capacity and requirements of her own sex, for she herself belonged to
that brilliant group--Hannah More, Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Jane
Austen, Joanna Baillie, Mary Russell Mitford--who were the living
refutation of her inherited theories. Their influence shows a pedagogic
impulse to present morally helpful ideas to the public.

[Illustration: ANNA L. BARBAULD]

From preceding generations whose lives had been concentrated upon
household affairs, these women pioneers had acquired the strictly
practical bent of mind which comes out in all their verse, as in all
their prose.

The child born at Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, a century and a
half ago, became one of the first of these pleasant writers for young
and old. She was one of the thousand refutations of the stupid popular
idea that precocious children never amount to anything. When only two,
she "could read roundly without spelling, and in half a year more could
read as well as most women." Her father was master of a boys' school,
where her childhood was passed under the rule of a loving but austere
mother, who disliked all intercourse with the pupils for her daughter.
It was not the fashion for women to be highly educated; but, stimulated
perhaps by the scholastic atmosphere, Lætitia implored her father for a
classical training, until, against his judgment, he allowed her to
study Greek and Latin as well as French and Italian. Though not fond of
the housewifely accomplishments insisted upon by Mrs. Aikin, the eager
student also cooked and sewed with due obedience.

Her dull childhood ended when she was fifteen, for then her father
accepted a position as classical tutor in a boys' school at Warrington,