CHAPTER II.

EARLY WOMANHOOD: DEVELOPING INFLUENCES.

Old Norwich, in the early years of this century, was a somewhat exceptional place. It so chanced that besides the exclusiveness natural even now to the society of a cathedral town—besides the insular tone of thought and manners which most towns possessed in those pre-railway days, and while our continental wars were holding our country-people isolated from foreign nations—besides all this, Norwich then prided herself upon having produced a good deal of literary ability. Her William Taylor was considered to be almost the only German scholar in England, and other men, whose names are now nearly forgotten, but who in their day were looked up to as lights of learning and literature—Sayers, Smith, Enfield, Alderson, and others,—gave a tone to the society of Norwich, which, if somewhat pedantic, was, nevertheless, favorable to the intellectual life. It is no small testimony to the healthy and stimulating mental atmosphere of old Norwich that there successively came out from her, in an age when individuality and intellect in woman were steadily repressed, three women of such mark as Amelia Opie, Elizabeth Fry and Harriet Martineau.

But even in Norwich the repression just alluded to was felt by women. Even there it was held, to say the least, peculiar and undesirable for a girl to wish to study deep subjects. "When I was young," Miss Martineau writes, "it was not thought proper for young ladies to study very conspicuously; and especially with pen in hand." They were required to be always ready "to receive callers, without any sign of blue-stockingism which could be reported abroad. My first studies in philosophy were carried on with great care and reserve.... I won time for what my heart was set upon either in the early morning or late at night."

It was thus at unseasonable hours, and without the encouraging support of that public feeling of the value and desirability of knowledge, and the honorableness of its acquisition, by which a young man's studies are unconsciously aided, that Harriet in her young womanhood continued to learn. She read Latin with her brother James, and translated from the classics by herself. Her cousin, Mr. Lee, read Italian with her and her sister; and in course of time they undertook the translation of Petrarch's sonnets into English verse. She read Blair's Rhetoric repeatedly. Her Biblical studies were continued until she was in that position which, according to Macaulay, is necessary "for a critic of the niceties of the English language;" she had "the Bible at her fingers' ends."

But her solitary studies went also into heavier and less frequented paths. Dr. Carpenter had taught her to interest herself in mental and moral philosophy. She read about these subjects at first because he had written upon them, and afterwards because she found them really congenial to her mind. Locke and Hartley were the authors whom she studied most closely. Then the works of Priestley, and the study of his life and opinions—which she naturally undertook, because Dr. Priestley was the great apostle and martyr of Unitarianism—led her to make a very full acquaintance with the metaphysicians of the Scotch school.

To how much purpose she thus read the best books then available, upon some of the highest topics that can engage the attention, soon became apparent when she began to write; but of this I must speak in due course later on. Two other of the most important events, or rather trains of events, in the history of her young womanhood, must be mentioned first.

The earlier of these was the gradual oncoming and increase of her deafness. She began to be slightly deaf while she was at Mr. Perry's school, and the fact was there recognized so far as to cause her to be placed next to her teacher in the class. How keenly she even then felt this loss, she has in part revealed in the story of Hugh Procter; and a few lines from an essay of hers on Scott may here be added:

"Few have any idea of the all-powerful influence which the sense of personal infirmity exerts over the mind of a child. If it were known, its apparent disproportionateness to other influences would, to the careless observer, appear absurd; to the thoughtful it would afford new lights respecting the conduct of educational discipline; it would also pierce the heart of many a parent who now believes that he knows all, and who feels so tender a regret for what he knows that even the sufferer wonders at its extent. But this is a species of suffering which can never obtain sufficient sympathy, because the sufferer himself is not aware, till he has made comparison of this with other pains, how light all others are in comparison."

As pathetically, but more briefly, she says about herself:—"My deafness, when new, was the uppermost thing in my mind day and night."

Her inability to hear continued to increase by slow degrees during the next six years; and when she was eighteen "a sort of accident" suddenly increased it. Music had, until then, been one of her great delights, and it shows how gradual was the progress of her deafness, that she found herself able to hear at an orchestral concert, provided she could get a seat with a back against which she could press her shoulder-blades, for a long time after the music had become inaudible without this assistance. Such a gradual deprivation of a most important sense is surely far more trying than a quick, unexpected, and obviously irremediable loss would be. The alternations of hope and despair, the difficulty of inducing the sufferer's friends to recognize how serious the case is, the perhaps yet greater difficulty to the patient to resolutely step out of the ranks of ordinary people and take up the position of one deficient in a sense, the mortifications which have to be endured again and again both from the ignorance of strangers and the mistaken sympathy of friends—all these make up the special trial of one who becomes by degrees the subject of a chronic affliction. No sensitive person can possibly pass through this fiery trial unchanged. Such an experience must either refine or harden; must either strengthen the powers of endurance or break down the mind to querulous ill-temper; must either make self the centre of creation or greatly add to the power of putting personal interests aside for the sake of wider and more unselfish thoughts and feelings. Which class of influences Harriet Martineau accepted from her trial the history of her courageous, resolute life-work, and her devotion to truth and duty as she saw them, will sufficiently show.

How much she suffered in mind was quite unknown to her family at the time. She was always reserved in speaking about her own feelings and emotions to her mother, and in this particular case Mrs. Martineau, with the kindest intentions, discouraged, as far as possible, all recognition of the growing infirmity. The society of Norwich had never been very attractive to the young girl, who was above the average in natural abilities, and still further removed from the petty and frivolous gossip of the commonplace evening party, by the extensive and elevating course of study through which her mind had passed. Had she been well able to hear, she could have quietly accepted what such intercourse could give her. This would have been much. Kindliness and good feeling, common sense, and ideas about man and his circumstances, are to be enjoyed and gained quite as much in ordinary as in what is commonly called intellectual society. But in the freshness of her sensitive suffering Harriet shrank from the Norwich evening parties. Her mother, however, insisted upon her taking her full share of visiting.

The case was made worse by the customary errors in the treatment of deaf persons; namely, the endeavoring to keep up the illusion that she was not deaf, the occasional assurances that she could hear as well as ever if it were not for her habits of abstraction, and so forth, and the imploring her to always ask when she did not hear what was said, followed by scoldings (kindly meant, but none the less irritating to the object) when it was found that she had been silently losing the larger part of a conversation. False pride, pretence, and selfish exactions were thus sought to be nourished in her; while the blessings of an open recognition of her trouble, and a full and free sympathy with her pain and her difficulty in learning to bear it, were at the same time withheld.

I have spoken of this method of treatment of such a case as erroneous. But in such a matter only those who have gone through the experience and have come out of it at last, as she did, with the moral nature strengthened, and the power of self-management increased, can be really competent to express an opinion upon the proper method of behavior to similar sufferers. I hasten to add, therefore, that in substance the view that I have given is that expressed in Harriet Martineau's Letter to the Deaf, published in 1834. In that remarkable fragment of autobiography she appealed to the large number of people who suffered like herself, to insist upon the frank recognition of their infirmity, and to themselves acquiesce with patience in all the deprivations and mortifications which the loss of a sense must bring. The revelation in this essay of her own sufferings is most touching; and very noble and beautiful is the way in which she urges that the misery must be met, and the humiliation must be turned aside, by no other means than courage, candor, patience, and an unselfish determination to consider first the convenience and happiness of others instead of the sufferer's own.

It is essential, for a correct understanding of her character, that this great trial of her youth should be presented amidst the moulding influences of that time with as much strength as it was experienced. But it is difficult, within the necessary limits of quotation, to convey an idea to the reader of either the intensity and bitterness of the suffering revealed, or of the firmness and beauty of the spirit with which the trial was met. Nor was the advice that she gave to others mere talk, which she herself never put in practice. If her family did not realize at the time how deeply she suffered, still less could her friends in later life discover by anything in her manners that her soul had been so searched and her spirits so tried. So frankly and candidly, and with such an utter absence of affectation, did she accept this condition of her life, that those around her hardly realized that she felt it as a deprivation; and a few lines in her autobiography, in which she mentions how conscious she was of intellectual fatigue from the lack of those distractions to the mind which enter continually through the normal ear, came like a painful shock to her friends, making them feel that they had been unconscious of a need ever present with her throughout life.

For some time after the deafness began, she did not use an ear-trumpet. Like many in a similar position, she persuaded herself that her deafness was not sufficiently great to cause any considerable inconvenience to others in conversation. At length, however, she was enlightened upon this point. An account appeared in a Unitarian paper of two remarkable cures of deafness by galvanism, and Harriet's friends persuaded her to try this new remedy. For a brief while, hope was revived in her; the treatment threw her into a state of nervous fever, during which she regained considerable sensibility in the organ of hearing. The improvement was very temporary, but it lasted sufficiently long to let her know how much her friends had been straining their throats for her sake. From that time she invariably carried and used an ear-trumpet, commencing with an india-rubber tube, with a cup at the end for the speaker to take into his hand, but afterwards employing an ordinary stiff trumpet.

Into this existence, which had hitherto been so full of sadness, there came at length the bright-tinted and vivid shower of light, which means so much to a woman. Love came to brighten the life so dark hitherto for lack of that sunshine. Much as it is to any woman to know herself beloved by the man whom she loves, to Harriet Martineau it was even more than to most. It was not only that her character was a strong one, and that to such a nature all influences that are accepted become powerful forces, but besides this she had always loved more than she had been loved; and her self-esteem had been systematically suppressed by her mother's stern discipline, and afterwards injured by the mortifications to which the on-coming of her deafness gave rise. How much, in such a case, it must have been, when the hour at last came for the history of the heart to be written! How delightful the time when she could cherish in her thoughts a love which was at once an equal friendship and a vivid passion! How great the revolution in her mind when she found that the man whom she could love would choose her from all the world of women to be his dearest, the partner of his life!

It would be a proof, if proof were needed at this time of day, that it is well-nigh impossible for any person to give a candid, full and unerring record of his own past, and the circumstances in it which have most influenced his development, to turn from the brief and cursory record which Harriet Martineau's autobiography gives of this attachment, to the complete story as I have it to tell, here and in a future chapter.

The strongest of all the family affections of her childhood and youth was that which she felt for her brother James. He was two years younger than herself. They had been playmates in childhood, and companions in study later on. Harriet's first attraction to Mr. Worthington was that he was her brother's friend. The two young men were fellow-students at college, preparing for the Unitarian ministry. Worthington was already well known to Harriet from her brother's letters before she saw him. He then went on a visit to Norwich, to spend a part of the vacation with James, and the interest which the friend and the sister already felt in each other, from their mutual affection for the brother, soon ripened into love. This was, I believe, in 1822, when she was twenty years old.

Her father and mother looked not unkindly upon the dawning of this affection. The brother, however, who knew the two so well, felt quite certain that they were not suited for each other. Harriet was of a strong, decided temper, even somewhat arbitrary and hasty, quick in her judgments, and firm in her opinions. The temperament of Worthington, on the other hand, was, I am told, gentle, impressionable and sensitive in the extreme. He was highly conscientious, and ultra-tender in his treatment of the characters and opinions of others. The two seemed in many respects the antipodes of each other. He who knew them both best was convinced that they would not be happy together, and that opinion he has never changed.

It is above all things difficult to predict beforehand whether two apparently antagonistic characters will really clash and jar in the close union of married life, or whether, on the contrary, the deficiencies of the one will be supplemented by those opposite tendencies which are rather in excess in the other. It is notorious that marriages are seldom perfect matches in the view of outsiders; the incongruities in the temperaments and the habits of life and thought, are more easily discerned than the fusing influence of ardent love can be measured. Nor, indeed, can the changes which will be worked in the disposition by a surrender to the free play of emotion be accurately foreseen. Considerations such as these, however, do not have much weight in the mind of a young man whose experience of the mysteries of the human heart is yet to come; and James Martineau was strongly averse to the engagement of his sister and his friend. Their attachment was not then permitted to become an engagement. Worthington was poor—was still only a student—Harriet was supposed, at that time, to be well portioned; the sensitive temperament of the young lover felt the variety of discouragements placed in the path of his affection, and so that affection which should have brought only joy became, in fact, to Harriet the cause of sorrow, suspense and anxiety. Yet its vivifying influence was felt, and the true happiness which is inseparable from mutual love, however the emotion be checked and denied its full expression, was not lacking. For some insight into what Harriet Martineau knew and felt of love, we must look elsewhere than in the formal record of the Autobiography. [3] But this, like all the other chief events of her life, has found a place in her works under a thin veiling of her personality. Let us see from one of her early essays how Harriet Martineau learned to regard love. The essay is called "In a Hermit's Cave."

Even more vividly, at a later period, she told something of her experiences in one of her fictions, under the guise of a conversation between a young husband and wife:—

This tells how Harriet Martineau could love in her youth. Perhaps the stream ran all the more powerfully for its course being checked; for it was over three years after she met and became attached to Mr. Worthington before their love was allowed to be declared, and their engagement was permitted—a long period for hope and fear to do their painful office in the soul, a long test of the reality of the love on both sides.

Her extensive and deep studies, her sufferings and inward strivings from her deafness, and the joys and anxieties of her love, were the chief moulding influences of her early womanhood. We shall soon see how she came to seek expression for the results of all these in literature.

CHAPTER III.

EARLIEST WRITINGS.

Harriet Martineau's first attempt to write for publication was made in the same year that her acquaintance with Mr. Worthington was formed; in 1822, when she was twenty years old. It was, apparently, at the close of the vacation in which Worthington had visited his friend Martineau at Norwich, that she commenced a paper with the design of offering it to the Unitarian magazine, The Monthly Repository. She had told James that when he had returned to college she should be miserable, and he had, with equal kindness and sense, advised her to try to forget her feelings about the parting by an attempt at authorship. On a bright September morning, therefore, when she had seen him start by the early coach, soon after six, she sat down in her own room with a supply of foolscap paper before her to write her first article.

The account which she—writing from memory—gives in her autobiography, of this little transaction, is curiously inaccurate, as far as the trifling details are concerned. Her own statement is that she took the letter "V" for her signature, and that she found her paper printed in the next number of the magazine, "and in the 'Notices to Correspondents' a request to hear more from 'V' of Norwich." Her little errors about these facts must be corrected, because the truth of the matter is at once suggestive and amusing.

The article may be found in the Monthly Repository for October, 1822. It is signed, not "V," but "Discipulus." This, it need hardly be pointed out, is the masculine form of the Latin for learner, or apprentice. The note in the correspondents' column is not in that same month's magazine; but in the number for the succeeding month, the editor says in his answers to correspondents: "The continuation of 'Discipulus' has come to hand. His other proposed communications will probably be acceptable." If more proofs than these were required that the youthful authoress had presented herself to her editor in a manly disguise, it would be furnished by a passage in one of these "Discipulus" articles, in which she definitely figures herself as a masculine writer, speaking of "our sex" (i.e. the male sex) as a man would do. The interesting fact is thus disclosed that Harriet Martineau adds another to the group of the most eminent women writers of this century who thought it necessary to assume the masculine sex in order to obtain a fair hearing and an impartial judgment for their earliest work. Surely, as our "Discipulus" takes her place in this list with George Eliot, George Sand, and Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, a great deal is disclosed to us about how women in the past have had to make their way to recognition against the tide of public opinion.

That first printed essay is interesting because it was the precursor of so long a course of literary work, rather than for itself. Yet it is not without its own interest, and is very far indeed from being the crude, imperfect performance of the ordinary amateur. The subject is "Female Writers of Practical Divinity." Here are the first words that Harriet Martineau uttered through the press:

"I do not know whether it has been remarked by others as well as myself, that some of the finest and most useful English works on the subject of practical Divinity are by female authors. I suppose it is owing to the peculiar susceptibility of the female mind, and its consequent warmth of feeling, that its productions, when they are really valuable, find a more ready way to the heart than those of the other sex; and it gives me great pleasure to see women gifted with superior talents applying those talents to promote the cause of religion and virtue."

There is nothing remarkable in the literary form of this first article. How soon she came to have a style of her own, vivid, stirring, and instinct with a powerful individuality, may have been gathered already from the quotations given in our last chapter. But in her first paper the style is coldly correct; imitative of good but severe models, and displaying none of the writer's individuality. Two points as regards the matter of the essay are of special interest, and thoroughly characteristic. It is interesting, in the first place, to know that she who was destined to do probably more than any other one woman of her century for the enlargement of the sphere of her sex in the field of letters, should have written her first article on the subject of the capacity of women to teach through their writings. The second point worth noticing is that her idea of "practical Divinity" is simply, good conduct. Theological disputation and dogma do not disturb her pages. Her view of practical Divinity is that it teaches morals; and it is largely because the women to whose writings she draws attention have occupied themselves with the attempt to trace out rules of conduct, that she is interested in their writings, and rejoices in their labors. Indeed, she only alludes once to the opinions on dogmatic theology of the writers whom she quotes, and then she does it only to put aside with scorn the idea that morality and teaching should be rejected because of differences upon points of theology.

Encouraged by the few stately words with which the editor of the Repository had received the offer of more contributions, "Discipulus" continued his literary labors, and the result appeared in a paper on "Female Education," published in the Monthly Repository of February, 1823. This is a noble and powerful appeal for the higher education of girls and the full development of all the powers of our sex. It is written with gentleness and tact, but it courageously asserts and demands much that was strange indeed to the tone of that day, though it has become quite commonplace in ours.

The author (supposed to be a man, be it remembered,) disclaimed any intention of proving that the minds of women were equal to those of men, but only desired to show that what little powers the female intellect might possess should be fully cultivated. Nevertheless, the fact was pointed out that women had seldom had a chance of showing how near they might be able to equal men intellectually, for while the lad was at the higher school and college, preparing his mind for a future, "the girl is probably confined to low pursuits, her aspirings after knowledge are subdued, she is taught to believe that solid information is unbecoming her sex; almost her whole time is expended on low accomplishments, and thus, before she is sensible of her powers, they are checked in their growth and chained down to mean objects, to rise no more; and when the natural consequences of this mode of treatment are seen, all mankind agree that the abilities of women are far inferior to those of men." Having shown reasons to believe that women would take advantage of higher opportunities if such were allowed them, "Discipulus" maintained in detail that the cultivation of their minds would improve them for all the accepted feminine duties of life, charitable, domestic and social, and that the consequent elevation of the female character would react beneficially on the male; cited the works of a cluster of eminent authoresses, as showing that women could think upon "the noblest subjects that can exercise the human mind;" and closed with the following paragraph, wherein occurred the phrases by which it is shown that our "Discipulus" of twenty is masquerading as a man, more decisively even than by the termination of the Latin nom de guerre:

"I cannot better conclude than with the hope that these examples of what may be done may excite a noble emulation in their own sex, and in ours such a conviction of the value of the female mind, as shall overcome our long-cherished prejudices, and induce us to give our earnest endeavors to the promotion of women's best interests."

It is most interesting to thus discover that Harriet Martineau's first writings were upon that "woman question" which she lived to see make such wonderful advances, and which she so much forwarded, both by her direct advocacy, and by the indirect influence of the proof which she afforded, that a woman may be a thinker upon high topics and a teacher and leader of men in practical politics, and yet not only be irreproachable in her private life, but even show herself throughout it, in the best sense, truly feminine.

Harriet contributed nothing more to the Monthly Repository after this (so far as can now be ascertained), for a considerable time. Encouraged by the success of her first attempts with periodicals, she commenced a book of a distinctly religious character, which was issued in the autumn of the same year, 1823, by Hunter, of St. Paul's Churchyard.

The little volume was published anonymously. Its title-page runs thus: "Devotional Exercises; consisting of Reflections and Prayers for the use of Young Persons. To which is added an Address on Baptism. By a lady."

The character of the work is perhaps sufficiently indicated by the title. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the book is a commonplace one. It contains a good deal of dogmatism and many platitudes. It contains, likewise, however, many a noble thought and many a high aspiration, expressed in words equally flowing and fervent. A "Reflection" (something like a short sermon) and a prayer are supplied for each morning and each evening of the seven days of the week. She had already attained to such an insight into the human mind as to recognize that religious devotion is an exercise of the emotions. Proof, too, is given in this little work of the fullness with which she realized that true religion must be expressed by service to mankind; to those nearest to one first, and afterwards to others; and indeed, that a high sense of social duty, with a fervent and unselfish devotion to it, is religion, rather than either the spiritual dram-drinking, or the dogmatic irrationality to which that name of high import is frequently applied.

The prayers in this little volume differ much from the supplications for personal benefits which are commonly called prayers.

These are rather aspirations, or meditations. The highest moral attributes, personified in God, are held up for the worship of the imperfect human creature, with fervent aspiration to approach as nearly as possible towards that light of unsullied goodness.

The lack of petitions for material benefits which appears in these "Devotions" was by no means unconscious, instinctive, or accidental. She had deliberately given up the practice of praying for personal benefits, partly because she held that, since it is impossible for us to foresee how far our highest interests may be served or hindered by changes in our external circumstances, it is not for us to attempt to indicate, or even to form a desire, as to what those circumstances shall be. As regarded the emotional side of her religion, she had come to prefer to leave herself and her fate to the unquestioned direction of a higher power.

But there was more than this in it. In her philosophical studies, she had, of course, met with the eternal debates of metaphysicians and theologians on Foreknowledge, Fate, and Freedom of the Will. The difficult question had, indeed, presented itself to her active and acute young mind long before those studies began. She remembered that when she was but eleven years old she found courage to offer her questionings upon this point to her elder brother Thomas. She asked: If God foreknew from eternity all the evil deeds that every one of us should do in our lives, how can He justly punish us for those actions, when the time comes that we are born, and in due course commit them? Her brother replied merely that she was not yet old enough to understand the point. The answer did not satisfy the child. She knew that if she were old enough to feel the difficulty, she must also be mentally fit to receive some kind of explanation. But under the pastoral influence of Dr. Carpenter, the emotional side of her religion was cultivated, and such doubts and difficulties of the reason were put away for the time.

Not for all time, however, could the problem be shirked by so active, logical, and earnest a mind. It recurred to her when she was left to her own spiritual guidance. Long before the date of these "Devotions" she had fought out the battle in her own mind, and had reached the standpoint from which her Prayers are written. She had convinced herself of the truth of the Necessitarian doctrine, that we are what we are, we do what we do, because of the impulses given by our previous training and circumstances; and that the way to amend any human beings or all mankind is to improve their education, and to give them good surroundings and influences, and mental associations; in short, that physical and psychological phenomena alike depend upon antecedent phenomena, called causes.

As soon as she had thus settled her mind in the doctrine of Necessity, she perceived that prayer, in the ordinary sense of the term, had become impossible. If it be believed that all that happens in the world is the consequence of the course of the events which have happened before, it is clear that no petitions can alter the state of things at any given moment. A belief in the efficacy of "besieging Heaven with prayers" implies a supposition that a Supreme Ruler of the Universe interferes arbitrarily with the sequence of events. Those whose minds are clear that no such arbitrary interference ever does take place, but that, on the contrary, like events always and invariably follow from like causes, cannot rationally ask for this fundamental rule of the government of the universe to be set aside for their behoof; even although they may believe in an all-powerful Divine Ruler, who has appointed this sequence of events for the law under which His creatures shall live and develop.

Still, however, Harriet Martineau supplicated for spiritual benefits, as we have seen in the little volume of Devotional Exercises. These aspirations not only gave her an emotional satisfaction, but were, she then thought, justifiable on necessitarian principles; for each time that we place our minds in a certain attitude we increase their "set" in the same direction; and she believed at that time that a holy life was in this way aided by frequent reflections on and aspirations towards the highest ideal of holiness personified in the name of God.

Her religious belief was, then, pure Theism. To her, it was still very good to be a worshipper of Jehovah, the Eternal Presence, the Ever-living Supreme; and Jesus was His Messenger, the highest type that He had ever permitted to be revealed to man of the excellencies of the divine nature. But there was no Atonement, no personal Evil One, no hell, no verbally-inspired revelation in her creed.

It will be unnecessary to say more about her theological beliefs till the next twenty years have been recorded, for in that period there was substantially no change in her views. There did come, indeed, a change in her method of self-management and in her opinions as to the way in which religious feelings should affect daily life. She soon concluded that we are best when least self-conscious about our own goodness, and that, therefore, we should rely upon receiving inspiration to right and elevated feelings from passing influences, and should refrain from putting our minds, by a regular exercise of volition, into affected postures in anticipation of those high emotions which we cannot command. Under these beliefs she soon ceased all formal prayer. Meantime she was still, at twenty-one years old, in the condition of mind to write Devotional Exercises.

The little book met with a favorable acceptance among the Unitarians, and speedily went into the second edition. Thus encouraged, Harriet began another volume of the same character. Such work could not proceed very fast, however, for her domestic duties were not light, and her writing was still looked upon in her family as a mere recreation. She labored under all the disadvantages of the amateur. But events soon began to crowd into her life to alter this view of the case, and to prepare the way for her beginning to do the work of her life in the only fashion in which such labor can be effectively carried on—as a serious occupation, the principal feature of every day's duties.

After a long period of poverty and distress, caused by the Napoleonic wars, England, in 1824, experienced the special dangers of a time of rapidly increasing wealth. There was more real wealth in the country, owing to the expansion of trade, which followed on the re-opening of the continent to our commerce, but speculation made this development appear far greater than it was in reality.

There was, at that time, no sort of check upon the issue of paper money. Not only did the Bank of England send out notes without limit; not only could every established bank multiply its drafts recklessly; but any small tradesman who pleased might embark in the same business, and put forth paper money without check or control. Thus there was money in abundance, the rate of interest was low, and prices rose.

The natural and inevitable consequence of this state of things, at a moment when trade was suddenly revived, was a rage for speculation. Not only merchants and manufacturers were seized with this epidemic; the desire for higher profits than could be obtained by quiet and perfectly safe investments spread amongst every class. "As for what the speculation was like, it can hardly be recorded on the open page of history without a blush. Besides the joint-stock companies who undertook baking, washing, baths, life insurance, brewing, coal-portage, wool-growing, and the like, there was such a rage for steam navigation, canals and railroads, that in the session of 1825, 438 petitions for private Bills were presented, and 286 private Acts were passed.... It is on record that a single share of a mine on which £70 had been paid, yielded 200 per cent, having risen speedily to a premium of £1400 per share." [5]

Periods of such inflation invariably and necessarily close in scenes of disaster. Gold becomes scarce; engagements that have been recklessly entered into cannot be met; goods have been produced in response to a speculative instead of a legitimate demand, and therefore will not sell; the locked-up capital cannot be released, nor can it be temporarily supplied, except upon ruinous terms. Panic commences; it spreads over the business world like fire over the dry prairies. The badly-managed banks and the most speculative business houses begin to totter; the weakest of them fall, and the crash brings down others like a house of cards; and in the depreciation of goods and the disappearance of capital, the prudent, sagacious and honorable merchant suffers for the folly, the recklessness, the avarice and the dishonesty of others.

Such a crash came, from such causes, in the early winter of 1825. Harriet Martineau's father was one of those injured by the panic, without having been a party to the errors which produced it. He had resisted the speculative mania, and allowed it to sweep by him to its flood. It was, therefore, by no fault of his own that he was caught by the ebbing wave, and carried backwards, to be stranded in the shallows. His house did not fail; but the struggle was a cruel one for many months. How severe the crisis was may be judged from the fact that between sixty and seventy banks stopped payment within six weeks.

The strain of this business anxiety told heavily upon the already delicate health of Mr. Thomas Martineau. In the early spring of 1826 it became clear that his days were numbered. Up to the commencement of that troubled winter it had been supposed that his daughters would be amply provided for in the event of his death. But so much had been lost in the crisis, that he found himself, in his last weeks, compelled to alter his will, and was only able to leave to his wife and daughters a bare maintenance. He lingered on till June, and in that month he died.

It was while Mr. Martineau lay ill, that Harriet's second book, Addresses, Prayers, and Hymns, passed through the press, and the dying father took great interest and found great comfort in his child's work. Much of it he must have read with feelings rendered solemn by his situation.

This little volume so closely resembles the Devotional Exercises, that it is unnecessary to refer to it at greater length. The hymns, which are the special feature of this volume, do not call for much notice. They are not quite commonplace; but verse was not Harriet's natural medium of expression: she wrote a considerable quantity of it in her early days, as most young authors do; but she soon came to see for herself that her gift of expression in its most elevated form was rather that which makes the orator than the poet.

The comparative poverty to which the family were reduced on Mr. Martineau's death at once freed Harriet, to a considerable extent, from the obstacles which had previously been interposed to her spending time in writing. It was still far from being recognized that literature was to be her profession; but it was obvious that if her pen could bring any small additions to her income they would be very serviceable. A friend gave her an introduction to Mr. Houlston, then publishing at Wellington, Shropshire; and a few little tales, which she had lying by, were offered to him. He accepted them, issued them in tiny volumes, and paid her five guineas for the copyright of each story. This, then, was the beginning of Harriet Martineau's professional authorship.