HAMILTON, ELIZABETH, born at Belfast in Ireland, but pro bably of Scottish parentage, is deservedly remembered as an early advocate of an enlarged and intellectual system of female education, and as one of the leaders of that useful class of novelists who have placed the interest of their fictions, not in rare adventure and glowing description, but in the accurate portraiture of the daily workings of domestic life. We find little to tell of her personal history. It appears that she filled the office of governess to the daughters of a Scottish nobleman, for the eldest of whom her Letters on the Formation of the Religious and Moral Principle' were written. She died July 25, 1816, regretted and beloved. Her warm and sincere piety was untinctured by severity, and her natural cheerfulness and lively talents rendered her delightful in society, and, in old age, a universal favourite with the young.
The following are her chief works: 'Letters of a Hiodoo Rajah,' 1796; 'Modern Philosophers,' 1800, a clever, popular, and effective satire, intended to throw discredit on the sceptical and republican doctrines taught by some disciples of the French Revolution; Letters on the Elementary Principles of Education,' 1801.2; Life of Agrip
pina,' 1804, an attempt to make history interesting, by expanding it into something bearing the resemblance of a novel ; ' Lettere on the Formation of the Religious and Moral Principle,' 1806; ' Cottagere of Glenburnie,' 1808 ; ' Exercises in Religious Knowledge,' 1809 ; ' Popular Essays,' 1813. Of these, the 'Letters on Education,' in which she has very skilfully applied the principles of metaphysics to the subject of education, is the moat sterling and important. As a noveliA, she will be best recollected by the Cottagers of Glenburnie,' "a lively and humorous picture of the slovenly habits, the indolent temper, the baneful content, which prevail among some of the lower class of people in Scotland." This piece, though only the picture of humble life in a remote and obscure district, can never lose its interest, for the characters are true to nature, essentially, not locally true; and the pathos, the humour, the admirable moral lessons, are of all time, and independent of the national peculiarities under which they are conveyed.