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In 1802 the Barbaulds removed from Hampstead. Through the kindness of a friend, I have before me the copy of a letter from Rochmount Barbauld to the celebrated Dr. Parr, dated March 29, 1802, in which he says: ‘We are on the point of leaving this charming spot, in order to remove to Stoke Newington, thus exchanging the beauties of nature for the pleasures of the heart and mind—for the advantage, I mean, of living close to Dr. Aikin.’ This closes all questions as to the time when the Barbaulds removed from Hampstead, which one writer has asserted to have been in 1799. It was at Stoke Newington that Crabb Robinson paid his first visit to them in 1805-6. We have seen his personal description of Mr. Barbauld, but he added to it the suggestive expression that at that time the afflictive disease was lurking in him which in a few years broke out, and, as is well known, caused a sad termination to his life. This was the circumstance that made their removal to Stoke Newington a necessity, in order that Mrs. Barbauld should be near her brother for advice, assistance, and protection. No wonder Mrs. Le Breton, in her recollections of her, calls her life a brave and beautiful one. Of Mrs. Barbauld, Crabb Robinson says: ‘She bore the remains of great personal beauty; she had a brilliant complexion, light hair, blue eyes, a small elegant figure, and her manners were agreeable, with something of the generation departed.’

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