MRS. FLETCHER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.*

Oua readers may ask, with the county lady, when, at the house of a common friend, a neighbour, whom she did not visit, was announced,—" And who is Mrs. Fletcher ?" Why should she among women be singled out for exemption from the usual and, according to Carlyle, the happier lot of "silence, and no bio- graphy ?" The simplest answer we can give is, that when near seventy, an old lady, well-known and highly esteemed in certain social and literary circles of the early part of this and the close of the last century, was persuaded by her daughter to write down some reminiscences of a varied and useful life, and has thus left behind her a lively picture of herself, and of the times when conversation was an art, politics a passion, and society something more than a mere aggregation of numbers. To some her name will recall recollections, hardly of the times them- selves,—for none are now left who can remember Lord Brougham as a young man "unknown to fame," eagerly catching at a chance prophecy of the future greatness of a nameless writer in the Edinburgh, "What, Mr. Fletcher, may he be anything? may he be Lord Chancellor ?" or who can realise Lord Russell as a youth, "who came sometimes with Mr. Playfair to our house in Castle Street; "—but of a childish veneration for the intellectual and superior people who loomed so large in the minds of parents and elders through the "golden mist of years." To such this book will have especial attractions. Full as it is of sketches drawn from personal knowledge of well-known people, and instinct as it is with the writer's strong vitality, it must, we think, prove pleasant reading to all who care for that most interesting form of biographieal literature, a good autobiography.

We call an autobiography good when it reflects clearly the character of its writer, gives him to us in "his habit as he lived," and is not ostentatiously modest, or more egotistic than is justified by the necessities of the case. And this is such a one. Writing for no wider public than an indulgent circle of children, grand- children, and friends, Mrs. Fletcher is frank and free in her state- ment of circumstances and feelings, without overstepping the line which separates frankness from the reserve due to self-respect.

I confess," writes Lady Richardson (the youngest daughter of Mrs. Fletcher, and widow of the Arctic explorer), in her short introduction, "I confess that it is a great pleasure to me to feel that one whose estimate of her own place in the world was always so modest, and who never anticipated the circulation of her Autobiography beyond the circle of her friends and descendants, should still excite so much interest in the 'city of her affections,' as to make the call for this publication one I was glad to yield to, and I have therefore left the book very much the same as it was, except with the addition of some letters from those among her friends not unknown to tho world by their own words and works."

In the year 1791, Mr. Fletcher, Writer to the Signet, mentioned in Cockburn's Life of Lord Jeffrey as a "pure and firm patriot," now somewhat past the age of youthful enthusiasm, but ardent as ever in the cause of reform, introduced into the society of Edinburgh a young Yorkshire lady, whose only educational ad- vantages had been a home of average intelligence and more than average tenderness, and a few years' instruction at the "Manor • Autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher. With Letters and other Family emortals. By the Survivor of' her Family. Edinburgh : Edmonston and Douglas.

school" at York. If her educational advantages, however, were not above the average, her natural abilities and force of character were ; these, with a certain nobility of temper and width of sympathy, gained for her the esteem and regard of a wide circle of friends, both in the "city of her affections" and from among the most celebrated people of the day.

She was an ardent politician, a true helpmate to her husband, in the days when Whig principles were incompatible with briefs,

and we were often reduced to our last guinea." In his Intro-

duction to Borough Reform, Lord Brougham speaks of Mrs. Fletcher as "one of the most accomplished of her sex, who, with the utmost purity of life that can dignify and enhance female charms, combined the inflexible principles and deep political convictions of a Hutchinson or a Roland." A note by the editor tells how at the first election at Edinburgh, after the passing of the Reform Bill, when Abercrombie and Jeffrey were returned, Lord Cock- burn rushed into a room full of Whig ladies, calling out, "Where is Mrs. Fletcher? she is the woman I want," and seizing her hand, had a good greet' with her over this realisation of their hopes and struggles in past years.

It could not be but that a woman of ability, moving among the literary stars of Edinburgh's most brilliant epoch, should herself desire to shine by her own light. Not having read her Dramatic Sketches, we cannot say if they deserve the oblivion into which, in spite of the praises of such judges as Campbell and Joanna Baillie, they have retired, but the specimens of her poetry scat- tered here and there through the pages of her journal, do not show more than the usual effects of a cultivated taste acting upon a mind of good natural capabilities. Her letters are good. Vivid, char- acteristic, bearing on a wide range of topics, literary, political, and social, and evidencing a warmth of heart and eager benevolence which are very attractive. She was not backward in any good work, and among other things, was the first to propose and the most active in establishing a Female Benefit Society in Edin- burgh. Her democratic principles were, however, a great draw- back to her exertions. It was gravely asked of Mr. Fletcher by a Highland clergyman how his wife could be "so awfully misled as to keep in her house a small guillotine with which she beheaded poultry," in order that, when the principles of the French Revolu- tion should be established in England, she might be quite au fait as to one of its chief institutions, and it needed all the energies of her numerous friends among the Tory ladies to defend her from such absurd yet credited imputations. To one whose besetting sin, as she said herself, was a love of popularity, such sacrifices to convictions must have come heavy ; but she lived to see the triumph of Whig principles, and to look forward hope- fully to a far more complete development of Liberal ideas than seemed possible in the days of her youth.

Of that youth she gives a pleasant picture. Her father, land- surveyor, the owner of a small estate, a Yorkshire yeoman, lost his young wife at the birth of this his only child. His mother, sister, and brother came to reside under his roof, and if spoiling could have seriously injured the little Eliza's better nature, she would have been hopelessly lost. Her aunt and grandmother watched the widowed father with jealous eyes ; the one sacrificed her own prospects that she might give him no pretext for a second marriage ; the other, hearing some report of an engagement, and "not being able to extract a serious denial of this report from my father, I well remember the old lady's indignation rising to a high pitch at the notion of this impending evil, and one day, taking me by the hand, she said, Child, you and I will beg our bread through the wide world rather than you should submit to the cruelty of a stepmother.' With this we set out together to leave my father's house, and were trudging away to Whighill Grange, where her second son lived on his farm, about three miles from Oxton," when they were overtaken by the aunt, and persuaded to return. An explanation with her son quieted the indignant soul of the grandmother, but in this anecdote we can trace the origin of the fiery, impulsive spirit which, controlled and disci- plined (and thus made productive of the richest harvest of good), lay at the root of Mrs. Fletcher's character.

The portrait of Eliza Dawson at fifteen, prefixed to the volume, shows a face of great thought and feeling, and of considerable beauty. "A succession of admirers," she remarks, "furnished me for the next two or three years with serious occupation, for I had nothing of the coquette in my disposition, though a good deal of the heroine of romance." At sixteen, a tour in Scotland gave her a first acquaintance with the land in which so many of the best years of her life were to be spent ; at the advanced age of eighteen her admirers took a more elderly form. Mr. Cartwright (the inventor of the power-loom) asked her to become the mother of his "five amiable children," an honour to which she felt herself unequal. She might have been obliged to decline the same honour from Lord Grantley, of Ripon, if she had not discreetly requested a friend to let him know of her engagement to Mr. Fletcher,—an engagement not sanctioned by her father, who objected to the slenderness of his fortune and the disparity of their years. For two years a literary correspondence had been kept up between herself and Mr. Fletcher, "in which a person more versed in the language of the heart than my father might have discovered more than the lectures of a philosopher or the epistles of a friend." This correspondence she continued.

"I was decidedly wrong in doing so, but I must either have sacri: deed Mr. Fletcher's happiness without satisfying my father's prejudices, or I must have continued the correspondence. I chose the latter, with the sincere intention of prevailing on Mr. Fletcher to give up the en- gagement, for it would have been then less painful to me to have done- so than to have offended my father, but I was unacquainted with the history of the human heart. At the end of two years I found that Mr. Fletcher had reasoned me into a conviction that it would be best for the interest and happiness of all parties that we should marry."

Though not present at the wedding, Mr. Dawson took a tender leave of his child, who writes,—" My marriage-day was one of the most sorrowful of my life." It is pleasant to find that filial dis-

obedience was, in this instance, crowned with reward, and that the closing days of the indulgent but unreasonable father were cheered by the knowledge of the happiness of his daughter and the frequent society of his grandchildren.

We cannot follow Mrs. Fletcher through the years of her married life, the vicissitudes of joy and sorrow ; the birth of five and the death of two children ; the formation of close and lasting friendships with people of the most various shades of political and religious belief. She corresponded with Mrs..

Barbauld and Miss Aiken, with Campbell and Ma.zzini, to whose character she gives the warmest encomiums, and was one of the first to notice and foster the genius of Allan Cunningham.

After her widowhood, Mrs. Fletcher lived little in Edinburgh.

Her life was devoted to her children, and to her two aged aunts, and she resided for many years wherever she was most needed by them. In her old age, and after the marriage of her last daughter to Sir John Richardson, she settled down with them at a small mountain farm she had purchased, Lancrigg, in Ease- dale, where, within easy reach of her friends the Wordsworthi and Arnolds, and close to her second daughter, the wife of Dr. Davy (Sir Humphrey Davy's brother), she passed some serene years, full to the last of every public and private interest, and gradually declining in health and strength, died quietly in her sleep on February 5, 1858, having just completed her eighty -eighth year.

Some doubts may certainly remain on laying down this volume as to how far its writer is entitled to the notice of a wider public than that for which she wrote, but for ourselves, we think Lady Richardson was right in giving to the world one more ex- ample of how a woman can combine public spirit with private excellence, and while fulfilling all the duties of a wife and mother, find room and time in her life and heart for the wider interests of her country and of humanity.