aristocratic girls to offset the practical infidelity that permeated the
upper walks of life, Hannah More desired to make the children of the
poor religious amid the savage profligacy which then marked the peasant
class. The first school she established was at Cheddar, a wild and
sunless hollow, amid yawning caverns, about ten miles from Cowslip
Green,--the resort of pleasure parties for its picturesque cliffs and
fissures. Around this weird spot was perhaps the most degraded peasantry
to be found in England, without even spiritual instruction,--for the
vicar was a non-resident, and his living was worth but £50 a year. In
her efforts to establish a school in such a barbarous and pagan locality
Hannah met with serious obstacles. The farmers and petty landholders
were hostile to her scheme, maintaining that any education would spoil
the poor, and make them discontented. Even the farmers themselves were
an ignorant and brutal class, very depraved, and with intense
prejudices. For a whole year she labored with them to disarm their
hostilities and prejudices, and succeeded at last in collecting two
hundred and fifty children in the schoolhouse which she had built. Their
instruction was of course only elemental, but it was religious.

From Cheddar, Hannah More was led to examine into the condition of
neighboring places. Thirteen contiguous parishes were without a resident
curate, and nine of these were furnished with schools, with over five
hundred scholars. Her theory was,--a suitable education for each, and a
Christian education for all. While she was much encouraged by her
ecclesiastical aristocratic friends, she still encountered great
opposition from the farmers. She also excited the jealousy of the
Dissenters for thus invading the territory of ignorance. All her
movements were subjected to prelates and clergymen of the Church of
England for their approval; for she put herself under their patronage.
And yet the brutal ignorance of the peasantry was owing in part to the