MRS. CHARLOTTE SMITH.

SHOULD it appear in the present memoir that superior endowments exempt not the possessor from the accidents and calamities of life, or that even in some situations they add poignancy to the sense of those calamities; yet, let it not be forgotten, that a cultivated imagination possesses in itself an independent source of peculiar and appropriate enjoyment, compared with which, in richness and variety, the pleasures of sense are mean and scanty. When wearied with the futility of society, or disgusted with its vices, it is the privilege of genius to retire within itself, to call up, with creative power, new worlds, and people solitude with ideal beings. It is to the improved taste, and feeling heart, that Nature, unveiling her charms, gives a zest to simple pleasures, and sheds over ordinary objects a touching grace.

Mrs. Charlotte Smith was the daughter of Nicholas Turner, a gentleman who possessed from his father and elder brother, considerable estates in the counties of Surrey and Sussex. Her mother, of the name of Towers, was no less distinguished for her personal charms than the qualities of her heart and understanding; but of her maternal care her children were unhappily deprived, when the eldest, the subject of this memoir, was little more than three years old her death was the source of many misfortunes, since their father, in consequence of it, quitted his house in Surrey, and went abroad for some time, leaving his children to the care of their mother's

sister,

sister, who, as far as her tenderness and affection could do it, made up to them the loss they had sustained. But when a blow so cruel falls on a man of lively passions, and thus destroys his domestic happiness, many evils ensuc from the cagerness with which a temporary forgetfulness is sought by mixing with the world. Returning from the tour he had made, in hopes of dissipating his sorrow, Mr. Turner placed his children at school, and, when the eldest was about ten years old, he sold his estate at Stoke,* near Guildford, and his family resided at his house in Sussex, or occasionally in London, for the purpose of having masters to attend his two daughters, while his son was placed at Westminster school.

The hours of the eldest daughter were now consumed in attempting to acquire, at a great expence, what are called accomplishments. But certain it is, that either from her instructors being ill chosen, or because her studies were too soon interrupted, she made no considerable progress in music, on which the greatest expence was lavished, and dedicated much of her time to drawing, with a fondness greater than her powers of execution, at least in drawing landscapes, in which the shortness of her sight precluded her from attaining any degree of perfection. At a more mature period of life she was accustomed to regret the time thus employed, and to wish that she had rather been directed in useful reading, and in the study of other languages, as well as the French, acquired in her early infancy. But though her faPurchased by Mr. Dyson, since by Mr. Aldersley.

ther,

ther, no contemptible poct himself, encouraged and cherished the talents he thought he observed in his daughter, her aunt, whose care she was still under, had other opinions as to the propriety of indulging her taste for reading, and saw, with alarm, that her niece passed, and she thought wasted, whole days in hanging over almost any books that fell in her way. Such books, therefore, as were most likely to flatter the taste of a young person, were absolutely prohibited the consequent of which was that she seized, with indiscriminating avidity, all that came in her way; by this means acquiring a superficial acquaintance with various subjects of knowledge, that, by awakening her curiosity, led, in subsequent periods, to more complete information.

At this time of her life, though yet at an age when most girls are at school, Mrs. Smith was taken a great deal into company; and almost all the gaiety she ever partook of was between her twelfth and fifteenth year.

But from the dissipations of London, in society, of at least a fashionable description, and from what she liked better, wandering amidst the romantic beautics of that part of Sussex where her father's house was situated, the time was now come when she was to be removed. Mr. Turner married a second wife, who, however defective in the qualities possessed by the first, had one advantage, by which, in the opinion of the majority, they were more than counterbalanced-a considerable fortune. Mr. Turner, foreseeing that his daughters, the eldest of whom had at

tained her fifteenth year, would probably object to the authority of a step-mother, suffered them to remain, for some months, under the protection of their aunt; but the eldest daughter was soon after seen and admired by Mr. Smith, the son of a West India merchant, of considerable fortune, who was also an India Director. Her extreme youth, to which the elder Mr. Smith had an objection, was no longer considered as such when he became acquainted with her; and, at a period of life when the laws of this country do not allow that a debt of ten pounds shall be contracted, she became the wife of Mr. Smith, exchanged the pure air of her native country for a residence (made needlessly splendid) in one of the closest and most disagreeable lanes in the city of London, and the amusements in which she had been perhaps improperly indulged, for society altogether different, when her desire to conform to the wishes of the father of her husband, who was extremely fond of her, allowed her to mix in society at all.

Much of her time was dedicated to this gentleman, the elder Mr. Smith, now a widower, having buried a second wife; and to amuse him she consented that her child (for she became a mother in her seventeenth year) should almost always reside with him. But in the following year, a few days only after the birth of a second son, this lovely infant was carried off by a sore throat, and from that period may be dated the commencement of those sorrows and anxieties, which, with unremitting seve! rity, have pursued her, and given to her productions

that

that tincture of sadness which has excited in every feeling heart so lively an interest. The disorder that robbed her of this child, was of a nature so malignant and infectious, that of all her household, only herself and the new born infant escaped it; and that infant, though he survived ten years, suffered so much in this early state of his existence, for want of the care which is then so indispensably necessary, that his feeble and declining health embittered with the most cruel solicitude the life of his mother, who loved him with more than ordinary fondness.

Mrs. Smith, detesting more than ever the residence in the city, and being indeed unable to exist in it, had then a small house at some distance, where, as her husband was a good deal in town, and her sister not always with her, she lived very much alone, occupied solely by her family, now increased to three children. It was then her taste for reading revived, and she had a small library, which was her greatest resource. Her studies, however, did not interferę with the care of her children; she nursed them all herself, and usually read while she rocked the cradle of one, and had, perhaps, another sleeping on her lap. After some changes to different houses in the neighbourhood of London, Mr. Smith's father (now married to that aunt of Mrs. Smith's who had brought her up) purchased for his son a house with about an hundred acres of land around it, called Lys Farm, in Hampshire, and the father undertook the whole management of the West India business, though he was now far advanced in life. At this place the family of

Mrs.