At the time of my mother's death, now sixteen years ago, one who had known her only during the latter years of her life, wrote thus to a mutual friend concerning her approaching death :—“I am very sorry to hear nothing more hopeful from Lancrigg; but the balance is not all on the mournful side. A mission so fulfilled, and such a mission, is not a common thing. Merely to have seen her must have kept many people from doing much mischief, if it has not led them to do some little bit of good—‘ Life is real, life is earnest,’ was so plainly and attractively preached by her look alone.”

If such was the impression of a thoughtful observer, who had only known her slightly, and if it be responded to by all who came nearer to her, and most of all by those to whom life lost most of its sunshine when she left it, it seems at once due to her memory and the cause of goodness to endeavour to bring together the records of a social influence so extensive and so penetrating as hers.

The reminiscences written by herself were begun, at my request, when she was nearly seventy, and give a vivid picture of her simple childhood and youth, the events of which stood out in her recollection as a green vista of summer days, spent among the fields and flowers of a small unknown hamlet in the plain of York.