her sons, William Cromartie Yearsley, who had bidden fair to be the prop
of her age; and whom she had apprenticed to an eminent engraver, with a
premium of one hundred guineas, prematurely died; and his surviving
brother soon followed him to the grave! Ann Yearsley, now a childless and
desolate widow, retired, heart-broken from the world, on the produce of
her library; and died many years after, in a state of almost total
seclusion, at Melksham. An inhabitant of the town lately informed me that
she was never seen, except when she took her solitary walk in the dusk of
the evening! She lies buried in Clifton church-yard.

In this passing notice of the Bristol milkwoman, my design has been to
rescue her name from unmerited obloquy, and not in the remotest degree to
criminate Hannah More, whose views and impressions in this affair may
have been somewhat erroneous, but whose intentions it would be impossible
for one moment to question.[10]

The reader will not be displeased with some further remarks on Mrs.
Hannah More, whose long residence near Bristol identified her so much
with that city.

Mrs. H. More lived with her four sisters, Mary, Elizabeth, Sarah, and
Martha, after they quitted their school in Park-Street, Bristol, at a
small neat cottage in Somersetshire, called Cowslip Green. The Misses M.
some years afterward built a better house, and called it Barley Wood, on
the side of a hill, about a mile from Wrington. Here they all lived, in
the highest degree respected and beloved: their house the seat of piety,
cheerfulness, literature, and hospitality; and they themselves receiving
the honour of more visits from bishops, nobles, and persons of
distinction, than, perhaps, any private family in the kingdom.