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HARRIET MARTINEAU :*
BY THE REV. A. H. VINE.

THE first two volumes of this work, constituting the Autobiography, were printed by Miss Martineau twenty years ago, at a time when she expected her life would soon terminate, and are now issued as they were then printed. In giving them to the world, Mrs. Chapman has thought fit to add a volume of Memorials, containing much eulogy that would, one should think, have been distasteful to her friend, and some information which she probably wished to be withheld. So far as the reader is concerned these thick octavo volumes will not make an unfair demand upon his time, considering the importance of their subject, for Miss Martineau was, in some respects, the most notable woman of the present century. She tells us that from her youth upwards she had felt that it was one of the duties of her life to write such a book; and that when her life became evidently a somewhat remarkable one, the sense of this duty became a burden until the work was done. Possibly, moreover, the fact that in later life she surrendered the last shred of expectation of a future state, may have strengthened her desire to retain a place and a name in the present. An earthly memorial is a poor substitute for a true immortality, it must be admitted; and she herself averred that she was absolutely content to be an unrecognized factor in the progress of the world; yet the anxiety manifested to furnish posterity with an account of herself seems to indicate that a desire to be remembered and have a definite, if unconscious, part in the future, survived the tyranny of her logic. This

desire, however, was not allowed to sully the perfect candour of her story so far as concerns herself. Since the deplorable Confessions of Rousseau were published, so frank a presentment of self has not been volunteered to the world. Miss Martineau dissects herself with a cool and steady hand. The result of this hard honesty is not always indeed satisfactory, even when she is dealing with herself, and her mode of dealing with others is often repulsive. She pours a sort of lime-light criticism upon her cotemporaries, in which, if their virtues are apparent, certainly every fault, great and small, is distinctly seen; except in cases where she was influenced by personal friendship. Perhaps, as a reviewer has suggested, the French blood in her veins may have had to do with this unreserve, and fondness for etching character with a sharp pen.

For HARRIET MARTINEAU came of an old Huguenôt stock, settled in Norwich since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Her ancestor, who came to Norwich for shelter, was a surgeon, and his descendants furnished a succession of able men in that profession to the old city, down to the end of the first quarter of the present century. The family, for some generations, had forsaken French Calvinism for Unitarianism; and it was amid the cold lights of this creed that Harriet's earliest religious opinions were formed. She was born in 1802; and her reminiscences apparently date from the second year of her life, and by their minuteness justify the claim she makes to a strong consciousness and a clear memory. She records

* Harriet Martineau's Autobiography. With Memorials by Maria Weston Chapman. Three volumes. Smith, Elder and Co. 1877.

some curiously vivid impressions received from sight and touch when she was yet an infant: the sense of smell she never had, and that of taste was very imperfect. She was the subject of strange panics, occasioned by circumstances which in themselves were likely to give her extreme pleasure the dancing of prismatic colours cast by lustres on the wall; the sight of tangled grass beneath tall trees, or of a starlight sky. These horrors were, doubtless, connected with the beggarly nervous system' with which she says she was cursed till nearer thirty than twenty years of age.

The story of her early life is pathetic in its unrelieved misery. Ailing child as she was, she met with no sympathy at home. At five years of age she meditated suicide; at fourteen, she had not passed a day without shedding tears; at fifteen, she had not seen a human face that she was not afraid of. Poor bairn! Shy, awkward, isolated, she thinks she must have been an intensely disagreeable child. Mrs. Chapman likens her to the Ugly Duckling of Hans Andersen's pretty story, that grew presently into a great swan. Her mother, whom Harriet afterwards treated, it seems, with admirable consideration, was a sensible and vigorous woman, and meant to be just and kind to her children ; but there must have been some great mistake in her treatment of this little girl, sighing for affection and sympathy, when she was able to secure from her nothing but fear and falsehood. In one respect, however, the parents did not fail in their duty: they were careful to provide, at great sacrifice of their own luxuries, a liberal education for all their children. Harriet was early taught Latin and French, and subsequently German and Italian, whilst she was diligently instructed in various household duties. Spare minutes she gave to Milton, Shakespeare and

the Globe newspaper. An amusing remark of hers, when she was nine years old, shows the philosophical turn of her mind. Just after the birth of her sister Ellen she told a friend in confidence that she should 'now see the growth of a human mind from the beginning;' and she endeavoured to carry out the necessary observation with the interest and patience of a Kitchener Parker. She had naturally a fine ear for music, and considerable power of expression in playing; but the deafness, which by the time she was sixteen had become a painful affliction, necessarily deprived her to a great extent of this source of benefit and consolation. Notwithstanding this new disadvantage life began to wear a more friendly aspect to her as she emerged from childhood into womanhood. She had found some who understood and loved her, and her temper consequently was much improved; she had learnt to some extent her intellectual strength; she had acquired considerable stores of information; and, thanks to her training at home and at school, had formed the habit of steady and conscientious work.

Her first appearance in print was about the year 1821, in the Monthly Repository, a little Unitarian periodical; and the praise her eldest brother gave to her anonymous paper on Female Writers on Practical Divinity made her an authoress. Other events helped to determine her towards a literary career: first, the financial embarrassments and then death, in 1826, of her father, who was a manufacturer of bombazine and cam

let; the subsequent loss of nearly all the property that remained to them; and Harriet's first and last love affair. Her betrothed became suddenly insane, and after months of illness died. Looking back on that time of distress, over a tract of thirty years, she says: "I feel there is a

power of attachment in me that has never been touched; ' but 'my strong will, combined with anxiety of conscience, makes me fit only to live alone; and my taste and liking are for living alone.' She says her business in life has been to think and learn, and to speak out with absolute freedom what she has thought and learned; and that therefore she is thankful for immunity from the trammels and cares of married life. She probably judged wisely of herself in this respect.

In 1830 Miss Martineau wrote three Prize Essays in answer to an advertisement of the Central Unitarian Association, in which Unitarianism was to be commended to Catholics, Jews and Mohammedans. She was successful in each case; and, of course, became famous in the Unitarian world. In the same year she wrote Traditions of Palestine, one of her most popular works; Five Years of Youth; seven tracts on social subjects; Essay on Baptism; and fiftytwo articles for the Monthly Repository.

It is desirable now to mark more precisely her religious opinions, as we are come about midway in the course she took from the time when, as a little child, heaven seemed to her a place gay with yellow and lilac crocuses to the time when 'she found herself on the low level of thought where God and immortality exist no longer.' According to her account of herself she was full of religious emotions almost from her cradle. She prayed much; and when she could read, studied the Bible diligently; she was also, she tells us, the subject of haunting, wretched, useless remorse' for her numerous faults. But the forgiveness clause in the Lord's Prayer was a stumblingblock to her, as she did not care to be let off the penalty. She longed for self-esteem; and, in short, 'ignozant of God's righteousness,' she went

The

'about to establish' her own. theological atmosphere she breathed perverted her instincts, which were simple and direct enough, as is evident from a little incident she relates. Accidentally she cut slightly one of the servants with her knife at dinner, and she says that her heart was bursting to tell her how sorry she was. If a child so willing to

make amends had known the evangelical doctrine of the forgiveness of sins, would she have found it a stumbling-block? She was justly severe, in after years, on the inconsistency of Unitarians in taking liberties with the Revelation they professed to receive, and was amazed that they could suppose they were giving their children a Christian education, in teaching them to interpolate or omit just what they pleased. And so it came to pass that as she grew up she found herself without any authority for the religious opinions that she held. The preparation for the aforesaid Prize Essays seems to have carried her towards simple Deism. Soon she considered prayer an absurdity, and devout aspiration folly. Then, still following her logic, she passed through necessarianism to blank Atheism.

The character of her earlier religious belief, as well as the style of her writing, at the time we are now speaking of, (about 1830,) may be illustrated by a pretty parable which she wrote for the Monthly Repository, and a few years after had, strange to say, absolutely forgotten.

6 THE WANDERING CHILD.

In a solitary place among the groves a child wandered whithersoever he would. He believed himself alone, and wist not that one watched him from the thicket, and that the eye of his parent was on him continually; neither did he mark whose hand had opened a way for him thus far. All things that he saw were new to him; therefore he feared nothing. He cast himself down in the long grass, and as he lay he sang till his voice of joy rang

through the woods. When he nestled among the flowers, a serpent rose from the midst of them; and when the child saw how its burnished coat glistened in the sun like a rainbow, he stretched forth his hand to take it to his bosom. Then the voice of his parent cried from the thicket, "Beware!" and the child sprang up and gazed above and around to know whence the voice came; but when he saw it not, he presently remembered it no more. He watched how a butterfly burst from its shell, and flitted faster than he could pursue, and soon rose far above his reach. When he gazed and could trace its flight no more, his father put forth his hand, and pointed where the butterfly ascended, even into the clouds. But the child saw not the sign.

'A fountain gushed forth amidst the shadows of the trees, and its waters flowed into a deep and quiet pool. The child kneeled on the brink, and looking in, he saw his own bright face, and it smiled upon him. As he stooped yet nearer to meet it, the voice once more said, "Be'ware!"

:

'The child started back; but he saw that a gust had ruffled the waters, and he said within himself, "It was but the voice of the breeze." And when the broken sunbeams glanced on the morning waves, he laughed, and dipped his foot that the waters might again be ruffled and the coolness was pleasant to him. The voice was now louder, but he regarded it not, as the winds bore it away. At length he saw somewhat glittering in the depths of the pool; and he plunged in to reach it. As he sank he cried aloud for help. Ere the waters had closed over him, his father's hand was stretched out to save him. while he yet shivered with chilliness and fear, his parent said unto him: "Mine eye was upon thee, and thou didst not heed; neither hast thou beheld my sign, nor hearkened to my voice. If thou hadst thought on me, I had not been hidden."

And

"Then the child cast himself on his father's bosom and said: "Be nigh unto me still and mine eyes shall wait on thee, and mine ears shall be open unto thy voice for evermore.'

Reference has been made to some tracts she wrote on social subjects: they dealt chiefly with the questions of wages and machinery. Presently a book on political economy fell into her hands, and she found that in her tracts she had been touching the fringe of this great subject. She

thereupon conceived the idea of 'exhibiting the great natural laws of society by a series of pictures of selected social action.' Each principle was to be illustrated by a story, and the work was to consist of thirtyfour small volumes, issued monthly, to be entitled Illustrations of Political Economy. Truly a formidable undertaking for a lady of nine-and-twenty; but she had something to say and must say it. As she herself says, her stimulus in all she wrote, from first to last, was simply need of utter

ance.

This necessity to speak to the world is less frequently felt, or at any rate proclaimed, by prose-writers, than by preachers and poets: 'I do but sing because I must And pipe but as the linnets sing;' but there is no doubt that Harriet Martineau was impelled to write these tracts by a burning sense of justice and truth, and by wide sympathy with her fellow-creatures.

The narrative of the publication of this work is a picture of heroic She determination and industry.

settled it in her mind, first, that such a work was needed by poor and rich; to teach them how to adjust their relations one to another; and next, that she had knowledge, sympathy, courage, for the task. She then determined that the thing should be done, and no power on earth should draw her away from it; that she would sustain her health under the suspense by unfaltering hope; that she would never lose her temper under slights or rejection; and lastly, that she would accept no loan out of the limited resources of her mother and aunt. She was only acquainted with one or two small provincial publishers, and had no interest; but she resolved to proceed by herself to London, and fight her own battle with the apathy or fearfulness of the trade. This she did with characteristic self-assertion, arguing very forcibly, but vainly, with the heads of various publishing

firms. She describes herself on one occasion, weary with walking, and so giddy from exhaustion as to need support, leaning over some dirty palings in Shoreditch, pretending to look at a cabbage bed, but saying to herself as she stood with closed eyes, 'My book will do yet.' She succeeded at last in finding a publisher, though on terms most unfair to herself.

Her faith in her literary power was fully justified by the event. Several thousand copies of the first number were sold in two or three weeks, and Harriet Martineau became all at once a woman famous in the political world, whom Members of Parliament and Cabinet Ministers were fain to consult. The labour of producing a volume a month, dealing with various political, sanitary and social principles, was, of course, enormous: it may be interesting to take notice of her method of work.

She first noted down her own leading ideas on the topic selected, and then read what might be found in books, making notes as she went along. So accurate was the information presented to the public that one of the series, entitled The Maid of All Work, gave rise to the belief that she herself, at one time, had occupied the unenviable position of that domestic. Having got her material,

she made a Summary of Principles. of which she intended to treat. Then she considered what part of the world would furnish the best scene for the exhibition of those principles. Next she embodied her principles in characters, and devised the accessories of the story. Then she marked out the chapters, and made a table of contents for each. Then she paged her paper and wrote straight off, without erasion or revision. She never re-wrote, and seldom altered a sentence or a phrase in a whole work. She acted on Cobbett's advice, recommending it to others: Know first what you want to say, and then say it in the first words that occur to you.'

This practice was the secret of the rapidity of her work, and enabled her to publish nearly a hundred volumes in her lifetime. It was also in consonance with the temper of her mind: it gave transparency and directness to her style: but it has perhaps deprived her writings of permanent value. It is not in the least likely that many of her books will be read a century hence; and this because whilst the matter of her writings will have ceased to be of any practical interest for men, the form is not precious enough to be retained for its own sake.

(To be concluded.)

'FULL REDEMPTION' ILLUSTRATED BY WESLEY'S HYMNS:

BY RICHARD T. SMITH, M.D.*

ONE of the most pleasing features in the present history of the Churches is the increased thought and attention given to the renewing and sancti

fying influence of the Holy Spirit, and the search after higher attainments in the Christian life. Very various are the names given to this

The writer of this Paper is much indebted to J. B. Walker, Dr. Asa Mahan and Dr. Pope.

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