ecause the personages concerned, though all of them
conspicuous, were for the most part commonplace in motive, though more
than commonplace in strength of faculty. Subtle analysis is wholly
unreasonable in the case of Miss Martineau herself, and she would
probably have been unable to use that difficult instrument in
criticising characters less downright and objective than her own.

The moment of the Crimean War marked an alarming event in her own life.
The doctors warned her that she had a heart disease which would end her
days suddenly and soon. Miss Martineau at once set her affairs in order,
and sat down to write her Autobiography. She had the manuscript put into
type, and the sheets finally printed off, just as we now possess them.
But the hour was not yet. The doctors had exaggerated the peril, and the
strong woman lived for twenty years after she had been given up. She
used up the stuff of her life to the very end, and left no dreary
remnant nor morbid waste of days. She was like herself to the
last--English, practical, positive. Yet she had thoughts and visions
which were more than this. We like to think of this faithful woman and
veteran worker in good causes, in the stroll which she always took on
her terrace before retiring to rest for the night:--

'On my terrace there were two worlds extended bright before me, even
when the midnight darkness hid from my bodily eyes all but the outlines
of the solemn mountains that surround our valley on three sides, and the
clear opening to the lake on the south. In the one of those worlds I saw
now the magnificent coast of Massachusetts in autumn, or the flowery
swamps of Louisiana, or the forests of Georgia in spring, or the
Illinois prairie in summer; or the blue Nile, or the brown Sinai, or the
gorgeous Petra, or the view of Damascus from the Salahiey; or the Grand
Canal under a Venetian sunset, or the Black Forest in twilight, or Malta
in the glare of noon, or the broad desert stretching away under the
stars, or the Red Sea tossing its superb shells on shore in the pale
dawn. That is one world, all comprehended within my terrace wall, and
coming up into the light at my call. The other and finer scenery is of
that world, only beginning to be explored, of Science.... It is truly an
exquisite pleasure to dream, after the toil of study, on the sublime
abstractions of mathematics; the transcendent scenery unrolled by
astronomy; the mysterious, invisible forces dimly hinted t