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MRS. BRAY.* "THERE are three classes," says Coleridge, "into which all the women past seventy that ever I knew are to be divided :-1. That dear old soul. 2. That old woman. 3. That old witch." Every one who reads the autobiography of Mrs. Bray, supple- mented by the unnecessarily apologetic narrative of her godson, and renews his acquaintance with her " Talbas," and "Protest.

ants," and" White Hoods " with the help of the new edition of her romances, which Messrs. Chapman and Hall have so oppor- tunely issued, must say, and say emphatically, that she belongs to the first of Coleridge's three classes. We might even go farther, and in an Edgworthian or Irish bull direction, and say that not only was Mrs. Bray "a dear old -soul" during the period—nearly a quarter of a century—that she lived after reaching the Scrip- tural limit of three-score-and-ten, but that she always was "a dear old soul." At all events, if the late Mr. Greg was justified in describing women of a certain class of sympathies as "old maids ab ovo," we may say that Mrs. Bray belongs to the class of "dear old souls ab ovo." She was one of those "Glad hearts ! without reproach or blot ! " whose lives, unchequered by adventure, undisturbed by passion, are one

long walk by moonlight. One great misfortune, indeed, befell her. She suddenly lost her first husband, Charles Stothard, a promising artist, who died through falling from a ladder in a church in which he was engaged in sketching, at a time when she was expecting to become a mother. Then her placid forti- tude stood her in good stead. Otherwise, her life was singularly serene. Born in London on Christmas Day, 1790, Anna Eliza Kempe, whose father was of a good Chelsea family, was delicately brought up, and in youth had no more serious annoyances than that caused by the cross temper of an old lady with whom she was brought in contact during her school days. She tells us that she had her little difficulties before her first marriage, which took place in 1818. But, although endowed with beauty of a refined type, she appears to have been in no sense a coquette, and her union with Charles Stothard was but the mellowing of an acquaintanceship. Her marriage was a happy one. She accompanied her husband on his artistic excursions to Normandy and elsewhere, and, inheriting literary tastes, and having been thrown at an early age into the society of literary folks, she wrote letterpress for his sketches, and began the writing of those romances which gave her a pleasing and easy employment till the end of the active portion of her life. Here is her account of a winter evening while -Charles Stothard was alive :—" Charles, unless when at the Antiquarian Society, or. engaged in business, spent all

his evenings at home, and often read to us till nearly bed-time. How well I remember the scene ! My dear father, with his fine and venerable head, seated in his easy-chair, and listening to the stories of Sir Walter Scott or the narratives of Froissart. My dear mother and myself, engaged with the needle, and

Charles with the book in his hand, seated in the chimney-corner." This is happiness, undoubtedly, but it is the happiness of the evening of life,—the happiness of the " dear old soul." Having recovered from her one tragedy—the fatal accident to her husband, followed by the death of her infant child—Mrs.

Stothard married the Rev. Edward Bray, Vicar of Tavistock.

Her second marriage brought her the perfection of that gentle pleasure for which she was by temperament suited. Mr. Bray was a man of handsome face—as a portrait which is given in this " Autobiography " shows—and dignified presence, who had written vers de societe in his youth ; was an elocutionist of the Kemble school; and hurled " Trismegistus at his ignorant but pleased parishioners, in sermons that

"Never said or showed That Earth is foul, that Heaven is gracious, Without refreshment on the road, From Jerome or from Athanssius."

Mr. and Mrs. Bray walked in the trim garden of the vicarage of Tavistock, or . ambled over Dartmoor, rich in natural scenery and historical associations, talking on some literary or antiquarian subject or aiding each other in composition. For Mr. Bray thought there were no such romances as Mrs. Bray's, and Mrs. Bray thought her Edward the greatest preacher in the world. The slamming of a door by a careless housemaid or the * Autobiography of Anna Eliza Bray. Edited by John A. Kempe. London : Chapman and Hall. 1884.—Mrs. Bray's Novels and Romances. Hew saa. Revised SdiV.on. London: Chapman and Hall. lea&

sending by the cook of vegetables to the table under-boiled was the worst affliction they experienced; the visit of some friend from London, such as their idol, poet-laureate Southey, their greatest event. Mr. Kempe, who finds in Mrs. Bray's diary the record of no worse sins than this, "Spent on myself £5; El of this I think I spent foolishly ; to mind not to do so again," gives a leaf from one of her journals containing "a plan of study for the winter." It closes with, "To practise the hour after dinner that Edward drinks his wine." On this Mr. Kempe comments :—

"What a picture of the tranquil life in that lonely vicarage is con- jured up by the last sentence ! The dignified figure of the Vicar, sitting bolt upright in his chair, slowly sipping his port of the choiceat vintage, as he meditates over his morning studies among the Fathers or in the Divina Comedia, and now and then listens appre- ciatively as his wife executes some difficult passages of the Kreuzer Sonata with more than ordinary emphasis ; followed by the comfort- able evening spent in reading aloud (always by her) a chapter of Alison's History of Europe, or of Southey's latest publication ; or, on rare occasions, the last finished chapter of one of her own novels, which would be received with that courteous and complacent criticism with which the pair habitually regarded one another's productions, and which added so much solid satisfaction and happiness to the lives of both. A picture of rest unattainable in these bustling days !"

The happiest of married unions comes to an end. Mr. Bray died at the age of eighty, and his widow removed to Brompton.

In her ninety-fifth year, her long and, on the whole, delightful walk by moonlight came to an end.

The one notable episode in Mrs. Bray's life, with the excep- tion of the death of her first husband, was her attempt to become an actress. As Anna Eliza Kempe, she was an adorer of Shakespeare and Mrs. Siddons, and had pleased her relatives and friends by appearances in what are now-a-days known as "amateur theatricals." At that time the high char- acter of Mrs. Siddons had temporarily raised the position of the stage, and it was not considered extraordinary that a young lady of refinement should try her fortune on the boards. It was actually arranged that Miss Kempe should appear at the Bath Theatre in the character of Belvidere, in Otway's Venice Preserved. But she caught cold in travelling from London to Bath, her engage- ment was cancelled, and she was mortified to find that in voice and in physical respects generally she was unequal to the career of an actress. So she drifted into literature. But Mrs. Bray

never really lived in the city of letters ; she never got beyond the suburbs. She met Sir Walter Scott, Giffard, and Mrs. Opie, but she was in no sense intimate with them, and her impressions of them seem as slight and superficial as her criticisms of such different authors as Rousseau and Richardson, which are to be found in her autobiography. Her one literary friend was Southey, who reviewed some of her works, kept up a correspondence with her, and visited Tavistock Vicarage in 1836, along with his son, the Rev. Cuthbert Southey. We confess, however, that this book adds little to our knowledge of Southey. His letters to Mrs. Bray are largely of the nature of good advice and

kindly criticism. There are some passages in them relating to his own Doctor which are rather puzzling. In one letter, he says :— "The Doctor has been sent me, with the author's compliments, in a hand which is either an unknown one to me, or a disguised one. At the first glance, D'Israeli seemed the likeliest person to have written it ; but upon a perusal, I was satisfied that he could not write a style which is at once so easy and so good. Then I thought of Rogers, who has both the wit and the feeling that the book dis- plays; bat I question whether he has the Cervantic humour, and,

moreover, he is a Dissenter. It may be 3fatthia8, perhaps But, on the whole, I incline to fix it upon Frere ; for in him (and I think in no other person) all the requisites for it are united."

In another letter he talks about a report that "poor Coleridge" had said to Murray, the publisher, that he (Southey) was the author of The Doctor, and says ambiguously,—" If there should be more volumes, the secret will probably be discovered, or the veil be laid aside." Why this mystification, seeing that Southey had such a high opinion of The Doctor—and of himself ?

Will Mrs. Bray's historical and " local " romances live ? Hardly,—and that in spite of her industry and good taste. Her writings are pleasant reading, full of wholesome sentiment ; they are a sound, if not rich, dinner claret, compared with the brandied rubbish which is published now-a-days by so many female novelists. At the best, however, they are well-written "exercises," after the manner of Sir Walter Scott. We prefer her " Warleigh " and "Fitz of Fitzford," in which her accur- ate local knowledge is shown, to more ambitious historical romances like "The White Hoods ;" the plot of " Warleigh "is, we may add, good and well-developed. In "The White Hoods" history is perverted, though that is the fault of the authori- ties Mrs. Bray got up, rather than of Mrs. Bray herself. Pierre Van den Bossche, the right-band man and lieu- tenant of Philip van Artevelde, was one of the greatest patriots and ablest popular leaders that the fourteentlr century produced ; yet in "The White Hoods" he appears, under the designation of Peter du Bois, as a vindictive and rather vulgar intriguer. Then, because Froissart says that a " demoiselle " accompanied Philip van .Axtevelde from Ghent to the fatal field of Roosebeke, Mrs. Bray makes out this com- panion to be his mistress instead of his wife, Yolande van den Broucke. Mrs. Bray's romances afforded herself and her circle great pkasure ; and, when taken along with her autobiography, prove what "a dear old soul" she was. Such, we take it, will be something like the final judgment of posterity upon her and them.