family by making them a currant tart. What a treasure was her activity and unfailing good humour! Not that she did not feel the change of circumstances, for with her thoughtful mind and tender heart she must have felt deeply; but she was intent on lightening the burden for the rest, and in this found her own soul comforted.
I have said she was a good needlewoman, and her own dress and that of the family depended almost entirely on her skill and taste. It was remarked of her, when she was grown up and mixed in the small but very cultivated circle of her friends, that her taste was so correct, no lady could be more elegantly and yet more simply dressed. Economy and neatness were both combined with taste and refinement, an equal avoidance of finery and shabbiness, which I think my judicious young readers will esteem the perfection of good sense in dress for those whose means are limited.
Although there were many interruptions and impediments to the studies that she loved during her residence in Ireland, and Elizabeth could not obtain the books she wished for, yet she made good use of such as fell in her way. Some Greek and Latin works especially came within reach, and she employed her brief leisure, or rather, by her habits of economizing time and rising early, made leisure to use these books in helping her to obtain classical knowledge.
From Ireland, the family returned to Bath, and
