380 LADY MORGAN. English mother from whom she inherited her practical sense and business capacity, and perhaps also what she herself describes as her " sacred horror of debt." During her early years the family fortunes were extremely unsettled, her father striving vainly to earn a respectable income by the combined pursuits of wine mer- chant and manager of a theatre. She and her younger sister Olivia received an irregular education, partly from their mother, partly at school. But they did not progress satisfactorily, and Sydney in particular was the despair of her mother, who had set her heart upon having her eldest daughter equal the achievements of a precocious little child of Rowland Hill's, who had read the Bible through twice before she was five, and knitted all the stockings worn by the coachman. Happily for the public good Mrs. Owenson's ambition was disappointed ; her elfish little girl found it quite impossible to master the genealogy of the patriarchs, and could not be made to sit still and sew, but nothing that was going on about her escaped her inquisitive, bright eyes. She was deeply interested in all the trades carried on in the neighborhood, and did her best to become acquainted with their mysteries. She even went so far as to set up a shop with her father's theatrical wigs, choosing for the purpose the only window fronting upon the street, and inscribing upon it, in her best and biggest hand-writing, Sydney Owen- son, System, Tete and Peruke Maker — which was the proper form of advertising at that period. "What is more, she could have carried on the trade had she been permitted, having acquired the art through observing her father's hair-dresser. She was also tolerably well instructed in chimney- sweeping, having closely observed the proceedings of a number of young sweeps who lived in a cellar across the way. On one occasion, when the school chimney caught
