erved that Mr. Story should work it up to its utmost
possible perfection.

* * * * *

Autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher. With Letters and other Family
Memorials. Edited by the Survivor of her Family. Boston: Roberts
Brothers.

There are in this work several elements of a gentle but unfailing
interest, such as generally attaches to the class of books to which
it belongs. It gives us some delineations of bygone manners and social
changes, glimpses of many more or less notable persons, and above all
the record of a life which, without being in the usual sense of these
terms eventful or distinguished, stands forth as one in a great degree
self-determined and bearing a strong impress of individuality. Mrs
Fletcher was one of those women who easily become the central figures
of the circles in which they move, and who owe this position, not
to any transcendent qualities, but to the combined and irresistible
influence of great personal charms, a high degree of mental vivacity,
and those sympathetic and harmonizing qualities which it is so
difficult to define, but which are equally distinct from mere
amiability on the one hand and intense self-devotion on the other.
There seems to be in such characters a hint of heroic possibilities
that would only be narrowed and despoiled of some of their charm if
put to the test of action. Lord Brougham compared Mrs. Fletcher to
Madame Roland, but she had neither the soaring intellect nor the
self-assertive tendencies that mark the representative of a cause.
Principle, however, counted for much more with her than with the sex
generally, and one can easily believe that her tenacity in adhering to
it would have been proof against any ordeal whether of persecution
or persuasion. This trait was not more strikingly illustrated by
the strength and fervency of her Whiggism amid the reactionary
tide produced by the excesses of the French Revolution than by the
circumstances of her marriage. The only child of a small landed
proprietor in Yorkshire, she had no lack of opportunities for
gratifying her father's ambition by marrying in a rank far above her
own. Nor was it her ardent affection for the man of her choice that
made her strong against entreaties and reproaches. She would probably
have been capable of any sacrifice of feeling imposed by her sense of
duty, but it was this latter sentiment that forbade the sacrifice.
"I was not, perhaps," she writes, "what in the l