Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1854-01-26
IA N U UARY 26, 1854.

IN manner, unreal in sentiments-and thev ar
so, If they be tried against the best writings b,
the authors of "The Admiral's Daughter. :
and " Mary Barton," and "Jane Eyre" Ii
their day, however, they were cherished, ant
wept over, as moving and truthful. They wor
Tor their authoress Continental reputation
and one of them, "The Father and Daug ghter, y
In its translated and dramatized form as the
opera Agnese," !" with Pears expression music,
(some of Pears best) and Ambrogettis har-
rowing personation of the principal character,
will connect Amelia Opic's name with opera so
long as the chronicles of music shall be written.
In these pursuits, accomplishments and sue
cesscs, the girlhood, married life, and first years
Of widowhood Of Ameliea Ope passed over.
Then come change-strangc, though not
without its parallel in the history of woman
of beauty, genius, and social success. She be-
came tired of the world, its pomps, pleasures
and vanities and attracted il is believed, by the
influence exercised over her mind by Mr.. Joseph
John Gurney, of Earlham (the brother of Mr..
Fry, and one of the most learned and refined of
Quakers), Amelia Opie sought and obtained a
membership in the sect, of which the ordinances
admit neither music or tale-telling, nor the en-
trance of frivolous and imaginative gayety in
any form. When she repaired to London from
Norwich, it was the Friends yearly meeting, Or
to the platform of some philanthropic assembly,
on which the slave, the prisoner, Or some other
d" desolate and oppressed" creature was themag-
net of attraction. What was more noticeable
still, by way of attcsting the sincerity of a
neophyte, Amelia Opio did her best to force
her old self, the novelist, into her new uniform
of staid silk bonnet and dove colored shawl.
After having ceased for some years from imagi-
native creation, the newly fedgad Friend sud
denly appeared as the authoress of "Illustra-
tions of Lying a work in which fiction, by
thought, word Or work, was whimsically de-
nounced in series of small fctions, This was
followed by Detraction Displayed" a second
draught from the same fountain. But neither
in the world she had quilted, nor in the world
she had entered, were these hybrid attempts to
reconcile sold things with new" received with
any extraordinary complaccncy. The fame Of
The Father and Daughter" and of the opera
"Agncse," could not be got rid of, could not
be dyed drab - and, for its sake, tho worldly
world of critics lorgave the fecblencss and un-
conscious disingcniousness of Amelia Opie's
latter attempts to recocile callings, habits and
associations, essentially and sternly irreconci-
liable.
After some years Of these new efforts Ame-
lia Opio gently and gracefully oscillated back
to some place and pleasure in the world, where
her earlier, and, We think, her more real life
had been led. She was onco more seen, though
still as Friend, in general society-and when
seen there Was always welcome for the viYacity
Of her manner, the kindliness of her heart, and
her anecdotes and "reminiscences of gone by
words Of art and fancy. BY those who were
personally acquainted with her, Amelia Opie
must be always pleasantly remembered by
those who knew her not, she can never be over
looked, when the works and claims of the
English authoresses of the nineteen century have
to be summed up.-London AthenGum.