Hannah More Author:Marion Harland Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT — FIRST VISIT TO LONDON — DR. JOHNSON AND THE REY- NOLDSES IT is not a matter of surprise that the many untoward and dist... more »ressing circumstances attendant upon Hannah More's betrothal should have begotten in her a dread of similar complications. But since she never professed to be "in love" with Mr. Turner at any period of the affair, and suffered more in pride and delicacy than in heart at the outcome of the entanglement, the strength of her resolution never again to think of marrying was remarkable and abnormal. She told her sisters, calmly, that she "put all such ideas out of her mind for all time," and resumed her intellectual and social duties as if the episode had been an incident, annoying for a time, The Broken Engagement 29 and now dismissed from speech and thought as if it had not been. Her trousseau was taken into every-day wear ; she discussed belles-lettres and MSS. with Sir James Stonehouse instead of Mr. Turner's vagaries. When, less than two years after the rupture of her engagement, she had another offer of marriage from a younger and more stable suitor, she negatived it with gentle dignity. 'And," says Mr. Roberts, "as it happened in the former case, the attachment of the proposer was succeeded by a cordial respect, which was met on her part by a corresponding sentiment, and ended only with his existence. These incidents the reader of delicacy will duly appreciate." The next four years passed quietly, always busily, and, as we gather from an occasional anecdote belonging to this interval, not unhappily. One of these has to do with her friendly intimacy with Dr. Langhorne, an accomplished scholar of whom much was expected in his day, but whose letters to his clever protegee are his only claim upon our considera...« less