THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARY HOWITT.*

THESE volumes recall very pleasantly two estimable pioneers of the wholesome popular literature of our time. They like- wise throw light upon the euthanasia of the Society of Friends, the influence of which upon English morals and manners has never been fully recognised. As long as the Friends were a separated sect of peculiar dress and singular manners, they had little influence on English society, which does not love singularity ; but no sooner did they become a Dispersion, than their principles made themselves felt in many departments of the national life. Not a few of the most influential among the social and religious reformers of to-day are Quakers without the external oddities of Quakerism. The gentle but strong- willed people educated in Quakerism have thus avenged the persecutions of their forefathers in a manner quite in ac- cordance with their principles.

• Mary Howitt: an Autobiography. Edited by her Daughter, Margaret Hewitt. I vole, London .Win. Mister, Limited. 1889.

The opening chapters of the Autobiography describe the early life of Mary Botham, and of her sister Anna, in their home in Staffordshire. Their parents ordered their household according to the strictest traditions of the older Quakerism, and presented an uncompromising front to the outside world.. Mr. Botham would never call the church anything but the "parish meeting-house," and was a sworn enemy to "hat- homage," and other compliances with conventional politeness. He was a person of considerable intelligence, and a constant student of mystical religious literature ; but he did not give his children any religious instruction, although the Scriptures were read in their hearing,—being fearful, his daughter writes, of presumptuously interfering with the teaching of the Divine Spirit. They were, however, most anxiously preserved from contact with the world outside,—were- never taken through the streets of quiet Uttoxeter if it was

possible to avoid it. When it became necessary to send them to school, a stipulation was made that they should sit apart from other girls, and hold no intercourse with them. They, were afterwards sent to Friends' schools at Croydon and at. Sheffield; but even there they felt themselves singular, because- of the specially plain dresses and bonnets which they had to wear. On their return home, they led a life of almost

cloistral seclusion, which was not unhappy, for their parents. werekind and loving ; but they longed to be as other girls, and' would fain have mingled in the social gatherings from which they were debarred. Fields and flowers, however, were beautiful, and were not forbidden ; they became botanists and. ardent lovers of natural scenery, which they observed with Pre-Raphaelite minuteness. Access to books was permitted, and they read widely in English literature. Mrs. Howitt spends some pity on herself and her sister in their secluded

life, with its narrow range of enjoyments. The pity is perhaps misplaced, if we strike a balance between the loss

and the gain. She and her sister retained a wonderful enjoy- ment of life to extreme old age, and one cannot help thinking- that they owed it to the seclusion of their youth, which deve- loped their faculty for tranquil abiding in the limited circle of enjoyments to which in later life all must confine themselves.

At the age of nineteen, Mary Botham was married to William Howitt ; they settled at Hanley, in the Staffordshire Potteries, where Mr. Howitt purchased a chemist's business. This he soon afterwards sold, and they removed to Notting- ham, where they remained for twelve years. Literature became the business of their lives, and their poems, tales, and sketches had a dewy freshness of feeling which gained for them reputation with the public, and praise from some of the leaders of literature. In the preface to their first volume of poems, they said that it had been written, not for the sake of writing, but "for the indulgence of overflowing feelings,"— a quite accurate description of all their writings, in which the feeling is always buoyant and pleasing, and usually better than the form. Mr. Howitt, who was a lax Friend, and dis- posed to Unitarian opinions, plunged into the political" struggles of Nottingham, and became a leader of advanced Radicalism. His wife endeavoured to sympathise with his reforming zeal, but when writing to her sister, defending her husband's proceedings, she unconsciously betrays her weariness of political debates, which are always uncongenial and injurious to one whose true vocation is literature. She pours forth her feelings as follows :—

"One's heart grows sore with looking upon the present pros- pects of English society. Any change, it seems to me, provided it affected the aristocracy and the immensely rich as well as the middle and lower classes, must be an improvement. One grows almost reckless about political changes, so utterly hopeless are human affairs becoming. Were it not for the tie children are of necessity, and the obligation they impose upon us to have a fixed home, I could like to tarn gipsy, or lead the life of a wild Indian, and have no home or hardly any country, except such as chance and circumstance gave us. I dare say, dear Anna, thou wilt think I have lost my senses, or am grown very wicked to have such strange notions. I am not going to do any wild thing, nor am I doubtful of Providence. But what thoughtful person can look round on the strange disorganisation of society without regarding. that life as the best and most rational which reduces one's wants to the smallest number, and makes us less dependent upon others, than the present state of things necessarily obliges us to be ?"

Some interesting reminiscences are given of the life in Nottingham. They witnessed the funeral of Byron. Hob- house alone, of all his friends, came from town to see the last rites paid ; atid the funeral was the occasion of a hideous outbunt of political pamaion. The Tory gentlemen would

pay no respect to the memory of the Whig nobleman, and the parsons forbade the bells to be tolled. But the rabble came from every lane and alley, garret and cellar, to curse and swear, to shout and push in his honour ; and the funeral of the poet became a scene of shocking indecorum.

In 1830 they removed to Esher, in Surrey, and Mr. Howitt got an engagement on the Constitutional, a newspaper estab- lished to advocate the principles of Joseph Hume, to which Thackeray was also a contributor. It failed for want of support, and Mr. Howitt was never paid for his work. After a stay in Germany, where they acquired a knowledge of German and other Northern literatures, they made London their home. Mr. Howitt became part-proprietor and one of the editors of the People's Journal, but the paper failed through mismanage- ment. They then brought out Howitt's Journal, which was intended to make the labouring classes their own benefactors, by means of temperance and self-education. They entered upon the venture with enthusiasm and high hopes, Mrs. Howitt writing to anxious friends that they need not fear for them, as its success was assured. Again evil fortune attended them ; their journal failed, and they met with a severe monetary loss. Friends said that the magazine had failed because it was not sufficiently amusing, as people engaged in a death-struggle for bread would pay for amusement, but not for instruction. Looking back in her old age on these disappointments, Mrs. Howitt wrote with truth, that they had attempted before the time was ripe, what has since been accomplished by more practical hands. In London they mixed in literary society. They formally quitted the Society of Friends in 1847, and they gained the friendship of some well-known literary people, among others, of the "retiring, meditative, young poet, Alfred Tennyson ;" but they seem to have been thrown, for the most part, among the protesting revolutionary spirits. Some of the young Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood became their friends, and they sympa- thised with their originality, and their bold defiance of the " Hanging Committee" of the Royal Academy. They saw a good deal, also, of the clever but rather mixed society which gathered round the once famous religious lecturer, W. J. Fox ; and we hear of some forgotten literary sensations. A book by Miss H. Martineau on human nature was a singular success, because of its outspoken atheism (female atheists were rare in those days) ; and the author, having completely emancipated herself from the idea of God, expressed herself to a friend as "so happy to be quite inde- pendent, and to have no one to domineer over her."

Mr. Howitt was drawn into the Spiritualistic vortex, and came to regard Spiritualism as a new Gospel ; his wife, although at one time almost persuaded, was repelled by the shoddy and imposture of the Spiritualistic teachers. Her daughter became a student of the writings of Swedenborg ; and Mrs. Howitt writes that, from what she learns of them, they contain more truth than is to be found elsewhere out- side the New Testament. These various winds of doctrine appear to have exercised a depressing and unfavourable influence on her genius. Naturally refined and disposed to pious optimism, and quite destitute of speculative powers or inclinations, she was perplexed, without being enlightened, by the crude and boisterous theorists around her.

Her pen was never idle during the long residence in London. Poems, tales, and sketches were written, chiefly for the maga- zines; and she and her husband translated much from the Swedish and Danish. They wrote a History of Scandinavian Literature, and were among the first to call the attention of English readers to the rich treasures of poetry in the Eddas and in the Northern Sagas. It was a congenial task to her to translate the Norse poems, for while she had little sympathy with poems inspired by the chivalrous or ecclesiastical spirit, she delighted in the early poetry of all nations. In 1870, Mrs. Howitt and her husband left England, and resided on the Continent during the rest of their lives, spending the winter in Rome and the summer in the Tyrol. The closing years of her life have about them a beautiful tranquillity : failures and disappointments left no bitterness behind. Her gracious amiability towards persons and places is, indeed, almost fatiguing; and one is disposed to ask if she never visited tiresome places or met disagreeable people.

Towards the close of her life, she entered the communion of the Church of Rome. Her husband, the Radical author of

The History of Priesteraft, was impressed by Catholic piety,

of which he wrote that it had struck its roots into the soil of common humanity, and was sending up shoots of holy benefi- cence of which present Protestantism knows nothing. His wife was still more strongly drawn towards it, and pronounced the interior life of her Catholic friends as very near to her

ideal of Apostolic faith and pure Christian practice. While writing thus, she added : "Don't think that I am going over. There is no fear of that." After her husband's death, how-

ever, she was baptised, and formally entered the communion which has received so many of the perplexed spirits of our time. The final step is described by herself :—

" Father Ceslas de Robiano called in the evening. I spoke with him of baptism ; wishing I could have a direct message from God, that an angel could come and tell me what He would have me to do. To this the Dominican replied : God speaks by His messengers, saying, "He that heareth you, heareth Me. He that despises you, despises Me." But you would be right in demanding from a stranger his credentials. Mine are the Cross of Christ on my forehead, and the words He uttered to me at my ordination, "As the Father hath sent Me, I also send you." I come from God, and with all the weight and authority of the Catholic Church.' He took out his breviary, opened it, and asked, May I read you a little prayer which a dear friend of mine, Pere Besson, gave me at a very critical moment of my life ?'—I expressed pleasure and surprise that he should have known Pere Besson.= Ah !' he replied with emotion ; he was my friend—my brother. He was with me when I took the habit.'—The prayer of the Dominican artist was written in French, Father de Rebiano's native tongue, for he is a Belgian. He read it very slowly, translating it into English. After this, the question of baptism was decided, and even the day fixed—May 26th."

The remarkably frank narrative suggests two reflections. It makes it clear that persons of high intelligence may exchange the Anglican for the Roman communion under the influence of emotion, and without giving a single thought to the

arguments from Scripture and history on which theologians have bestowed so much pains. Mrs. Howitt was drawn to the

Church of Rome by the devout life she found within its pale, and made "the sacrifice of the intellect" without a struggle. Of the profession of faith which she had to read at baptism, the Creed of Pope Pius IV., she wrote :—" It is all right, though it seemed to me a little sweeping." The narrative also exhibits the power of suave dogmatism to overcome the opposition of impressionable natures. Had Father Robiano argued, he might have met with a reverse ; he contented him- self with assertion, and was easily victorious.