditions of the family by his well-known translations of Grimm's "German Popular Tales," and by his edition of the "Roman du Rou ;"
another, Richard, published an "Index Monasticus " of the diocese of Norwich, and a valuable history of the coalfields of Britain and America. Emily was the youngest child of the family, for her mother died shortly after her birth, and this circumstance seemed to throw a shade over her infancy. Soon, however, indications of the extraordinary precocity of her intelligence ; the ardour with which she studied and read when a very young child ; the beauty of her voice, and the correctness of her musical ear, made her an object of peculiar interest to the family. She was but seven years old when an event occurred which dimned the brightness of this young life, and threw over it a shadow not ever to be removed. She took the scarlet-fever badly. For some time her life was despaired of, and when she woke from the trance of unconsciousness, she found herself in the condition of a deaf child. For many weeks the disease which had attacked the bones of the ear rendered all communication with her by the voice impossible. She has herself described the mingled feelings of surprise, irritation, and grief with which she discovered that no sound reached her sense, and fancied that every one round her bed was whisper- ing and mocking her. It was no mockery, but the doom of a life. The faculty of hearing was afterwards in some degree restored, so that she was able to take a part in conversation, and to hear to some extent with an ear-trumpet ; but the freedom and ease of social intercourse, the facilities of education, the delicate enjoyment of music were gone for ever. One of the gates of life was closed. As years passed, a mind naturally curious and energetic shaped itself, and shaped surrounding circumstances, to this altered and impaired condition. The less the external world made itself felt and known, the more the world of thought and of books became instinct with life and reality. Her reading became universal. To a boundless appetite for poetry and fiction, she combined the reso- lution needed for severer studies in political economy and mental philosophy ; and her solitary existence, in which contemplation bore so large a part, naturally sought for consolation and light in religious meditation and the exercise of a fervent piety. No one was ever more free from religious cant or exaggeration than Emily Taylor. She remained alike untouched by the Evangelical enthusiasm of many of her friends in early life, and by the ecclesiastical
pretensions of later years. But from convictions, formed for herself and modestly asserted, she quitted the Unitarian body, to which her family had so long belonged, and be- came what she remained till death, a humble, devoted, and believing member of the Church of England. Meanwhile her sympathies with the outer world were kept alive by friendships of uncommon steadfastness and warmth, though these were chiefly maintained by the exchange of letters. Spending the greater portion of her life in a Norfolk village, and debarred by infirmity from communication with those about her, the circle of her acquaint- ances and friends extended from year to year, and letter-writing, in which she excelled, became the social occupation of her life.
But not to these luxuries of the intellect was her activity con- fined. In 1811 her father had removed to the parish of New Bucken- ham, where he occupied the house of Dr.Wanostrocht, and was him- self the owner of the ruined old castle and its farm. In this neglected village, such as we remember it fifty years ago, Emily Taylor suc- ceeded with very small resources, and unaided by the clergyman of the parish, in establishing a primary school, which was one of the first Lancast,erian schools in the rural districts of Norfolk. In the present ardour for popular education, which has gained all classes and all sects, it is scarcely possible to convey to the reader a notion of the difficulty and importance of such an achievement. Many years afterwards, when she had become a resident in the north of London, she displayed the same energy and administrative abi- lity in the creation of improved schools for young ladies of the middle and upper classes designed to raise the standard of female educa- tion. She took the most active interest in the West Central Collegiate School in Southampton Row, which was founded in 1858, and filled the office of Honorary Secretary to this institution till within a short time of her death. Her constant unostenta- tious services to the cause of education had made the promotion of these schools the business of her life. The experience she had gained in these labours was of the highest value. Her advice was always practical and judicious : and these qualities caused her to be consulted with the utmost deference by those who are now eagerly following the work she had been one of the first to point out. To do good for its own sake, to seek out truth for the
love of it, to live up to a high standard of Christian rectitude and duty, are the best objects of our being. They ennoble the obscure ; they defy infirmity ; and they impart to the life of a single-minded woman a distinction which allies her to the great and good, and tells us she did not live in vain.
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