of memory can see this girl of twenty sitting in a flowery arbour in the garden, with the history of Livy or Polybius on her knee, and her scraps of manuscript around her. The drama was sketched out, and a first play finished at that age; a second and superior version—essentially the same—followed in two or three years. It was the praise given to this by her father, an excellent classical scholar, that lighted up her first faint modest desires for fame. "I never thought I could be ambitious," she said, "but papa's words have made me so." But it was laid by, publishing being an expensive luxury that could not then be dreamed of.
In 1845 the serious illness of Mrs. Shore caused the break-up of the Sunbury home, and the family removed to London. The three years there were made pleasant by a good deal of congenial, including literary, society. Former pupils renewed their old friendship, and fresh ties were formed.
Again, however, ill-health came in the way—Mr. Shore's this time. His long years of unremitting labour were brought to an end by cruel neuralgic sufferings, and country life was
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