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her mother and sisters. She was a year older than Rogers and had already attained considerable success and reputation as an authoress. At eighteen she had become known as a poetess, and at twenty had published a novel entitled Edwin and Eltruda,' written in the sentimental fashion of the time; and two years later she had written a similar tale entitled 'Julie.' Rogers spoke of her in after years as a very fascinating person, though not handsome, and he became at this period of his life very intimate with her. She was a woman of much conversational power, and had the charm of sympathy and the art of bringing people together. She was full of admiration for the French Revolution, and in 1791 the family went to France with the intention of settling at Orleans. They, however, soon removed to Paris, where Rogers afterwards visited her. She was a warm adherent of the Girondist party, and shared their fall and imprisonment, and, but for an oversight, would have been carried with their leaders to the guillotine. She was liberated after the fall of Robespierre, and became in later years an admirer of Napoleon. She translated the twenty-nine volumes of Humboldt's 'Personal Narrative' of his Travels into English, and wrote several works on France which were a good deal more read. She continued to live in Paris till her death in 1827. Meanwhile her sister Cecilia had married a Frenchman

-M. Coquerel—and her son, Athanase Coquerel, became the celebrated Liberal Protestant preacher of the Oratoire, and representative of Paris after the Revolution of 1848. Cecilia's grandson, Athanase Coquerel the younger, was, till his too early death, the genial and gentle, yet high

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spirited and vigorous leader of the Liberal section of the French Protestant Church.

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Another of Rogers's friends in these early days was Mrs. Barbauld. The Barbaulds had settled at Hampstead in the summer of 1786, where Mr. Barbauld was the minister of a small Presbyterian chapel on Rosslyn Hill. The congregation was one of those which had already become Unitarian in theology. It is now the largest Unitarian congregation in London, and is under the charge of Dr. Sadler, the accomplished editor of Crabb Robinson's Diary.' Writing to her brother, Dr. Aikin, Mrs. Barbauld says, Hampstead is certainly the pleasantest village about London,' but she adds, 'except Avignon it is the most windy place I was ever in.' She speaks too of the long tea-drinking afternoons which the calls of friends imposed on her, and remarks with pity on the number of young ladies. 'One gentleman in particular,' she says, ' has five tall marriageable daughters, and not a single young man is to be seen in the place.' Rogers had already visited her when she writes to ask him to come again. In the letter conveying the invitation, which her great-niece, the late Mrs. Le Breton, writer of Memories of Seventy Years,' dates in October, 1787, Mrs. Barbauld says—

1

'Your visit was so short that we wish to think of anything which may induce you to make us a longer; and as we are to have an Assembly at the Long Room on Monday next, the 22nd, which they say will be a pretty good one,

1 "

Martin.

Memories of Seventy Years' p. 63. Edited by Mrs. Herbert

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I take the liberty to ask whether it will be agreeable to you to be of our party, and in that case we have a bed at your service. I could, I am sure, have my petition. supported by a round robin of the young ladies of Hampstead, which would act like a spell and oblige your attendance; but, not being willing to make use of such compulsory methods, I will only say how much pleasure it would give to,

'Sir, your obliged and obedient servant,

'A. BARBAULD.'

She adds a postscript to say that their dinner hour is half after three. This invitation was probably accepted, and Rogers kept the letter all his life. He told Mr. Dyce that he used to go to the Hampstead Assemblies when he was young, that there was much good company there, and that he had sometimes danced four or five minuets in one evening. The acquaintance with Mrs. Barbauld soon became intimate, and the friendship continued unbroken till her death in 1825.

Among the friends whom he made during these visits to Hampstead was Miss Joanna Baillie. Miss Baillie was a year older than Rogers, and died only four years before him, in her ninetieth year. In these early days she was unknown as an authoress, and Mrs. Barbauld says, came to Mr. Barbauld's meeting with as innocent L a face as if she had not written a line.' Even after the publication of the first volume of her Plays of the Passions' in 1799, she kept the secret of her authorship, though the warmest admiration of her writings was expressed in her presence. The unsuspected author

lay snug,' says Miss Aikin, 'in the asylum of her taciturnity.' Her intercourse with Rogers was constant, and large numbers of her letters have been preserved, but they are of small importance, and are as a rule without a trace of date. Her brother, Dr. Matthew Baillie, the eminent physician, who lived with her, was the successor of Dr. William Hunter in his anatomical professorship.

It was in the year 1788 that the first great change in the prospects of Samuel Rogers took place. His eldest brother Daniel was at Cambridge. Daniel Rogers had definitely chosen a career which had left the banking business to his two younger brothers, Thomas and Samuel. He was not adapted for business, and his father did not leave him, in his will, even the estates in Worcestershire and elsewhere which had come to him by inheritance or had been acquired during his life. Sir Egerton Bridges in his chatty and egotistical autobiography speaks of Daniel Rogers as one of his fellowcollegians, a very clever man, who had an amazing memory and read much, but he adds, 'I never saw any of his compositions.' Daniel Rogers, in fact, did not become an author. He preferred the life of a country squire. Samuel Sharpe, his nephew, speaks of him as a man of delightfully simple mind, a great reader, and throughout life an earnest student of the ancient and Eastern languages.' In the autobiographical sketch I have quoted in his memoir (p. 18) Samuel Sharpe further says of his uncle Daniel: He was of delightful guileless simplicity, without a thought that was hidden from you, and was liked by all his acquaintance. His father

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meant him for the Bar, and had great hopes of his being a distinguished man. But he did not like the law: he preferred classics. He married his cousin, Martha Bowles, and went to live in the country, much to his father's disappointment. He dwelt first at Lincoln, where he was intimate with Dr. Paley, but he afterwards removed to Wassal Grove, near Hagley, where he had a farm. There I visited him, and spent my time most delightfully, sometimes rambling in Hagley Park with his daughters, sometimes walking over the farm with him and then returning to his study, where he would pull down book after book to follow a reference or trace a thought, with an enthusiasm and richness of memory that was most encouraging to anybody fond of knowledge. He had at that time been studying Persian.' These tastes and this disposition in the eldest brother quite sufficiently account for the abandonment of the bank and all its concerns to the younger brothers.

Thomas Rogers, the second son, was eighteen months older than Samuel, and appears to have been devoted to business. He had neither his elder brother's distaste for it, nor his younger brother's literary ambition. He would naturally have been his father's successor in the management of the bank; and his diligence and care justified the confidence reposed in him. He and Samuel had become partners at the same time and on the same terms, and the relations between them were those of perfect confidence. They dined together every day with Mr. Olding, who was the resident partner, and lived over the bank. At holiday seasons they were away from business by turns; and their father wrote to them with

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