term, those things which appear or come forth, are the very essence of an existence which consists in activity, manifestation, and development. Taking the term in this, its etymological import, events (from the Latin e, out of, and venio, I come) have been in the greatest number crowded into the life of Harriet Martineau, who has felt more emotions, thought more thoughts, uttered more sentiments, and, in general, been a greater doer, than any merchant, mechanic, or swordsman, that ever lived.

Multifarious as well as numerous are her writings. Few have written at once so much and so well. Except poetry, there is scarcely a branch of literature in which she has not gained repute. It falls not within our purpose to give a dry chronological catalogue of her publications. A few remarks must suffice. She began her career as a writer (1821) by a volume entitled "Devotional Exercises for the Use of Young Persons;' and it may serve as a warning to that disposition which is so common to carp at the laudable attempts of early authorship, if we state that the writer was thought presumptuous, because by her title she seemed to provoke comparison with a somewhat similar volume, the work of a grave and learned divine. Time, the suffrages of the public, and her own great merit, have long ere this turned the tables, and those who of old made light of the young lady's first book, would now be most ready with their unqualified homage.

The religious disposition which that work betokened has never ceased to operate in determining Miss Martineau's literary undertakings, though we cannot affirm, that, either in her mode of treatment or in the results of her study, she has so improved as to make her last words her best words. Sometimes she has written under the impulse of morbid excitement, and so produced a somewhat unnatural and exaggerated work, as in her "Life in the Sick Room" (1844). Sometimes she has attempted a subject, which, for a just and independent judgment, required a depth and solidity of learning, historical and theological, which she does not possess; and so gave birth to the paradoxes, blunders, and undue refinements of the parts in her "Eastern Life" (1848), which treat of the Egyptian and Hebrew history. Yet,

the deep and refined religious feeling with which, amid all her vagaries of opinion, the very essence of her mind is imbued, appears to great advantage in many parts of that interesting book of travels, and specially in the graphic and lovely sketches it presents of the natural scenery of Egypt and Palestine, and the spots made for ever memorable by the sacred feet of that Great One who trod the Holy Land eighteen centuries ago. Among all the numerous works which the love and devotion of our modern pilgrims have put forth in their wish to record their impressions, and paint to the eye Canaan as it is, "Eothen" not excepted, contains gems of description so charming, yet so faithful.

not one,

The skill and felicity of her hand had been already put beyond a question by the six octavo volumes (1837, 1838) in which she recorded the impressions she received from a visit, which, with a special view to the improvement of her health, she made to the United States of America, in the year 1834. The descriptive power displayed in these works gave an augury of success, should she follow what seemed to be a natural tendency of her mind, and employ her highly-cultured and very various faculties in the composition of history. This department of literature is the last in which she has won laurels. In her "History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace" (1816-1846. 2 vols. 1850), she has produced an interesting work, which is the more valuable because she was led by her subject to speak of persons, describe characters, and narrate events whereof she had had personal knowledge and experience to an extent equalled probably by no eminent writer of the present age. At the same time it is proper to add, that the times and the events which she handles are too near the author, and the chronological manner she pursues too closely resembles a Register or a Chronicle, to allow of that depth and comprehensiveness of thought, that breadth of treatment, that grouping of events,in a word, that picture-writing, which the success of the modern French historians, and of our own Macaulay, have taught well-read persons to expect, and which now are the only sure guarantees of lasting popularity.

During the period of her youth Harriet Martineau moved in a social

circle where Hartley's "Essay on Man" had been held in high estimation from the time when it was eulogised and epitomised by the celebrated Dr. Priestley. The study of the book was a sort of hereditary obligation. She devoted much time to its perusal, and became a devout disciple. Hartley ("holy Hartley," as Harriet Martineau called him so late as 1844) is the most spiritual philosopher of the sensuous school. Having matriculated therein, Miss Martineau could not in her nature be satisfied until she had reached its highest grades of knowledge. With growing experience, however, and a constantly-widening circle of reading, she was unable to remain with so superficial a system of philosophy as that of Locke and his followers. The German metaphysicians attracted her attention, gave her mind a severe logical discipline, opened within her own soul new sources of knowledge, and deepened her views of human nature. Unfortunately she did not pursue this line of study so far as to wholly lose the impression produced on her by the sensuousness of her earliest metaphysics. Under that lingering bias, she was turned aside from a spiritualism, which, modified by her Saxon strength of intellect, and her English good sense, would probably have issued in most desirable results; and she was led by degrees to the adoption and advocacy of a materialism, which, founded on magnetism, mesmerism, and phrenology, presents a strange combination of scepticism and credulousness; of revived superstitions and defiance of universal beliefs. Hence, from being one of the most practical of women, and one of the most lucid expounders of the common-sense doctrine, she seems to have approached the limbo of the visionaries, not only dreaming dreams but seeing visions.

"It is," she says in her extraordinary Letters to Mr. Atkinson,* "It is really vexatious that I cannot convey to you, or any one, what I think I have reason to rely on about this-the existence of some faculty or faculties by which things can be known, or conceived of, apart from all aid whatever from the senses which usually co-operate in the presentment of ideas. You know that I preserve some distinct recollections, on awakening from the mesmeric trance, of the ideas presented in that state. Well, twice at

* "Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development. By Henry George Atkinson and Harriet Martineau. London. 1851."

least I have perceived matters so abstract as to owe no elements whatever (as far as I could discover) to the ordinary senses. Of course, I cannot explain what they were, because they could be communicated only to a person in a similar state, and not by ordinary language at all. They have since (during five years) been gathering to themselves more and more visual elements; so that the experience remains only an affair of memory. But it is one which assuredly I can never forget. There is no pleasure that I would not forego to experience it again and often, the conscious exercise of a new faculty. I wonder whether you saw (as I did) lately in a newspaper, an account of Wordsworth's rapture in once being able to smell a flower, -the only time in his life that the sense ever acted. I know what that is, for almost the same thing once happened to me; but it is nothing to the other experience I spoke of. The one occasions extreme and tumultuous amazement (the first experience of a new sensation), a sort of passionate delight,—a conviction on the spot that we are only groping in a universe where we think everything ours till a new primitive sensation comes to show us how far we are from comprehending nature; and then presently we have had enough of it, we are tired of it, and turn to intellectual objects. You may like to know how it happened to me. I had not Wordsworth's good fortune,-to smell a flower. I was not well that day; sat down to lunch with a family who were dining early on a leg of mutton. At the first mouthful of mutton I poured out water hastily, and drank so prodigiously,-so strong and so exquisite was the flavour. I went on eating with amazement and extraordinary relish; but I was obliged to take water after every mouthful. It occurred to me to try if I could smell. There was a bottle of Eau de Cologne on the mantelpiece. At first I could make nothing of it; but after heating it I could smell it, not in the nose at all, but a little way down the throat. It must have been really the scent, for it was no more like the sensation from taste than from colour or sound. I was presently tired of it. But I was rather shocked to find myself reckoning on my dinner, a great late dinner that I was going to. I might have spared my anticipations; for by that time everything in my palate had become as tasteless as ever. There was nothing like this in the experience of the exercise of the new faculty,-no surprise, no tumult first, or disgust afterwards. It was inexpressibly delightful, both the matter apprehended and the power of apprehension. Nothing in the experience of my life can at all compare with that of seeing the melting away of the forms, as facts and arrangements under which we ordinarily view nature, and its fusion into the system of forms which is presented to the intellect in the magnetic state. But there is no use in dwelling on an experience which is, from its nature, incommunicable. I have been led to speak of it now by what you have written of our having eight or nine or more senses, and of man being yet probably far from fully developed."P. 120-2. "You are aware that when mesmerised I, deaf as I am, have occasionally

heard otherwise than through the ear,-as somnambules are seen to read with the sole of the foot or the top of the forehead. And I could give you more evidence of the same kind unconnected with mermerism."-P. 126. "I think there are cases in plenty to show that you are right as to the interior sense of the presage of time. Most of us can wake at any hour we please to impress ourselves with; and I suppose most persons can tell pretty nearly what time it is, day or night, if they trust to their instinct. I once could, within five minutes, and can now, when I do not stop to think."-P. 151.

While Miss Martineau thus surpasses the rest of the world in some unknown faculty, she is defective in another, which she possesses in common with the rest of the world :

Aunt

"Let me tell you a curious thing which happened twice to me, the being unable, by any effort, to see a conspicuous object directly before my eyes; I suppose because I must have had a wrong notion of what I was to see. When I was near seven years old, I was taken to Tynemouth, in a passion of delight, because I was to see the sea. Margaret took me, and an older and a younger one, to the haven. There, when standing on the bank, we were expected to exclaim about the sea, which flowed in up to the foot of the bank, directly before our eyes. The other two children were delighted; but I could not see it. When questioned, I was obliged to say so; and I said it with shame and reluctance. I well remember the misery. I believe it was thought affectation, like my indifference to scents. We were led down to the bank, which was steep and difficult for children. Not till the gentle waves were at my very toes, did I see the sea at all; and then it gave me a start, and a painful feeling of being a sort of idiot, not to have seen it before. The revelation at last was very like that of a lightning flash. It may be mentioned that my impression of my only previous sight of the sea was of something quite different. I was then under three years old, not strong on my feet, and my father led me along the old Yarmouth jetty, which was full of holes, through which I saw the swaying waters below, and was frightened, as I well remember. I may have been occupied with this idea on the second occasion. The other anecdote is yet more odd. When the

great comet of 1811 appeared, I was nine years old. Night after night, that autumn, the whole family went up to the long range of windows in my father's warehouse to see the comet. I was obliged to go with them; but I never once saw it! My heart used to swell with disappointment and mortification. No effort was wanting on my part; and parents, brothers, and sisters, used to point and say, Why, there! Why, it is as large as a saucer! You might as well say you cannot see the moon!' I could not help it. I never saw it; and I have not got over it yet (1851). The only thing I can suppose is, that I must have been looking for something

wholly different; and that no straining of the eyes avails if the mind is occupied with another image."-Pp. 160, 161.

Equally curious is Harriet Martineau's experience regarding music :

"Yes, I fainted one day from having in a freak put a musical snuff-box on my head. The delicious precision of the music, and the revival of the old charms, after the muffled piece of confusion that instrumental music had been to me for some years, overcame me in a second of time. I am sure I heard that performance quite as well as anybody could through the ear; and I have since clapped on my head every musical snuff-box I could lay hands on. You may like to know the following:-When I had become just deaf enough to have difficulty in catching the pitch of a piece of music, in the concertroom we attended, which had benches, with a long wooden rail to lean against, I could always get right by pressing my shoulder blades against the rail, only the pitch was a third below. Finding this with music I was familiar with, I soon got to allow for it always, and so did very well for the time. As the deafness increased, I found all bass sounds lose their smoothness and come in pulses, beating upon the ear, and vibrating through the pit of the stomach, while as yet higher sounds were as formerly, and even now treble voices are smoooth, as far as I hear them, while confused, and the bass are lost. Before I quite left off playing the piano, I always took the treble parts in duets, leaving it to my partner to fit the bass to it, without any cognisance of mine."-Pp. 162, 163.

Never, perhaps, was there presented to the world a more singular psychology than that which Miss Martineau has offered in relation to herself in these and other revelations of her experiences in sensation, imitation, and opinion. A sense of smell in the throat, a sense of sound in the stomach, eyes broad open which cannot see a comet, an inner sight which sees by immediate intuition, to say nothing of the clairvoyance and foresight which she claims in virtue of mesmeric influence, present in combination qualities so extraordinary as to suggest some hallucination as their cause. She herself has informed us that self-consciousness with her exists in a state of unusual intensity. Not improbably that intensity has given occasion to morbid action, which, in union with an inborn tendency to self-exaggeration, has interfered with the sound and normal condition of her mind. This phase of mental disease appears to have received development from the very severe and painful bodily distemper which she suffered, and which long threatened

M

her life. Certainly the work which she wrote under the influence of these corporeal sufferings, and the mental excitement and distress which these sufferings occasioned, we allude to her "Life in the Sick Room" (1844),betrays a tone of such spasmodic exaggeration as would ensue from a diseased and disordered constitution of body and mind, and suggests, if it does not establish, the view of her case here presented. Beyond a doubt her imagination has always been peculiarly strong and vivid. We are not sure that it is not her master faculty. When a powerful imagination acts under morbid conditions of mind or body, it not only gains the ascendancy, but perverts the reports of the senses, and distorts and confuses the perceptions of the intellect. Seizing with a rash hand all the vital energies, it bends them, as with imperial power, to its own control, and turns them to its own purposes. A species of monomania ensues. Some one idea rises to the meridian, in whose light all other ideas, and all objects generally, are seen. Its colours they reflect; its disclosures they repeat; its tendencies they serve; its purposes they execute.

This morbid action may be but partial. It may affect the mind in only one respect, in relation to a certain class of ideas, or on particular subjects. There is danger, indeed, of its extending its influence; and, alas! it may become universal, to the utter overthrow and ruin of all the faculties. But, in the case before us, it is counteracted by extraordinary strength of both intellect and will. It is counteracted also by constant mental occupation. Above all, it is counteracted, and to some extent countervailed, by a constant intercourse with the outer world, in its most tangible and least spiritual forms. Miss Martineau is a good housewife. Taking daily a direct concern in the minutest and humblest details of her home, she also superintends her farm-yard, the moment after she has made a bargain with her publisher, or written a letter of sound counsel to a young friend. True her eccentricity may follow her, so that we hear of her saving a cow from the jaws of death by the employment of her great mesmeric powers; nevertheless her strong good sense, her practical view and practical uses of life, toge

ther with her practical and unpretending benevolence, shine out and throw a deep and widely-diffused hue over her daily existence.

The same valuable qualities appear in her writings. Those writings are the image, as they are the utterance, of her life. Whatever we may think of some positions she has advanced, we regard with hearty admiration the general purpose and tendency of her aims and efforts. She is obviously living for a great object. As obvious is it that her object is "to learn, and thence to do" public good. She has cultivated her own superior facultiesfirst, because their cultivation was her primary obligation; and, secondly, because thereby she would gain power for largely benefitting the world. For herself and for others, progress is her motto. Constant, therefore, and ceaseless have been her efforts in pursuit of truth. And, by truth, she does not intend her own convictions. Like all powerful natures, indeed, Miss Martineau is dogmatic, sometimes offensively dogmatic; very confident that her actual opinion is "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." But then in a little while she offers compensation, in being equally confident that the old opinion was an error. In confuting herself no one has been more expert or more successful. But it is by her own hand that the cardbuilt edifice must be tumbled down. The intervention of another hand puts her into an attitude of defence, the weapons of which she well knows how to use. In the midst, however, of the diversities and contradictions of opinion which hence arise, she has given utterance to very many noble thoughts and generous sympathies; which remain in their own imperishable essence, and form for herself an unfading crown of glory. Equally while she has appeared to vacillate-to move backward as well as forward; to unsay what she had said, and undo what she had done -she has not failed to make constant advances in personal culture and knowledge; to enter more and more deeply into the inmost recesses of the temple of holy and Divine truth; and to carry with her, and impel, many of the most highly-endowed minds of the age. Nor has her benign influence been by any means limited to the select. On the people at large she has wrought no less

powerfully than beneficially. Popular in her sympathies, she has largely written for the people; and, among the people, she has found willing and attentive audience. Her tales illustrative of political economy, composed expressly to instruct the people who had been allowed to remain in sad ignorance of matters in which their physical interests and social relations were involved, though they appeared at a time when the minds of our working classes, abused and misdirected by designing men, were adverse to all efforts for their good proceeding from the higher classes, and specially adverse to the conclusions (in part narrow and erroneous) of the English economists, yet made their way into the libraries of our Mechanics' Institutions, our Sunday-schools, and our cottages; and produced generally, in the humbler ranks, an impression no less durable than beneficial. Nay, it is within our own knowledge, that the series of volumes was scarcely less acceptable to young persons in the middle class of life. So simple and charming are the fictions into which she has woven doctrines the most abstract, and the most remote from ordinary apprehension, that those works were, and are, eagerly seized and eagerly devoured, by intelligent persons little beyond the age of childhood; and thousands, in consequence, have been, and are, growing up with an intellectual pabulum containing germs of thought, conviction, principle, and impulse; which, growing with their growth and strengthening with their strength, will greatly contribute to their becoming enlightened, useful, and happy citizens, of a class far superior, in mind and character, to their predecessors.

In writing for the young, indeed, Harriet Martineau has been peculiarly Ruccessful. Most attractive are the many volumes she has produced for their instruction and improvement. In this species of composition she is specially at home, It is a theory of Curs that she is never so happy in her own feelings as when she is writing a tale or a volume for young people. No other proof is needed of the goodLess of her heart. No formal description need, after this statement, be given of her style. A style that engages and charms the young, must be Saxon in its substance, and lucid, easy,

and lively in its manner. Miss Martineau, like all great masters of style, is very various in her modes of utterance. Always idiomatic, always clear, always forcible, she sometimes allows her ease to degenerate into carelessness; sometimes, in word and elaboration, rises to the confines of poetic prose; and very often pours forth a flowing stream of polished and elegant narrative, or engages in dialogues the most natural and effective; or, again, conducts an argument with consummate ability and overpowering force of conviction, in diction the most appropriate.

MARGARET FULLER.

(MARCHESA OSSOLI.)

Rudely thou wrongest my poor heart's desire, In finding fault with her too portly pride;" The thing which I do most in her admire

Is of the world unworthy most envied. For, in those lofty looks is close implied Scorn of base things, disdain of foul dishonour,

Threatening rash eyes which gaze on her so wide,

That loosely they ne dare to look upon her : Such pride is praise, such portliness is honour, That bolden'd innocence bears in her eyes, And her fair countenance, like a goodly banner,

Spreads in defiance of all enemies. Was never in this world aught worthy tried, Without a spark of some self-pleasing pride. SPENSER.

EMERSON quotes this sonnet from Spenser as accurately descriptive of the character of Margaret Fuller; hundreds of equally striking and characteristic passages might be cited from the poets, and applied as direct delineations of this large and universal woman, who, but two years since, illuminated many literary and social circles to which her genius was as a sun,-a sun, which, alas! has set on them for ever. Perhaps, of these none would be more appropriate than the lines addressed by Mrs. Browning to George Sand, wherein she speaks of the French amazon as a "large-brained woman," an epithet equally happy if uttered in reference to Margaret. The mind of America is necessarily young, and in letters and the arts she has but few teachers, and fewer prophets. Yet of these few it is astonishing how strong are the personalities, how striking the completeness, originality, and individuality of genius. Emerson, Channing, Power, Margaret Fuller, are names