l^O-M] CHILDHOOD 35
the highest aspirations after a -Christian and a heavenly life. Her father, Oswald Leycester, Rector of Stoke-npon-Terne in Shropshire, was a finished scholar,, had travelled much, and was the most agreeable of companions. Her only sister, seven years older than herself, was married when very young to Edward Stanley, Rector of Alderley, and afterwards Bishop of Norwich, well known for the picturesque-ness of his imaginative powers, for his researches in Natural History, and for that sympathy with all things bright and pleasant which preserved in him the spirit of youth quite to the close of life. Her most intimate friend, and the voluntary preceptor of her girlhood, had been the gifted .Reginald Heber, who, before his acceptance of the Bishopric of Calcutta, had lived as Rector of Hodnet — the poet-rector—within two miles of her home.
One of the happy circle which constantly met at llodnet Rectory, she had known Augustus Hare (lirst-cousin of Mrs. Heber, who was a daughter of Dean Shipley) since she was eighteen. Later interests and their common sorrow in Hebcr's death had thrown them closely together, and it would scarcely have been possible for two persons to have proved each other's characters more thoroughly than they had done, before the time of their marriage, which was not till Maria/ Leyeester was in her thirty-first year.
Four years of perfect happiness were permitted them — years spent almost entirely in the quiet of their little rectory in the singularly small parish of Alton Barnes amid the Wiltshire downs,, where thed; anil alter her return to Paris, tin* means which sho often tnnk to attain the ends to which nlte devoted httr life brought trunblo tos once instead of three times every day of the year.