now I think of it, most of her opinions, when I knew her in later life, were singular enough then, but had been universally prevalent fifty years before.  For instance, while I lived at Hanbury Court, the cry for education was beginning to come up:  Mr. Raikes had set up his Sunday Schools; and some clergymen were all for teaching writing and arithmetic, as well as reading.  My lady would have none of this; it was levelling and revolutionary, she said.  When a young woman came to be hired, my lady would have her in, and see if she liked her looks and her dress, and question her about her family.  Her ladyship laid great stress upon this latter point, saying that a girl who did not warm up when any interest or curiosity was expressed about her mother, or the “baby” (if there was one), was not likely to make a good servant.  Then she would make her put out her feet, to see if they were well and neatly shod.  Then she would bid her say the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed.  Then she inquired if she could write.  If she could, and she had liked all that had gone before, her face sank—­it was a great disappointment, for it was an all but inviolable rule with her never to engage a servant who could write.  But I have known her ladyship break through it, although in both cases in which she did so she put the girl’s principles to a further and unusual test in asking her to repeat the Ten Commandments.  One pert young woman—­and yet I was sorry for her too, only she afterwards married a rich draper in Shrewsbury—­who had got through her trials pretty tolerably, considering she could write, spoilt all, by saying glibly, at the end of the last Commandment, “An’t please your ladyship, I can cast accounts.”

“Go away, wench,” said my lady in a hurry, “you’re only fit for trade; you will not suit me for a servant.”  The girl went away crestfallen:  in a minute, however, my lady sent me after her to see that she had something to eat before leaving the house; and, indeed, she sent for her once again, but it was only to give her a Bible, and to bid her beware of French principles, which had led the French to cut off their king’s and queen’s heads.

The poor, blubbering girl said, “Indeed, my lady, I wouldn’t hurt a fly, much less a king, and I cannot abide the French, nor frogs neither, for that matter.”

But my lady was inexorable, and took a girl who could neither read nor write, to make up for her alarm about the progress of education towards addition and subtraction; and afterwards, when the clergyman who was at Hanbury parish when I came there, had died, and the bishop had appointed another, and a younger man, in his stead, this was one of the points on which he and my lady did not agree.  While good old deaf Mr. Mountford lived, it was my lady’s custom, when indisposed for a sermon, to stand up at the door of her large square pew,—­just opposite to the reading-desk,—­and to say (at that part of the morning service where it