Born, at Norwich, 12 June 1802. Early education at home. At a school at Norwich, 1813–15. At Bristol, 1818–19. Returned to Norwich, April 1819. Contrib. to “Monthly Repository,” from 1821. Severe illness, 1827, followed by financial difficulties. Wrote three prize essays for Central Unitarian Association, 1830–31. Visit to her brother James at Dublin, 1831. Engaged on “Illustrations of Political Economy,” Feb. 1832 to Feb. 1834. Settled in London. Visit to America, Aug. 1834 to Aug. 1836. Travelled on Continent, 1839. Refused Crown Pensions, 1834, 1841, and 1873. Testimonial raised to her by her friends, 1843. Lived at Tynemouth, 1839–45; at Ambleside, Westmoreland, 1845 till her death. Friendship with Wordsworth. Visit to Egypt and Palestine, Aug. 1846 to July 1847. Contrib. to “Daily News,” 1852–66; to “Edinburgh Review,” from 1859. Died, at Ambleside, 27 June 1876. Works: “Devotional Exercises” (anon.), 1823; “Addresses, with Prayers” (anon.), 1826; “Traditions of Palestine,” 1830; “Five Years of Youth,” 1831; “Essential Faith of the Universal Church,” 1831; “The Faith as unfolded by many Prophets,” 1832; “Providence as manifested through Israel,” 1832; “Illustrations of Political Economy” (9 vols.), 1832–34; “Poor Laws and Paupers Illustrated,” 1833–34; “Illustrations of Taxation,” 1834; “Miscellanies” (2 vols., Boston), 1836; “Society in America,” 1837; “Retrospect of Western Travel,” 1838; “How to Observe,” 1838; “Addresses,” 1838; “Deerbrook,” 1839; “The Martyr Age of the United States” (under initials: H. M.), 1840; “The Playfellow” (4 pts.: “The Settlers at Home;” “The Peasant and the Prince;” “Feats on the Fiord;” “The Crofton Boys”), 1841; “The Hour and the Man,” 1841; “Life in the Sick Room” (anon.), 1844; “Letters on Mesmerism,” 1845 (2nd edn. same year); “Forest and Game-Law Tales” (3 vols.), 1845–46; “Dawn Island,” 1845; “The Billow and the Rock,” 1846; contribution to “The Land we Live In” (with C. Knight and others), 1847, etc.; “Eastern Life,” 1848; “History of England during the Thirty Years’ Peace” (with C. Knight), 1849; “Household Education,” 1849; “Introduction to the History of the Peace,” 1851; “Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature” (with H. G. Atkinson), 1851; “Half a Century of the British Empire” (only 1 pt. pubd.), [1851]; “Sickness and Health of the people of Bleaburn” (anon.), 1853; “Letters from Ireland” (from “Daily News”), 1853; “Guide to Windermere” [1854]; “A Complete Guide to the English Lakes” [1855]; “The Factory Controversy,” 1855; “History of the American Compromises” (from “Daily News”) 1856; “Sketches from Life” [1856]; “Corporate Traditions and National Rights” [1857]; “British Rule in India,” 1857; “Guide to Keswick” [1857]; “Suggestions towards the Future Government of India,” 1858; “England and her Soldiers,” 1859; “Endowed Schools of Ireland” (from “Daily News”), 1859; “Health, Husbandry, and Handicraft,” 1861; “Biographical Sketches” (from “Daily News”), 1869 [1868]. Posthumous: “Autobiography,” ed. by M. W. Chapman, 1877 (3rd edn., same year); “The Hampdens,” 1880 [1879]. She translated: Comte’s “Positive Philosophy,” 1853. Life: by Mrs. Fenwick-Miller, 1884.

Personal

  I believe she will do much good; her motives and principles are pure and high, and success, as I predicted, has improved, not spoiled her. Indeed, she has very extraordinary talent and merit, and a noble independence of mind.

  Her dress is simple, unexpensive, and appropriate. Her voice is too low-toned, but agreeable, the suitable organ of a refined spirit. Her manners, without any elegance, are pleasing, natural, and kind. She seldom speaks unless addressed, but in reply to a single touch she pours out a rich stream. She is never brilliant, never says a thing that is engraven on, or cut in, to your memory, but she talks on a greater variety of topics than any one I ever heard—agreeably, most agreeably, and with sense and information. She is womanly, strictly, with sympathies fresh from the heart, enthusiasms not always manifestly supported by reason, now and then bordering on the dogmatical, but too thorough a lover of human rights ever, I think, to overstep the boundary, and she is, I think, not conceited—no, not in the least, but quite aware of her own superiority, and perhaps a little too frank on this point. But this may be from a deficiency instead of excess of vanity.

  Miss Martineau is a person of lively, agreeable conversation, kind and candid, but rather easily imposed upon, and somewhat spoiled, perhaps, by the praises she has received, and the importance allowed to her writings.

  I was apprehensive, from her high literary reputation, that I should find her a little too blue to be agreeable. But it is not at all the case; she is pleasant and unaffected, has great vivacity, talks well upon all subjects, and is fond of laughing; with these qualifications she is, of course, an engaging companion. The only difficulty in conversing with her arises from her great deafness.

  Two or three days ago there came to call on us a Miss Martineau, whom you have perhaps often heard of in the “Examiner.” A hideous portrait was given of her in the “Fraser” one month. She is a notable literary woman of her day, has been traveling in America these two years, and is now come home to write a book about it. She pleased us far beyond expectation. She is very intelligent-looking, really of pleasant countenance, was full of talk, though unhappily deaf almost as a post, so that you have to speak to her through an ear-trumpet. She must be some five-and-thirty. As she possesses very “favourable sentiments” towards this side of the street, I mean to cultivate the acquaintance a little.

  She is a woman of one idea,—takes one view, that is, and knows nothing of qualification,—and hence is opinionated and confident to a degree that I think I never saw equalled.

  She is a heroine, or to speak more truly, her fine sense and her lofty principles, with the sincerest religion, give her a fortitude that is noble to the best height of heroism.

  She is a very admirable woman—and the most logical intellect of the age, for a woman. On this account it is that the men throw stones at her, and that many of her own sex throw dirt; but if I begin on this subject I shall end by gnashing my teeth. A righteous indignation fastens on me. I had a note from her the other day, written in a noble spirit, and saying, in reference to the insults lavished on her, that she was prepared from the first for publicity, and ventured it all for the sake of what she considered the truth—she was sustained, she said, by the recollection of Godiva.

  Miss Martineau makes herself an object of envy by the success of her domestic arrangements. She has built a cottage near her house, placed in it a Norfolk dairy-maid, and has her poultry-yard, and her piggery, and her cow-shed; and Mrs. Wordsworth declares she is a model in her household economy, making her servants happy, and setting an example of activity to her neighbors.

  I trust to have derived benefit from my visit to Miss Martineau. A visit more interesting I certainly never paid. If self-sustaining strength can be acquired from example, I ought to have got good. But my nature is not hers; I could not make it so though I were to submit it seventy times seven to the furnace of affliction, and discipline it for an age under the hammer and anvil of toil and self-sacrifice. Perhaps if I was like her I should not admire her so much as I do. She is somewhat absolute, though quite unconsciously so; but she is likewise kind, with an affection at once abrupt and constant, whose sincerity you cannot doubt. It was delightful to sit near her in the evenings and hear her converse, myself mute. She speaks with what seems to me a wonderful fluency and eloquence. Her animal spirits are as unflagging as her intellectual powers. I was glad to find her health excellent. I believe neither solitude or loss of friends would break her down. I saw some faults in her, but somehow I like them for the sake of her good points. It gave me no pain to feel insignificant, mentally and corporeally, in comparison with her.

  I think I neglected to record that I saw Miss Martineau a few weeks since. She is a large, robust, elderly woman, and plainly dressed; but withal she has so kind, cheerful, and intelligent a face that she is pleasanter to look at than most beauties. Her hair is of a decided gray, and she does not shrink from calling herself old. She is the most continual talker I ever heard; it is really like the babbling of a brook, and very lively and sensible too; and all the while she talks, she moves the bowl of her ear-trumpet from one auditor to another, so that it becomes quite an organ of intelligence and sympathy between her and yourself. The ear-trumpet seems a sensible part of her, like the antennæ of some insects. If you have any little remark to make, you drop it in; and she helps you to make remarks by this delicate little appeal of the trumpet, as she slightly directs it towards you; and if you have nothing to say, the appeal is not strong enough to embarrass you. All her talk was about herself and her affairs; but it did not seem like egotism, because it was so cheerful and free from morbidness. And this woman is an Atheist, and thinks that the principles of life will become extinct when her body is laid in the grave! I will not think so, were it only for her sake. What! only a few weeds to spring out of her mortality, instead of her intellect and sympathies flowering and fruiting forever.

  We Unitarians have reason to be proud that this remarkable woman was born and developed in our communion, and that Unitarian publishing-houses first printed and circulated her works, when other houses refused her books on political economy as dull and unmarketable. Thus the modest Unitarian publisher in Paternoster Row really brought her to the notice of the world. We, as Unitarian Christians, it may be said, have reason also to be sad, that the woman who began her successful literary career by writings that illustrated and defended our views of Christianity, should in later life have renounced her faith in historic Christianity, and the divine assurance of immortality contained in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

  How well I remember the first sight of her, so long ago! We first saw her at church—Dr. Channing’s. It was a presence one did not speedily tire of looking on—most attractive and impressive; yet the features were plain, and only saved from seeming heavily moulded by her thinness. She was rather taller and more strongly made than most American ladies. Her complexion was neither fair or sallow, nor yet of the pale, intellectual tone that is thought to belong to authorship. It was the hue of one severely tasked, but not with literary work. She had rich, brown, abundant hair, folded away in shining waves from the middle of a forehead totally unlike the flat one described by those who knew her as a child. It was now low over the eyes, like the Greek brows, and embossed rather than graven by the workings of thought. The eyes themselves were light and full, of a grayish greenish blue, varying in color with the time of day, or with the eye of the beholder—les yeux pers of the old French romance writers. They were steadily and quietly alert, as if constantly seeing something where another would have found nothing to notice. Her habitual expression was one of serene and self-sufficing dignity—the look of perfect and benevolent repose that comes to them whose long, unselfish struggle to wring its best from life has been crowned with complete victory. You might walk the livelong day, in any city streets, and not meet such a face of simple, cheerful strength, with so much light and sweetness in its play of feature.

  Looking back at this calm distance at the whole transaction, I think it open to reasonable doubt whether it was well for me to become the critic of the “Letters” at all, even in the impersonal form of an anonymous reviewer. And I might have anticipated the fruitlessness of my attempt to withdraw the master from the disciple and try conclusions with him alone. But in the substance of the critique I see nothing to correct or retract. And in its tone I do not notice an uncalled-for severity. If compared with Edward Forbes’s review of the same book (fairly representing the purely scientific estimate of its character), it indubitably stands much further within the limits of patient and considerate controversy…. The estrangement produced by this cause and its antecedents was all on one side. My affection for my sister Harriet survived all reproaches and mistakes, and, if she had permitted, would at any moment have taken me to her side for unconditional return to the old relation. If time had lessened our sympathies of thought, it had enlarged those of character, and had developed in her a cheerful fortitude, an active benevolence, and unflinching fidelity to conviction, on which I looked with joyful honour, and in view of which all vexing memories were ready to die away.

  I do not want to overpraise a personage so antipathetic to me as H. M. My first impression of her is, in spite of her undeniable talent, energy, and merit—what an unpleasant life and unpleasant nature!

  She became at length almost another estate in the realm. Cabinet Ministers consulted her upon the gravest questions of policy. She interposed to settle disputes between leaders which were embarrassing the reform movements of the time. She brought about a reconciliation between Sir Robert Peel, when Prime Minister, and Cobden. She was full of diplomatic skill and social address. We cannot be surprised that without vanity, she felt herself a power, and became dogmatic and dictatorial. No man or woman ever lived who guarded more jealously a personal self-respect. The noble family of Lansdowne wished an introduction to her at a London party, at which her mother was present; but as they did not ask that her mother be presented to them, she rejected every overture for further acquaintance. She refused an introduction to the poet Tom Moore, because he published a poem of raillery in the Times. It wounded her and she never forgave it. Different administrations urged a government pension upon her, which she refused. This great, proud, toilsome, self-contained character, wrought her work until she attained the age of seventy-four years, and, measured either by the powers developed in her life, or by its results upon the thought and policy of her time, she appears a peerless woman. Indeed we almost forget she was a woman, and think of her as a human force thrown upon our century when great revolutions were demanding great leaders.

  I confess I am very curious to see Mrs. Chapman’s book. This stout-hearted woman (Martineau) lay down with a sort of grim satisfaction to die, at the age of fifty-one; and didn’t she live quite twenty years afterwards? I will hazard the observation that her longevity may have been favoured by her supreme self-complacency. Also is she not a little cool (coarse? vulgar?) in the way she talks about “Old Wordsworth?” Mind, I can stand her contempt for parsons, and all that—it doesn’t ruffle my feathers in the least. But I do feel that with Wordsworth we are upon sacred ground. I am all the more bothered because Miss Martineau was not a Philistine by any means, and she makes every now and then extraordinary good hits as to what constitutes true poetry.

  I was pleased to find that, notwithstanding her heresies, the common people in Ambleside held her in gentle and kindly remembrance. She was a good neighbor, charitable to all, considerate toward the unlettered, never cynical or ill-tempered, always cheerful and happy as the roses and ivy of “The Knoll” she so much loved.

  Her form and features were repellent; she was the Lady Oracle in all things, and from her throne, her sofa, pronounced verdicts from which there was no appeal. Hers was a hard nature: it had neither geniality, indulgence, nor mercy. Always a physical sufferer, so deaf that a trumpet was constantly at her ear; plain of person—a drawback of which she could not have been unconscious; and awkward of form: she was entirely without the gifts that attract man to woman: even her friendships seem to have been cut out of stone; she may have excited admiration indeed, but from the affections that render woman only a little lower than the angels she was entirely estranged.

  Faults she had, of course—the necessary defects of her virtues. Let it be said that she held her own opinions too confidently—the uncertain cannot be teachers. Let it be said that her personal dislikes were many and strong—it is the necessary antithesis of powerful attachments. Let it be said that her powers of antagonism at times were not sufficiently restrained—how, without such oppugnancy, could she have stood forth for unpopular truths? Let all that detractors can say be said, and how much remains untouched? In the paths where Harriet Martineau trod at first almost alone, many women are now following. Serious studies, political activity, a share in social reforms, an independent, self-supporting career, and freedom of thought and expression, are by the conditions of our age, becoming open to the thousands of women who would never have dared to claim them in the circumstances in which she first did so. In a yet earlier age such a life, even to such powers as hers, would have been impossible. As it was, she was only a pioneer of the new order of things inevitable under the advance of civilization and knowledge…. She cared for nothing before the truth; her efforts to discover it were earnest and sincere, for she spared no pains in study and no labor in thought in the attempt to form her opinions correctly. Having found what she must believe to be a right cause to uphold, or a true word to speak, no selfish consideration intruded between her and her duty. She could risk fame, and position, and means of livelihood, when necessary, to unselfishly support and promulgate what she believed it to be important for mankind to do and believe. She longed for the well being of her kind; and so unaffectedly and honestly that men who came under her influence were stimulated and encouraged by her to share and avow similar high aims. Withal, those who lived with her loved her; she was a kind mistress, a good friend, and tender to little children; she was truly helpful to the poor at her gates, and her life was spotlessly pure.

  Plain and, judging from her portraits, far from prepossessing in her young days, she had become with age a good-looking, comely, interesting old lady, very deaf, but cheerful and eager for news, which she did not always catch correctly. With all her manly self-dependence and strict intentional honesty, with all her credit for practical common sense, she was as much a poet at heart as her brother, the Rev. James…. A true and brave woman.

  My boyish recollection of Miss Martineau is very pleasant. She was always amiable. On one occasion, when she sat writing at a table in a parlor, I remember standing with my head just above it, and wondering at the ease and regularity with which she despatched, in her clear, round hand, letter after letter, never pausing for a word or an idea, or to read what she had written. Although there was no room for mystery, I felt something of the fascination which, we are told, riveted the observer who watched the unknown hand at the opposite window filling and throwing off with the tireless uniformity of a machine what proved to be the manuscript pages of “Waverley.” As she tossed the last letter on the great pile before her, she said, “Now, my boy, isn’t that a pretty good morning’s work?” and while I hesitated for an answer that should do justice to her and credit to myself, she put on a hair glove of hers which was lying on the table, and gave my cheeks a playful rubbing, the tingle of which I seem to feel yet.

  Within the household in Magdalen Street the severity of Puritan training still lingered, though perhaps it was less marked than in some other families; and Harriet Martineau, who was an abnormally sensitive child, delicate in health, and always longing for demonstrative tokens of affection, chafed against this strictness. It is easy to collect from the pages of her Autobiography passages which, taken by themselves, give a repellant picture of her mother; but this is unjust, both to the mother and to the daughter, and the Autobiography as a whole does not lay the latter open to the charge of disloyalty and ingratitude to which injudicious friends have exposed her. That there was a difference of temperament which, especially in Harriet’s childhood, prevented a mutual understanding, does not lay either of them open to blame. According to the autobiography the gentle and unselfish father was likewise unable to read the heart of the young genius.

Autobiography

  Her forthcoming “Autobiography” will be looked for with deep, if somewhat painful interest, for it is to contain “a full account of her faith and philosophy.” In the sketch already referred to she tells us that the cast of her mind was “more decidedly of the religious order than any other, during the whole of her life,” and that “her latest opinions were in her own view the most religious;” and at the same time “that she was not a believer in revelation at all” in her later years. Her firm grasp of her own meaning, and her singular power of expression will probably stand her in good stead in making her faith, whatever it may be, clear to those who have never yet been able to understand it. In any case it must command the most respectful attention, for even if not the motive power in, it was at least consistent with, a singularly noble and courageous life.

  Deeply interesting as the work is, it is impossible to deny that it has given more pain than pleasure to large numbers of those friends who knew her best and valued her most truly. Her own autobiography does her so much less than justice, and the needless, tasteless, and ill-conditioned memorials of the lady to whom she injudiciously entrusted the duties of editor, have managed to convey such an unsound and disfiguring impression of her friend, that the testimony of one who enjoyed her intimacy for many years, and entertained a sincere regard for her throughout, seems wanting to rectify the picture.

  You must read Harriet Martineau’s “Autobiography.” The account of her childhood and early youth is most pathetic and interesting; but as in all books of the kind, the charm departs as the life advances, and the writer has to tell of her own triumphs. One regrets continually that she felt it necessary not only to tell of her intercourse with many more or less distinguished persons—which would have been quite pleasant to everybody—but also to pronounce upon their entire merits and demerits, especially when, if she had died as soon as she expected, these persons would nearly all have been living to read her gratuitous rudenesses. Still I hope the book will do more good than harm.

  Miss Martineau knew herself unusually well, and she has determined that we should know all that she had to tell us. The knowledge will rather dim the brightness of the popular tradition which rests upon the first wonderful years in London and the first happy years at Ambleside; it will give some substance to the reserve of the minority which persisted in finding Miss Martineau disagreeable; it contains a most unsparing revelation of a most unattractive nature; but it contains also a picture of the diligent, unflinching heroism by which that nature was trained to a life of nobleness and at last of happiness. Nor is the picture less impressive for the austerity of the artist’s method. She has resolved not only that we should know intimately, but that we should know her almost exclusively through her own deliberate judgment. She wrote her autobiography partly because she knew she could write it, but principally because she thought it a duty to withhold her letters from publication.

  It is written with ability, and there is much in it that is instructive and something that is interesting; but my interest is rather in the other subjects of which she writes than in the woman. She is undoubtedly honest and truthful; but I have seldom seen truth and honesty made to wear so repulsive an aspect; and this through what seems to me a pervading connection of it with presumption and pride. I get rather tired of her perpetual “principles,” and in her devotion to truth I think she makes a mistake, not altogether uncommon, of what it is that she ought to be devoted to—mixing up one with another of the divers meanings of the word.

  I have even bought Miss Martineau; and am reading her as slowly as I can, to eke her out. For I can’t help admiring, and being greatly interested in her, tho’ I suppose she got conceited. Her Judgments on People seem to me mainly just.

  I stop in the midst of reading Miss Martineau’s memoir of her own life—an entertaining book for the most part, with one or two tedious places; but how immensely conceited the woman was! One would think, on reading what she says of herself, that the whole world stood still while it was waiting for her directions. She is very contemptuous in her judgments of almost every eminent person whom she had any acquaintance with, and expresses her contempt without the least reserve. I perceived that trait in her character when she was here. She seemed to fancy that she had crossed the Atlantic to enlighten us in regard to our duty and interest, and that all we had to do was to submit ourselves to her guidance.

General

  Know that a great new light has arisen among English women. In the words of Lord Brougham, “There is a deaf girl at Norwich doing more good than any man in the country.” You may have seen the name and some of the productions of Harriet Martineau in the “Monthly Repository,” but what she is gaining glory by are “Illustrations of Political Economy,” in a series of tales published periodically, of which nine or ten have appeared. It is impossible not to wonder at the skill with which, in the happiest of these pieces, for they are unequal, she has exemplified some of the deepest principles of her science, so as to make them plain to very ordinary capacities, and demonstrated their practical influence on the well-being, moral and physical, of the working classes first, and ultimately on the whole community. And with all this, she has given to her narratives a grace, an animation, and often a powerful pathos, rare even in the works of pure amusement.

  I have not time to write to you about Miss Martineau’s “Tales,” of which of course you have heard, and we have read many. Some are, I think, excellent, and all are powerful where her imagination comes into play. Her reasoning is not and does not pretend to be original. It is taken verbatim from Malthus and McCulloch, a bad school, and her sectarianism not unfrequently peeps out; but I would recommend you strongly to read the “Manchester Strike,” which might I think be useful to your poor people at Coventry hereafter, if the time should come when any such folly should be meditated.

  I have no great faith in some of her doctrines, but I delight in her stories. The “Garveloch Tales” are particularly good. What a noble creature Ella is! To give us in a fishing-woman an example of magnanimity and the most touching affection, and still keep her in her sphere; to make all the manifestations of this glorious virtue appropriate to her condition and consistent with her nature,—this seems to me to indicate a very high order of mind, and to place Miss Martineau among the first moral teachers as well as first writers of her time. Perhaps I may be partial. I feel so grateful to her for doing such justice to the poor and to human nature, and I am strongly tempted to raise her to the highest rank.

  On one point, unfortunately, Miss Martineau could have been at no loss, from the moment of deciding to write a book of Travels in this country. America her theme, satire was to “be her song;” the bookseller and his patrons are to be satisfied with no less than a pungent piquancy of remark, and this they stand ready to compensate with no stinted bounty.

  You say you are surprised I did not express more admiration of Harriet Martineau’s book about America. But I do admire it—the spirit of it—extremely. I admire her extremely; but I think the moral, even more than the intellectual, woman. I do not mean that she may not be quite as wise as she is good; but she has devoted her mind to subjects which I have not, and probably could not, have given mine to, and writes upon matters of which I am too ignorant to estimate her merit in treating of them. Some of her political theories appear to me open to objection; for instance, female suffrage and community of property; but I have never thought enough upon these questions to judge her mode of advocating them. The details of her book are sometimes mistaken; but that was to be expected, especially as she was often subjected to the abominable impositions of persons who deceived her purposely in the information which she received from them with the perfect trust of a guileless nature. I do entire justice to her truth, her benevolence, and her fearlessness; and these are to me the chief merits of her book.

  Woman: “And we have now got another writer-lady down at Ambleside.” Howitt: “A poet?” Woman: “Nay, nothing of the sort; another guess sort of person, I can tell you.” Howitt: “Why, who is that?” Woman: “Who is that? why Miss Martineau they call her. They tell me she wrote up the Reform Bill for Lord Brougham: and that she’s come from the Lambtons here; and that she’s writing now about the taxes. Can she stop the steam, eh? can she, think you? Nay, nay I warrant, big and strong as she is. Ha! Ha! good lauk! as I met her the other day walking along the muddy road below here—‘Is it a woman or a man, or what sort of an animal is it?’ said I to myself. There she came, stride, stride—great heavy shoes, stout leather leggings on, and a knapsack on her back! Ha! Ha! that’s a political comicalist, they say; what’s that? Do they mean that they can stop steam? But I said to my husband: Goodness, but that would have been a wife for you! Why she’d ha’ ploughed! and they say she mows her own grass, and digs her own cabbages and potatoes!”

  We have read Miss Martineau’s book. It is, to my mind, the most awful book that was ever written by a woman. She and this wise Mr. Atkinson dethrone God, abuse Christ, and prefer Mahometanism to Christianity. It made me sick and ill to hear them talk of Jesus as a mere clever mesmerist. To me it is blasphemy. To show you how evil the book is, I must tell you that Alfred wanted the Inquisition for its authors, and I sympatised with him. It will make good people devilish in their indignation and anger, and it will set all the poor infidels crowing like cocks on a dunghill. And only think, in their large appendix, in which they support themselves by such authorities as Hobbes, Lord Bacon, Sir James Mackintosh, &c., I should see a long article with the innocent name of Mary Howitt to it! It is the account of the Preaching Epidemic in Sweden. Curious as it is, it proves nothing, and seems merely introduced to make me out an infidel. I think this has provoked your father more than anything else.

  We cannot call to mind any woman of modern or of past times, who has produced a larger number and variety of solid, instructive, and interesting books. She has written well on political economy, on history, on foreign travel, on psychology, and on education; she has produced many clever tales and novels; her books for children and for men are alike good.

  The greatest among Englishwomen, except George Eliot, has just departed from among us. Her genius was not only various and remarkable in every line in which it was developed, but singularly masculine in its characteristics. She was a poet and a novelist; but she was much more distinguished in the more unusual developments of a female mind, namely, as political economist, theologian, and journalist. Of course she was precocious. Indeed, when one thinks of what she has done, and when she began to do it, it seems incredible that even three-quarters of a century should have sufficed for so much work. To the last generation she must have seemed one of the most familiar and well-established of English writers; to the present generation it is a marvel to see her death announced to-day, for to us she was a British classic, and hardly accounted among the moderns…. Upon the whole, I think, “Life in the Sick-Room” is the most delightful of her works, and will live almost as long as sickness is in the world. One proof of its intrinsic merit is that though published without the aid of her then famous name, it achieved a great success at once; nor is it too much to say it would have been the foundation-stone of her fame as a religious writer, had she confined her attention to similar topics.

  Hard work and high courage were, to our thinking, her most noteworthy characteristics. Even those most familiar with her life and work will have been startled at the list of her writing drawn up by herself, “to the best of her recollection,” which appeared in the “Daily News” as an appendix to the autobiographical sketch left by her for publication with the editor of that journal, to which alone in her later years she had contributed no less than 1642 articles. From this list it appears that her first book, “My Servant Rachel,” was published in 1827, her last, “Biographical Sketches,” in 1869. In those fifty-two years more than 100 volumes (103 we believe to be the exact number) appeared from her pen, besides which she was a constant contributor to quarterlies, and monthly magazines, and newspapers, and carried on a correspondence which would of itself have been enough to use up the energy of most women. Apart from all the questions of its contents, the mere feat of getting such a mass of matter fairly printed and published could not easily be matched, and the more the matter is examined the more our wonder will grow. In all that long list there is not a volume, so far as we are aware, which bears marks of having been put together carelessly, or for mere book-making purposes, and her fugitive articles are as a rule upon burning topics, the questions by which men’s minds were most exercised at the time. Indeed, though she lived by the pen, no writer ever wielded it with greater independence and single-mindedness.

  I entirely agree with you in respect to Miss Martineau. The curious limited folly of her apparent common-sense struck me in St. Andrews, and I thought it would make a good article. The autobiography seems much worse than could have been expected. How such a common-place mind could have attained the literary position she did fills me with amazement. How did she manage it? I can only look and wonder.

  She is a most lucid writer, and often more than lucid. When we compare her intellectual force with that of her accomplished contemporary, Sara Coleridge, for example, we feel at once how much power there was in her. She nearly always grasps us; and if we are in haste to find her wrong we sometimes find we have to retrace our steps and pronounce her right after all.

  There were doubtless authors in England and America who had produced a higher quality of work, but not one perhaps who had accomplished so large an amount of solidly good and useful achievement. Miss Martineau certainly did much to refute the lingering tradition, if it still needs refuting, that the minds of women are wanting in clearness, method, and logic. Her arguments, if unsatisfactory, were always coherent, and those who tried to cope with her in controversy generally repented it. This conscious power did not diminish her positiveness, but rather increased it, and she was as often dogmatic in her assertions as if she had no arguments to back them. A very clever woman lately said to us, speaking of her young son, “I reasoned with him; I said to him, Charley, you are a great fool.” Miss Martineau could supply the reasoning if needed, but she often came at once to the same decisive assertion.

  She had, early in life, cultivated a concise and ready style of composition, and was proud of her neat manuscripts. Statesmen, editors, publishers, and philanthropists felt that here was a writer—woman though she was—who could fill their coffers or sweep their stable clean. Hence her widespread power. It needed all her honesty, her sense of the high purposes of literature and of her own vocation in it, and above all, her unfailing instinct for choosing the noble and liberal side in a controversy, to prevent her from becoming every man’s drudge—a mere literary besom. But she was not this. One of the last acts she recorded of herself was her quarrel with “Household Words” because she thought the editor had behaved unfairly to the Roman Catholics. She was thoroughly honest, brave even to recklessness, a warm friend, and not a less spiteful foe. She was not half so admirable as a writer and thinker as she was in her more practical capacity of philanthropist. She began life a “radical reformer,” and she died true to her colours.

  A work [“History of England”] containing much information of interest and value, and written with the author’s well known spirit and vivacity. It is strongly tinged with personal feeling, and, for this reason, the work can hardly be said to have permanent value. Miss Martineau entered into the life and activity of political affairs with great zeal, and, as she grasped every subject with the energy of a strong mind, her opinions are always entertaining and are generally well worth listening to. Her description of the deplorable financial and social condition of England after the Napoleonic wars is perhaps the most successful part of the work. The volumes are pervaded with an ardent sympathy for the people in their struggles for greater liberties.

  In an epoch fertile of great genius among women, it may be said of Miss Martineau, that she was the peer of the noblest, and that her influence on the progress of the age was more than equal to that of all the others combined. She has the great honor of having always seen truth one generation ahead; and so consistent was she, so keen of insight, that there is no need of going back to explain by circumstances in order to justify the actions of her life. This can hardly be said of any great Englishman, even by his admirers.

  Harriet Martineau is one of the most distinguished literary women this century has produced. She is among the few women who have succeeded in the craft of journalism, and one of the still smaller number who succeeded for a time in moulding and shaping the current politics of her day.

  Some of her stories perhaps show an approach to genius; but neither her history nor her philosophical writings have the thoroughness of research or the originality of conception which would entitle them to such a name. As an interpreter of a rather rigid and prosaic school of thought, and a compiler of clear compendiums of knowledge, she certainly deserves a high place, and her independence and solidity of character give a value to her more personal utterances.

  Her gift to literature was for her own generation. She is the exponent of the infant century in many branches of thought:—its eager and sanguine philanthropy, its awakening interest in history and science, its rigid and prosaic philosophy. But her genuine humanity and real moral earnestness give a value to her more personal utterances, which do not lose their charm with the lapse of time.

  Harriet Martineau was the object of rather absurd obloquy from Conservative critics as an advanced woman in her day, and of still more absurd eulogy by Liberal sympathisers both in that day and since. Personally she seems to have been amiable and estimable enough. Intellectually she had no genius; but she had a good deal of the versatile talent and craftsmanship for which the literary conditions of this century have produced unusual stimulus and a fair reward.

  She is however most memorable, not as an original thinker, but as a translator and expounder. She translated and condensed the philosophy of Comte, and did as much as anyone to make it known in England. She had the great merits of unshrinking courage, perfect sincerity and undoubting loyalty to truth.

  Opinions may differ as to what constitutes Harriet Martineau’s best work, but my view is that her translation and condensation of Auguste Comte’s six volumes into two will live when all her other work is forgotten. Comte’s own writings were filled with many repetitions and rhetorical flounderings. He was more of a philosopher than a writer. He had an idea too big for him to express, but he expressed at it right bravely. Miss Martineau, trained writer and thinker, did not translate verbally; she caught the idea, and translated the thought rather than the language. And so it has come about that her work has been translated literally back into French and is accepted as a text-book of Positivism, while the original books of the philosopher are merely collected by museums and bibliophiles as curiosities.