A devoted wife and mother, a woman full of feminine qualities and energetic resolution happily combined, the daughter of Sir John Harrison, and the cousin of Evelyn, must always excite a pleasing interest when we follow her in her flights and her wanderings, and accompany her in her simple and clear descriptions of places and things which circumstances, both of misfortune and prosperity, made known to her. She has written her own memoirs, which present a lively picture of the time in which she lived, namely, during the civil wars, when Charles and Cromwell were struggling for mastery, and when that most careless and ungrateful of princes, Charles the Second, reclaimed his birthright, and shuffled off the friends who had gained it for him.

She relates minutely all that occurred to her husband and herself; for it was then a time when to write memoirs was considered a necessary employment; but, unlike the insufferable Duchess of Newcastle, and the amiable but prosaic Countess of Pembroke and Montgomery, her accounts are full of life and grace, and the mixture of superstition which accompanies her genuine piety is merely entertaining, for her wonderful stories are really good. At the outset of her biography, she relates this anecdote of her mother, who died when she had attained the age of fifteen, in 1640.