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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Autograph.

Half-title.

Frontispiece.

PAGE

Anne Gilchrist. Painted by Herbert Harlakenden Gilchrist, 1882-1884. Photogravure

Mrs. Butler [Anne Gilchrist's great-aunt]. Drawn by Herbert
Harlakenden Gilchrist, from the picture by George
Romney, at Colne Priory

Mrs. Carwardine and Child. From the picture at Colne
Priory, painted by George Romney. Photogravure
Silhouette of Anne Burrows (Gilchrist), 1835. Engraved on
wood by W. H. Hooper

Alexander Gilchrist. Drawn by Herbert H. Gilchrist from
daguerreotype made in 1851

Monument of Thomas de Vere, the eighth Earl of Oxford.
Died September 18, 1370

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Brookbank. Drawn by Herbert H. Gilchrist, 1884

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William Blake. Sketched from memory by Frederick Tatham for Alexander Gilchrist, one evening at 6 Great Cheynerow, in 1860 William Hayley. Drawn by Herbert H. Gilchrist, from a sketch in oil-colour by George Romney, at Colne Priory 154

Map upon which Walt Whitman had traced his journey to
the Rocky Mountains.

Anne Gilchrist. Painted by Herbert H. Gilchrist, June, 1885.
Photogravure

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Angel of Hope. Designed, in water-colour, by William Blake 284 (Reproduced by Walker and Boutall.)

ANNE GILCHRIST.

CHAPTER I.

ANCESTRY.

'HE life of Anne Gilchrist is the life of a woman

THE

of letters, who in a measure renounced literature until she had reared her children, giving to each a profession; whose strength of character stemmed adverse fortune, made life a success under difficult circumstances, and enabled her to emerge through sorrow with a spirit only more finely tempered. A life too, which, when seen through family association, touched the slower pulse of the eighteenth century; that century forming a background to the scientific and political events of her own.

As life itself is a fragment, a fragment albeit of greatness, how fragmentary must a biography appear! When we catch reflected in a pool a tall elm or hurrying cloud, seen at intervals through long rifts driven by the wind, our mind unconsciously completes the forms so obscured. Even such a partial reflection, the biographer perforce must set before his reader.

Anne Gilchrist, whose maiden name was Burrows, was born at number seven, Gower Street, on the twenty-fifth of February, 1828-year of Schubert's 14

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death, and of Dante Rossetti's birth. She was the surviving child of three, one of whom died in infancy; she lost the other, a brother, John Burrows, twenty-one years later. The fact of death as revealed to her when a child of three, in the form of an only baby-sister shrouded in black velvet, left a lasting impression.

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Henrietta Burrows, née Carwardine, was a gentlewoman of the old school. Descended from a long line of small squires, she was drilled in the now despised accomplishments, being a mistress of those graceful amenities of life that a daughter learns in a family where bringing up is insisted upon, with its high traditions of conduct and unflinching obedience to self-imposed duties: traditions duly instilled into little Annie. witty and delightful grand dame she seemed to us, whose stately manners were reminiscent of the "grand old style." It seemed wonderful to look into Henrietta Burrows' aged face, whilst conversing about the past; for were we not face to face with one out of those very audiences held spell-bound by Mrs. Siddons, when the actress, as Lady Macbeth, in the fifth act began—" Yet here's a spot."

Could we give some delineation of the Carwardines, and their environment at Earls Colne, would it not help us to appreciate the influences that most combined. to mould Anne Gilchrist's character? for Colne was the background to leisure hours in early and middle life.

Earls Colne, the garden of Essex, as it is called, possessed once a beautiful church and priory. From whatever point we approach the village, we see rising mid elms the church tower, encircled beneath the battlements

COLNE PRIORY.

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with stars picked out in flint, which sparkle in the sun. The sluggish Colne, winding through pastures, skirts Colne Priory, a monastery founded by Aubrey de Vere, A.D. 1100; its chapel enriched with four richly carved tombs, three of which are to the Earls of Oxford.

These are the same monuments about which there was a controversy in the public journals, June, 1884. More than a hundred years ago the Priory chapel fell into disuse, when it rapidly became a ruin: the four tombs were removed, and were lent by Henry Carwardine to Colne Church, pending a rebuilding of the Priory; he subsequently removed them back to a sort of cloister on the Priory. The monuments to the De Veres received many embellishments from the bucolic clasp-. knife during their incarceration in Colne Church; in fact, had they been allowed to remain there, would have been well nigh destroyed: beyond doubt, Henry Carwardine was well within his legal rights in the matter.

The earliest and most beautiful tomb is that surmounted by the effigy of Robert de Vere, the fifth Earl of Oxford, who died A.D. 1296. It is carved in stone. The Earl lies with his legs crossed; he is clothed in a hauberk or shirt of mail, reaching nearly to the knees, with a hood, or coif de maille, secured round the forehead by a fillet, or, perhaps, covered with a basenet, or iron skull cap. 'Both the opening for the face and the lower edge of the hood terminate in a point. The legs and feet are encased in mail, the knees being further protected by poleyns or genouillières. The spurs are attached to the heels by straps which pass round the instep. The shield is gone, but the guige by

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