went out with more than usual advantages, it was a severe trial to a most tender and anxious mother; but an affliction yet more poignant awaited her in the same year, when her second son was carried off, after only thirty-six hours' illness, by a fever of the most malignant nature, which, spreading through the family, reduced several of the children and servants to the brink of the grave; but by her personal exertions they were restored, and she escaped the infection.

They were at this time residing at Woolbeding House, near Midhurst, which they had engaged after their return from France in 1785; but Mrs Smith was not destined to be stationary in any residence. An increasing incompatibility of temper, which had rendered her union a source of misery for twenty-three years, determined her on separating from her husband; and, after an ineffectual appeal to one of the members of the family to assist her in the adjustment of the terms, but with the entire approbation of her most dispassionate and judicious friends, she withdrew from Woolbeding House, accompanied by all her children, some of them of an age to judge for themselves, and who all decided on following the fortunes of their mother.

She settled in a small house in the environs of Chichester, and her husband, soon afterwards finding himself involved in fresh difficulties, again retired to the continent, after having made some ineffectual efforts to induce her to return to him. They sometimes met after this period, and constantly corresponded, Mrs Smith never relaxing in her endeavours to afford him every assistance, and bring the family affairs to a final arrangement; but they never afterwards resided together. Though the decisive step she had taken in quitting her husband's house, was perhaps, under the then existing circumstances, unavoidable, yet I have been told, the manner was injudicious, and that she should have insisted on previous legal arrangements, and secured to herself the enjoyment of her own fortune. That she was liable to much unmerited censure, was a matter of course; but those who knew the dessous des cartes, could only regret that the measure had not been adopted years before.

The summer of 1787 saw Mrs Smith established in her cottage at Wyhe, pursuing her literary occupations with much assiduity and delight, supplying to her children the duties of both parents. It was here that she began and completed, in the

space of eight months, her first, and perhaps most pleasing, novel of Emmeline, and its success was very general. It was published in the spring of 1788, and the whole of the first edition, 1500, sold so rapidly, that a second was immediately called for; and the late Mr Cadell found his profits so considerable, that he had the liberality, voluntarily, to augment the price he had agreed to give for it. The success of her volume of Sonnets was equally gratifying, and, exclusive of profit and reputation, procured her many valuable friends and estimable acquaintances, and some in the most exalted ranks of life; and it was not the least pleasing circumstance to a mother's heart, that her son in Bengal owed his promotion in the civil service to her talents.

The novel of Ethelinde was published in 1789; Celestina in 1791.

She had quitted her cottage near Chichester, and lived sometimes in or near London, but chiefly at Brighthelmstone, where she formed acquaintances with some of the most violent advocates of the French Revolution, and unfortunately caught the contagion, though in direct opposition to the principles she had formerly professed, and to those of her family.

It was during this paroxysm of political fever that she wrote the novel of Desmond; a work which has been greatly condemned, not only on account of its politics, but its immoral tendency. I leave its defence to an abler pen, and content myself with regretting its consequences. It lost her some friends, and furnished others with an excuse for withholding their interest in favour of her family, and brought a host of literary ladies in array against her, armed with all the malignity which envy could inspire!

She had been in habits of intimacy for the two or three last years with Mr Hayley, (as well as with his lady,) then at the height of his poetical reputation, but this was a distinction not to be enjoyed with impunity. His praise was considered as an encroachment on the rights of other muses, (as he was accustomed to call his poetical female friends,) each of whom claimed the monopoly of his adulation. In the present day the prize would scarcely be thought worth contending for. In 1792, Mrs Smith made one of the party at Eastham, when Cowper visited that spot. In 1793, her third son, who was serving as an ensign in the 14th regiment of infantry, lost his leg at Dun

kirk; and her own health began to sink under the pressure of so many afflictions, and continual harassing circumstances in which the family property was involved, in the arrangement of which her exertions were incessant. She removed to Bath, but received no benefit from the use of the waters. An imperfect gout had fixed itself on her hands, probably increased by the constant use of the pen, which nevertheless she continued to employ, though some of her fingers were become contracted. Her second daughter had been married to a gentleman of Normandy, who had emigrated at the beginning of the Revolution. She fell into a decline after her first confinement, and died at Clifton in the spring of 1794. It would be impossible to describe the affliction Mrs Smith experienced on this occasion. Mothers only can comprehend it! From this time she became more than ever unsettled, moving from place to place in search of that tranquillity she was never destined to enjoy, yet continuing her literary occupation with astonishing application.

The dates of her different works are recorded in

*This estimable young man died a few years after, of the yellow fever, in Barbadoes.