THESE two large volumes contain two parts. The first part, which occupies the whole of the first volume, and one hundred and thirty pages of the second, constitutes an autobiography, left by Miss Martineau in Mrs. Chapman's hands, to be published after the death of the former. The second part of the work, making up the remaining four hundred and sixty-five pages of the second volume, contains memorials concerning Harriet Martineau, prepared or written by Mrs. Chapman.

The whole work 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

Harriet Martineau's Autobiography. 2 vols. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.

Edited by MARIA WESTON CHAPMAN.

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 subcommittee 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.

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She was then thirty years old. She was already deaf, her health poor; but she then began a career of intellectual labor seldom equalled by the strongest man through the longest life. She began to write every morning after breakfast; and, unless when travelling, 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; "Deerbrook"; "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 numerous 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 defence 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. NO. 256.

VOL. CXXIV.

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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 always under of judging and sentencing those from whom she supposes herself to have received any 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 filegrinders 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 so, too, 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 savans of the highest distinction. So that 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 OsirisMartineau, 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 amazed 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. 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 great 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

But