The whole work46 is very interesting. How could it be otherwise, in giving the history of so remarkable a life? The amount of literary work which Miss Martineau performed is amazing. She began to write for the press when she was nineteen, and continued until she could no longer hold her pen. The pen was her sword, which she wielded with a warrior's joy, in the conflict of truth with error, of right with wrong. She wrote many books; but her articles in reviews and newspapers were innumerable. We find no attempt in either part of this biography to give a complete list of her writings. Perhaps it would be impossible. She never seems to have thought of keeping such a record herself, any more than a hero records the number of the blows he strikes, in battle. No sooner had she dismissed one task than another came; and sometimes several were going on together. Like other voluminous writers, she enjoyed the exercise of her productive powers; and, as she somewhere tells us, her happiest hours were those in which she was seated at her desk with her pen.

Her principal works cover a large range of thought and study. One of her first books, "The Traditions of Palestine," she continued to regard long after with more affection than any other of her writings, except "Eastern Life." But her authorship began when she was nineteen, in an article contributed to a Unitarian monthly. Afterwards she obtained three separate prizes offered by the Central Unitarian Association for three essays on different topics. About the same time she wrote "Five Years of Youth," a tale which she never looked at afterward. But her first great step in authorship, and that which at once made her a power in politics and in literature, was taken when she commenced her series of tales on "Political Economy." She began, however, to write these stories, not knowing that she was treating questions of Political Economy, "the very name of which," she says, "was then either unknown to me, or conveyed no meaning." She was then about twenty-five years old. She had the usual difficulties with various publishers which unknown authors are sure to experience, and these tales, which became so popular, were rejected by one firm after another. One of them was refused by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, as being too dull. The president of that Society, Lord Brougham, afterward vented his rage on the sub-committee which rejected the offered story, and so had permitted their Society, "instituted for that very purpose, to be driven out of the field by a little deaf woman at Norwich." At last a publisher was found who agreed to take the books on very unsatisfactory terms. As soon as the first number appeared, the success of the series was established. A second edition of five thousand copies was immediately called for,—the entire periodical press came out in favor of the tales,—and from that hour Miss Martineau had only to choose what to write, sure that it would at once find a publisher.

She was at this time thirty years old. She was already deaf, her health poor; but she then began a career of intellectual labor seldom equaled by the strongest man through the longest life. She began to write every morning after breakfast; and, unless when traveling, seldom passed a morning during the rest of her life without writing,—working from eight o'clock until two. Her method was, after selecting her subject, to procure all the standard works upon it, and study them. She then proceeded to make the plan of her work, and to draw the outline of her story. If the scene was laid abroad, she procured books of travels and topography. Then she drew up the contents of each chapter in detail, and, after this preliminary labor, the story was written easily and with joy.

Of these stories she wrote thirty-four in two years and a half. She was then thirty-two. She received £2,000 for the whole series,—a sufficiently small compensation,—but she established her position and her fame. Her principal books published afterward were her two works on America, the novels "Deerbrook" and "The Hour and the Man;" nine volumes of tales on the Forest and Game Laws; four stories in the "Playfellow;" "Life in the Sick-Room;" "Letters on Mesmerism;" "Eastern Life, Past and Present;" "History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace;" "Letters on the Laws of Man's Social Nature and Development;" "Translation and Condensation of Comte's Positive Philosophy;" besides many smaller works, making fifty-two titles in Allibone. In addition to this, she wrote many articles in reviews and magazines; and Mrs. Chapman mentions that she sent to a single London journal, the "Daily News," sixteen hundred articles, at the rate sometimes of six a week. Surely Harriet Martineau was one who worked faithfully while her day endured.

But, if we would do her justice, we must consider also the motive and spirit in which she worked. Each thing she did had for its purpose nothing merely personal, but some good to mankind. Though there was nothing in her character of the sentimentalism of philanthropy, she was filled with the spirit of philanthropy. A born reformer, she inherited from her Huguenot and her Unitarian ancestors the love of truth and the hatred of error, with the courage which was ready to avow her opinions, however unpopular. Thus, her work was warfare, and every article or book which she printed was a blow delivered against some flagrant wrong, or what she believed such,—in defense of some struggling truth, or something supposed to be truth. She might be mistaken; but her purposes through life were, in the main, noble, generous, and good.

And there can be no question of her ability, moral and intellectual. No commonplace mind could have overcome such obstacles and achieved such results. Apparently she had no very high opinion of her own intellectual powers. She denies that she possesses genius; but she asserts her own power. She criticises "Deerbrook" with some severity. And, in fact, Harriet Martineau's mind is analytic rather than creative; it is strong rather than subtle; and, if it possesses imagination, it is of rather a prosaic kind. Her intellect is of a curiously masculine order; no other female writer was ever less feminine. With all her broad humanity she has little sympathy for individuals. A large majority of those whom she mentions in her memoirs she treats with a certain contempt.

Her early life seems to have been very sad. We are again and again told how she was misunderstood and maltreated in her own home. Her health was bad until she was thirty; partly owing, as she supposed, to ill-treatment. She needed affection, and was treated with sternness. Justice she did not receive, nor kindness, and her heart was soured and her temper spoiled, so she tells us, by this mismanagement. As she does not specify, or give us the details of this ill-treatment, the story is useless as a warning; and we hardly see the reason for thus publishing the wrongs of her childhood. As children may be sometimes unjust to parents, no less than parents to children, the facts and the moral are both left uncertain. And, on the whole, her chief reason for telling the story appears to be the mental necessity she was under of judging and sentencing those from whom she supposes herself to have received ill-treatment in any part of her life.

This is indeed the most painful feature of the work before us. Knowing the essentially generous and just spirit of Harriet Martineau, it is strange to see how carefully she has loaded this piece of artillery with explosive and lacerating missiles, to be discharged after her death among those with whom she had mingled in social intercourse or literary labors. Some against whom she launches her sarcasms are still living; some are dead, but have left friends behind, to be wounded by her caustic judgments. Is it that her deficiency in a woman's sensibility, or the absence of a poetic imagination, prevented her from realizing the suffering she would inflict? Or is it the habit of mind from which those are apt to suffer who devote themselves to the reform of abuses? As each kind of manual occupation exposes the workman to some special disease,—as those who dig canals suffer from malaria, and file-grinders from maladies of the lungs,—so it seems that each moral occupation has its appropriate moral danger. Clergymen are apt to be dogmatic or sectarian; lawyers become sharp and sophistical; musicians and artists are irritable; and the danger of a reformer is of becoming a censorious critic of those who cannot accept his methods, or who will not join his party. That Harriet Martineau did not escape this risk will presently appear.

While writing her politico-economical stories she moved to London, and there exchanged the quiet seclusion of her Norwich life for social triumphs of the first order, and intercourse with every kind of celebrity. All had read her books, from Victoria, who was then a little girl perusing them with her governess, to foreign kings and savants of the highest distinction. So this young author—for she was only thirty—was received at once into the most brilliant circles of London society. But it does not appear that she lost a single particle of her dignity or self-possession. Among the great she neither asserted herself too much nor showed too much deference. Vanity was not her foible; and her head was too solidly set upon her shoulders to be turned by such successes. She enjoyed the society of these people of superior refinement, rank, and culture, but did not come to depend upon it; and in all this Harriet Martineau sinned not in her spirit. But why, in writing about these people long afterward, should she have thought it necessary to produce such sharp and absolute sentences on each and all? Into this judgment-hall of Osiris-Martineau, every one whom she has ever known is called up to receive his final doom. The poor Unitarian ministers, who had taught the child as they best could, are dismissed with contemptuous severity. This religious instruction had certainly done her some good. Religion, she admits, was her best resource till she wrought her way to something better. Ann Turner, daughter of the Unitarian minister, gave her piety a practical turn, and when afraid of every one she saw, she was not at all afraid of God; and, on the whole, she says religion was a great comfort and pleasure to her. Nevertheless, she is astonished that Unitarians should believe that they are giving their children a Christian education. She accuses these teachers of her childhood of altering the Scripture to suit their own notions; being apparently ignorant that most of the interpolations or mistranslations of which they complained have since been conceded as such by the best Orthodox critics. But she does not hesitate to give her opinion of all her old acquaintances in the frankest manner, and for the most part it is unfavorable. Mrs. Opie and Mrs. John Taylor are among the "mere pedants." William Taylor, from want of truth and conviction, talked blasphemy. She speaks with contempt of a physician who politely urged her to come and dine with him, because he had neglected her until she became famous. Lord Brougham was "vain and selfish, low in morals, and unrestrained in temper." Lord Campbell was "flattering to an insulting degree;" Archbishop Whately, "odd and overbearing," "sometimes rude and tiresome," and "singularly overrated;" Stanley, Bishop of Norwich, "timid," "sensitive," "heedless," "without courage or dignity." Macaulay "talked nonsense" about the copyright bill, and "set at naught every principle of justice in regard to authors' earnings." Macaulay's opposition to that bill was based on such grounds of perfect justice that he defeated it single-handed. But Harriet Martineau decided then and there that Macaulay was a failure, and that "he wanted heart," and that he "never has achieved any complete success." The poet Campbell had "a morbid craving for praise." As to women, Lady Morgan, Lady Davy, Mrs. Jameson, Mrs. Austin, "may make women blush and men be insolent" with their "gross and palpable vanities." Landseer was a toady to great people. Morpeth had "evident weaknesses." Sir Charles Bell showed his ignorance by relying on the argument for Design. The resources of Eastlake were very bornÉs. John Sterling "rudely ignored me." Lady Mary Shepherd was "a pedant." Coleridge, she asserts, will only be remembered as a warning; though twenty years ago she, Miss Martineau, "regarded him as a poet." Godwin was "timid." Basil Montagu was "cowardly;" and Lord Monteagle "agreeable enough to those who were not particular about sincerity." Urquhart had "insane egotism and ferocious discontent." The Howitts made "an unintelligible claim to my friendship," their "tempers are turbulent and unreasonable." It may be some explanation of this unintelligible claim that it was heard through her trumpet. Fredrika Bremer is accused of habits of "flattery" and "a want of common sense." Miss Mitford is praised, but then accused of a "habit of flattery," and blamed for her "disparagement of others." And it is Miss Martineau who brings this charge! She also tells us that Miss Bremer "proposes to reform the world by a floating religiosity," whatever that may be. But perhaps her severest sentence is pronounced on the Kembles, who are accused of "incurable vulgarity" and "unreality." In this case, as in others, Miss Martineau pronounces this public censure on those whom she had learned to know in the intimacy of private friendship and personal confidence. She thus violates the rules rather ostentatiously laid down in her Introduction. For she claims there that she practices self-denial in interdicting the publication of her letters,47 and gives her reasons thus: "Epistolary conversation is written speech; and the onus rests with those who publish it to show why the laws of honor, which are uncontested in regard to conversation, may be violated when the conversation is written instead of spoken." Most of her sharp judgments above quoted are pronounced on those whom she learned to know in the private intercourse of society. Sometimes she recites the substance of what she heard (or supposed that she heard; for she used an ear-tube when she first went to live in London). Thus she tells about a conversation with Wordsworth, and reports his complaints of Jeffrey and other reviewers, and quotes him as saying about one of his own poems, that it was "a chain of very valooable thoughts." "You see, it does not best fulfill the conditions of poetry; but it is" (solemnly) "a chain of extremely valooable thoughts." She then proceeds to pronounce her sentence on Wordsworth as she did on Coleridge. She felt at once, she says, in Wordsworth's works, "the absence of sound, accurate, weighty thought, and of genuine poetic inspiration." She also informs us that "the very basis of philosophy is absent in him," and that it is only necessary "to open Shelley, Tennyson, or even poor Keats ... to feel that, with all their truth and all their charm, few of Wordsworth's pieces are poems." "Even poor Keats!" This is her de haut en bas style of criticism on Wordsworth, one of whose poems is generally accepted as the finest written in the English language during the last hundred years. And this is her way of respecting "the code of honor" in regard to private conversation!

In 1834, at the age of thirty-two, Harriet Martineau sailed for the United States, where she remained two years. She went for rest; but the quantity of work done in those two years would have been enough to fill five or six years of any common life. At this point she began a new career; forming new ties, engaging in new duties, studying new problems, and beginning a new activity in another sphere of labor. The same great qualities which she had hitherto displayed showed themselves here again; accompanied with their corresponding defects. Her wonderful power of study enabled her to enter into the very midst of the phenomena of American life; her noble generosity induced her to throw herself heart, hand, and mind into the greatest struggle then waging on the face of the earth. The antislavery question, which the great majority of people of culture despised or disliked, took possession of her soul. She became one of the party of Abolitionists, of which Mr. Garrison was the chief, and lived to see that party triumph in the downfall of slavery. She took her share of the hatred or the scorn heaped on that fiery body of zealous propagandists, and was counted worthy of belonging to what she herself called "the Martyr Age of the United States." Fortunately for herself, before she visited Boston, and became acquainted with the Abolitionists, she went to Washington, and traveled somewhat extensively in the Southern States. At Washington she saw many eminent Southern senators, who cordially invited her to visit them at their homes. In South Carolina she was welcomed or introduced by Mr. Calhoun, Governor Hayne, and Colonel Preston. Judge Porter took charge of her in Louisiana. In Kentucky she was the guest of Mrs. Irwin, Henry Clay's daughter and neighbor. Without fully accepting Mrs. Chapman's somewhat sweeping assertion that there was no eminent statesman, man of science, politician, partisan, philanthropist, jurist, professor, merchant, divine, nor distinguished woman, in the whole land, who did not pay her homage, there is no doubt that she received the respect and good-will of many such. She was deeply impressed, she says, on arriving in the United States, with a society basking in one bright sunshine of good-will. She thought the New Englanders, perhaps, the best people in the world. Many well-known names appear in these pages, as soon becoming intimate acquaintances or friends; among these were Judge Story, John G. Palfrey, Stephen C. Phillips, the Gilmans of South Carolina, Mr. and Mrs. Furness of Philadelphia, and in Massachusetts the Sedgwicks, the Follens, Mr. and Mrs. Ellis Gray Loring, Mr. and Mrs. Charles G. Loring, Dr. Channing, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ware, Dr. Flint of Salem, and Ephraim Peabody.

When Miss Martineau had identified herself with Mr. Garrison and his friends by taking part in their meetings, those who had merely sought her on account of her position and reputation naturally fell away. But it may be doubted whether she was in such danger of being mobbed or murdered as she and her editor suppose. She seems to think that Mr. Henry Ware did a very brave deed in driving to Mr. Francis Jackson's house to take her home from an antislavery meeting. She speaks of the reign of terror which existed in Boston at that time. No doubt she, and other Abolitionists, had their share of abuse; but it is not probable that any persons were, as she thought, plotting against her life. She and her friends were deterred from taking a proposed journey to Cincinnati and Louisville by being informed that it was intended to mob her in the first city and to hang her in the second. Now, the writer of this article was at that time residing in Louisville, and though antislavery discussions and antislavery lectures had taken place there about that period, and though antislavery articles not unfrequently appeared in the city journals, no objection or opposition was made to all this by anybody in that place. In fact, it was easier at that time to speak against slavery in Louisville than in Boston. The leading people in Kentucky of all parties were then openly opposed to slavery, and declared their hope and purpose of making Kentucky a free State. A year later, Dr. Channing published his work on slavery, which was denounced for its abolitionism by the "Boston Statesman," and sharply criticised in a pamphlet by the Massachusetts attorney-general. But copious extracts from this work, especially of the parts which exposed the sophisms of the defenders of slavery, were published in a Louisville magazine, and not the least objection was made to it in that city. At a later period it might have been different, though an antislavery paper was published in Louisville as late as 1845, one of the editors being a native Kentuckian.

After her return from the United States she published her two works, "Society in America," and "Retrospect of Western Travel;" and then wrote her first novel, "Deerbrook." The books on America were perhaps the best then written by any foreigner except De Tocqueville. They were generous, honest, kind, and utterly frank,—they were full of capital descriptions of American scenery. She spoke the truth to us, and she spoke it in love. The chief fault in these works was her tone of dogmatism, and her ex cathedr judgments; which, as we have before hinted, are among the defects of her qualities.

In 1838, when thirty-six years old, she was taken with serious illness, which confined her to her room for six years. She attributes this illness to her anxiety about her aged aunt and mother. Her mother, she tells us, was irritable on account of Miss Martineau's fame and position in society; in short, she was jealous of her daughter's success. Miss Martineau was obliged to sit up late after midnight to mend her own clothes, as she was not allowed to have a maid or to hire a working-woman, even at her own expense. How she could have been prevented is difficult to see, especially as she was the money-making member of the family. It seems hardly worth while to give us this glimpse into domestic difficulties. But, no doubt, she is quite correct in adding, as another reason for her illness, the toils which were breaking her down. The strongest men could hardly bear such a strain on the nervous system without giving way.

And here comes in the important episode of Mr. Atkinson, mesmerism, and the New Philosophy. She believes that she was cured of a disease, pronounced incurable by the regular physicians, by mesmerism. By this she means the influence exerted upon her by certain manipulations from another person. And as long as we are confessedly so ignorant of nervous diseases, there seems no reason to question the facts to which Miss Martineau testifies. She was, there is little doubt, cured by these manipulations; what the power was which wrought through them remains to be ascertained.

In regard to Mr. Atkinson and his philosophy, accepted by her with such satisfaction, and which henceforth became the master-light of all her seeing, our allotted space will allow us only to speak very briefly. The results of this new mental departure could not but disturb and afflict many of her friends, to whom faith in God, Christ, and immortality was still dear. To Miss Martineau herself, however, her disbelief in these seemed a happy emancipation. She carried into the assertion of her new and unpopular ideas the same honesty and courage she had always shown, and also the same superb dogmatism and contempt for those who differed from her. Apparently it was always to her an absolute impossibility to imagine herself wrong when she had once come to a conclusion. In theory she might conceive it possible to be mistaken, but practically she felt herself infallible. The following examples will show how she speaks, throughout her biography, of those who held the opinions she had rejected.

Miss Martineau, being a Necessarian, says, "All the best minds I know are Necessarians; all, indeed, who are qualified to discuss the subject at all." "The very smallest amount of science is enough to enable any rational being to see that the constitution and action of will are determined by the influences beyond the control of the possessor of the faculty." She adds, that for more than thirty years she has seen how awful "are the evils which arise from that monstrous remnant of old superstition,—the supposition of a self-determining power, etc." Now, among those she had intimately known were Dr. Channing and James Martineau, neither of them believing in the doctrine of Necessity.

Speaking of Christianity, after she had rejected it, she calls it "a monstrous superstition." Elsewhere she speaks of "the Christian superstition of the contemptible nature of the body;" says that "Christians deprave their moral sense;" talks of "the selfish complacencies of religion," and of "the atmosphere of selfishness which is the very life of Christian doctrine and of every other theological scheme;" speaks of "the Christian mythology as a superstition which fails to make happy, fails to make good, fails to make wise, and has become as great an obstacle in the way of progress as the prior mythologies it took the place of." "For three centuries it has been undermined, and its overthrow completely decided." Thus easily does she settle the question of Christianity.

Miss Martineau ceased to believe in immortality; and immediately all believers in immortality became, to her mind, selfish or stupid, or both. "I neither wish to live longer here," she says, "nor to find life again elsewhere. It seems to me simply absurd to expect it, and a mere act of restricted human imagination and morality to conceive of it." There is "a total absence of evidence for a renewed life." "I myself utterly disbelieve in a future life." She would submit, though reluctantly, to live again, if compelled to. "If I find myself conscious after the lapse of life, it will be all right, of course; but, as I said, the supposition appears to me absurd."

Under the instructions of Mr. Atkinson, Miss Martineau ceased to believe in a personal God, or any God but an unknown First Cause, identical with the Universe. The argument for Design, on which Mr. John Stuart Mill, for instance, lays such stress, seemed to her "puerile and unphilosophical." The God of Christians she calls an "invisible idol." He "who does justice to his own faculties" must give up "the personality of the First Cause." She considered the religion in her "Life in the Sick-Room" to have been "insincere;" which we, who know the perfect honesty of Harriet Martineau, must take the liberty to deny. Though declaring herself to be no Atheist, because she believes in an unknown and unknowable First Cause, she regards philosophical Atheists as the best people she had ever known, and was delighted in finding herself unacquainted with God, and so at peace.

It is curious to read these "Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development," of which Harriet Martineau and Mr. Atkinson are the joint authors. The simple joy with which they declare themselves the proud discoverers of this happy land of the unknowable is almost touching. All that we know, say they, is matter or its manifestation. "Mind is the product of the brain," and "the brain is not, as even some phrenologists have asserted, the instrument of the mind." The brain is the source of consciousness, will, reason. Man is "a creature of necessity." "It seems certain that mind, or the conditions essential to mind, is evolved from gray vesicular matter." "Nothing in nature indicates a future life." "Knowledge recognizes that nothing can be free, or by chance; no, not even God,—God is the substance of Law." Whereupon Miss Martineau inquires whether Mr. Atkinson, in speaking of God, did not merely use another name for Law. "We know nothing beyond law, do we?" asks this meek disciple, seeking for information. Mr. Atkinson replies that we must assume some fundamental principle "as a thing essential, though unknown; and it is this which I wrongly enough perhaps termed God." But if it is wrong to call this principle God, and if they know nothing else behind phenomena, why do they complain so bitterly at being charged with Atheism? And directly Mr. Atkinson asserts that "Philosophy finds no God in nature; no personal being or creator, nor sees the want of any." "A Creator after the likeness of man" he affirms to be "an impossibility." For, though he professes to know nothing about God, he somehow contrives to know that God is not what others believe him to be. Eternal sleep after death he professes to be the only hope of a wise man. The idea of free-will is so absurd that it "would make a Democritus fall on his back and roar with laughter." "Christianity is neither reasonable nor moral." Miss Martineau responds that "deep and sweet" is her repose in the conviction that "there is no theory of God, of an author of Nature, of an origin of the Universe, which is not utterly repugnant to my faculties; which is not (to my feelings) so irreverent as to make me blush, so misleading as to make me mourn." And thus do the apostle and the disciple go on, triumphantly proclaiming their own limitations to the end of the volume.

And yet the effect of this book is by no means wholly disagreeable. To be sure, in their constant assertions of the "impossibility" of any belief but their own being true, their honest narrowness may often be a little amusing. They seem like two eyeless fish in the recesses of the darkness of the Mammoth Cave talking to each other of the absurdity of believing in any sun or upper world. But they are so honest, so sincere, so much in love with Truth, and so free from any self-seeking, that we find it easy to sympathize with their naÏve sense of discovery, as they go sounding on their dim and perilous way. Only we cannot but think what a disappointment it must be to Harriet Martineau to find herself alive again in the other world. In her case, as Mr. Wentworth Higginson acutely remarks, we are deprived of the pleasure of sympathizing with her gladness at discovering her mistake, since another life will be to her a disagreeable as well as an unforeseen event.

Nor is it extraordinary, to those who trace Harriet Martineau's intellectual history, that she should have fallen into these melancholy conclusions. In her childhood and youth, most of the Unitarians of England, followers of Priestley, adopted his philosophy of materialism and necessity. Priestley did not believe in a soul, but trusted for a future life to the resurrection of the body. He was also a firm believer in philosophical necessity. An active and logical mind like Miss Martineau's, destitute of the keenness and profundity which belonged to that of her brother James, might very naturally arrive at a disbelief in anything but matter and its phenomena. From ignorance of these facts, Mrs. Chapman expresses surprise that the inconsistency of Harriet Martineau's belief in necessity, with other parts of her Unitarianism, "should not have struck herself, her judges, or the denomination at large." It would have been inconsistent with American Unitarianism, but it was not foreign from the views of English Unitarians at that time.

The publication of these "Letters" naturally caused pain to religious people, and especially to those of them who had known and honored Miss Martineau for her many past services in the cause of human freedom and progress. Many of these were Unitarians and Unitarian ministers, who had been long proud of her as a member of their denomination and one of their most valued co-workers. It seemed necessary for them to declare their dissent from her new views, and this dissent was expressed in an article in the "Prospective Review," written by her own brother, James Martineau. Mrs. Chapman now makes known, what has hitherto been only a matter of conjecture, that this review gave such serious offense to Miss Martineau that she from that time refused to recognize her brother or to have any further communication with him. Mrs. Chapman, who seldom or never finds her heroine in the wrong, justifies and approves her conduct also here, quoting a passage from the review in support of Miss Martineau's conduct in treating her brother as one of "the defamers of old times whom she must never again meet." In this passage Mr. Martineau only expresses his profound grief that his sister should sit at the feet of such a master as Mr. Atkinson, and lay down at his bidding her early faith in moral obligation, in the living God, in the immortal sanctities. He calls this "an inversion of the natural order of nobleness," implying that Mr. Atkinson ought to have sat at her feet instead; and, turning to the review itself, we find this the only passage in which a single word is said which could be regarded as a censure on Miss Martineau. But Mr. Atkinson is indeed handled with some severity. His language is criticised, and his logic is proved fallacious. Much the largest part of the review is, however, devoted to a refutation of his philosophy and doctrines. Now, as so large a part of the "Letters" is pervaded with denunciations of the bigotry which will not hear the other side of a question, and filled with admiration of those who prefer truth to the ties of kindred, friendship, and old association, we should have thought that Miss Martineau would rejoice in having a brother who could say, "Amica Harriet, sed magis amica veritas." Not at all. It was evident that he had said nothing about herself at which she could take offense; but in speaking against her new philosophy and her new philosopher he had committed the unpardonable sin. And Mrs. Chapman allows herself to regard it as a natural inference that this honest and manly review resulted from "masculine terror, fraternal jealousy of superiority, with a sectarian and provincial impulse to pull down and crush a world-wide celebrity." She considers it "incomprehensible in an advocate of free thought" that he should express his thoughts freely in opposition to a book which argued against all possible knowledge of God and against all faith in a future life. It is, however, only just to Miss Martineau to say that she herself has brought no such charges against her brother, but left the matter in silence. We cannot but think that it would have been better for Miss Martineau's reputation if her biographer had followed her example.

But, though we must object to Mrs. Chapman's views on this point, and on some others, we must add that her part of the second volume is prepared with much ability, and is evidently the result of diligent and loyal friendship. Miss Martineau could not have selected a more faithful friend to whom to confide the history of her life. On two subjects, however, we are obliged to dissent from her statements. One is in regard to Dr. Channing, whom she, for some unknown reason, systematically disparages. He was a good man, Mrs. Chapman admits, "but not in any sense a great one. With benevolent intentions, he could not greatly help the nineteenth century, for he knew very little about it, or, indeed, of any other. He had neither insight, courage, nor firmness. In his own Church had sprung up a vigorous opposition to slavery, which he innocently, in so far as ignorantly, used the little strength he had to stay." Certainly it is not necessary to defend the memory of Dr. Channing against such a supercilious judgment as this. But we might well ask why, if he is not a great man, and did not help the nineteenth century, his works should continue to be circulated all over Europe? Why should such men in France as Laboulaye and RÉmusat occupy themselves in translating and diffusing them? Why should Bunsen class him among the five prophets of the Divine Consciousness in Human History,—speaking of "his fearless speech," his "unfailing good sense," and "his grandeur of soul, which makes him a prophet of the Christianity of the Future"? Bunsen calls him a Greek in his manly nature, a Roman in his civic qualities, and an apostle in his Christianity. And was that man deficient in courage or firmness who never faltered in the support of any opinions, however unpopular, whether it was to defend Unitarianism in its weak beginnings, to appear in Faneuil Hall as the leader against the defenders of the Alton mob, to head the petition for the pardon of Abner Kneeland, and to lay on the altar of antislavery the fame acquired by past labors? Is he to be accused of repressing the antislavery movement in his own church, when there is on record the letter in which he advocated giving the use of the church building to the society represented by Mrs. Chapman herself; and when the men of influence in his society refused it? Nor, in those days of their unpopularity, did Mrs. Chapman and her friends count Dr. Channing's aid so insignificant. In her article on "The Martyr Age," Miss Martineau describes the profound impression caused by Dr. Channing's sudden appearance in the State House to give his countenance and aid to Garrison and the Abolitionists, in what, she says, was a matter to them of life and death. And she adds, "He was thenceforth considered by the world an accession to their principles, though not to their organized body."

Nor do we quite understand Mrs. Chapman's giving to Miss Martineau the credit of being the cause of the petition for the pardon of Abner Kneeland; as his conviction, and the consequent petition, did not take place until she had been nearly two years out of the country. And why does Mrs. Chapman select for special contempt, as unfaithful to their duty to mankind, the Unitarian ministers? Why does she speak of "the cowardly ranks of American Unitarians" with such peculiar emphasis? It is not our business here to defend this denomination; but we cannot but recall the "Protest against American Slavery" prepared and signed in 1845 by one hundred and seventy-three Unitarian ministers, out of a body containing not more than two hundred and fifty in all. And it was this body which furnished to the cause some of its most honored members. Of those who have belonged to the Unitarian body, we now recall the names of such persons as Samuel J. May, Samuel May, Josiah Quincy, John Quincy Adams, John Pierpont, Mr. and Mrs. Ellis Gray Loring, John G. Palfrey, John P. Hale, Dr. and Mrs. Follen, Theodore Parker, John Parkman, John T. Sargent, James Russell Lowell, Wm. H. Furness, Charles Sumner, Caleb Stetson, John A. Andrew, Lydia Maria Child, Dr. S.G. Howe, Horace Mann, T.W. Higginson. So much for the "cowardly ranks of American Unitarians."

The last years of Miss Martineau were happy and peaceful. She had a pleasant home at Ambleside, on Lake Windermere. She had many friends, was conscious of having done a good work, and if she had no hopes in the hereafter, neither had she any fears concerning it. She was a strong, upright, true-hearted woman; one of those who have helped to vindicate "the right of women to learn the alphabet."