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( 28 )
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III.—MISS BOSANQUET.
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Considerable interest having been expres...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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( 28 )
( 28 )
Iii.—Miss Bosanquet.
III . —MISS BOSANQUET .
Considerable Interest Having Been Expres...
Considerable interest having been expressed concerning an
incidental mention of Miss Bosanquet which occurred in a Scotch peri odical some time since , we have thought that a few words
explanatory of who she was , and what she did , might not be unacceptable to our readers , while it serves as a legitimate preface to
a series of biographies which we hope to publish in this journal . Miss Bosanquet closed her long life in 1815 , and yet she is
intimately linked with much that is going on around us at this hour , having devoted her life to a multitude of labours which were
at the time exceedingly unfashionable , indeed , considered eccentric in the highest degree . So wonderful a study is it to watch how
we change our minds from generation to generation I Of district visitors , tract distributors ! , Sunday School teachersand hospital
, nurses , Miss Bosanquet may be taken as the type . She was born on the let of September , old style , 1739 , when John
Wesley was thirty-six years of age , and when Methodism had already begun to make great progress in London , Bristol , and other parts of
the West of England . It was in this very year that Whitefield first began his famous preachings in the open air ; and by the time the
little daughter of the rich City family , who lived down at Ley tonstone in Essex , grew old enough to think at all , she came under the
influence of the wonderful religious revival which was spreading more widely year by year . Not , however , through her
parentsthey seem to have been worthy and religious people , but they disliked the extremes of Methodism , its daily habits , and its dress .
It was a servant who first imbued the child with these ideas , and the tiny theologian wished that she could be burnt as a martyr
, and so escape from the dilemmas into which she fell . As might be expected , her excitable temperament preyed upon
her health ; the servant had left the family , and as no other member except a sister only a few years older sympathised in the intensity of
her convictions , the little one struggled on , suffering much ill-health , but laying the foundations of that splendid power of self-devotion
which finally made her a brave and healthy human being . Under the severe garb of Methodism , Mary Bosanquet seems to us to have
achieved a sane mind in a healthy body , and in telling the story o her childhood she put ' s in a passing plea for more judicious care of
exceptional infants like herself . At the ago of thirteen she , by her father ' s desire , was confirmed at St . Paul ' s , and in the following year
she lost her grandfather , Mr . Dunster , with whom she frequently
lived . He was very religious , and she recalls having "been with him
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), March 1, 1858, page 28, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01031858/page/28/
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