letters and her books present her to us as a
woman who had courage and independence precisely because she was so
normal, so healthy in mind and body, so richly endowed with a generous
vitality. If she won the hearts of all who knew her, it was because her
own affections were warm and true. She was a good sister, a good
daughter, a passionate lover, an affectionate friend, a devoted and
tender mother.

She was too real a human being to be misled by the impartialities of
universal benevolence. "Few," she wrote, "have had much affection for
mankind, who did not first love their parents, their brothers, sisters,
and even the domestic brutes whom they first played with." That eloquent
trait, her love of animals and her hatred of cruelty, helps to define
her character. She was, says Godwin, "a worshipper of domestic life,"
and, for all her proud independence, in love with love. In Godwin's prim
phraseology, she "set a great value on a mutual affection between
persons of an opposite sex, and regarded it as the principal solace of
human life." Indeed, in the _Letters to Imlay_, which appeared after her
death, it is not so much the strength and independence of her final
attitude which impresses us, as her readiness to forgive, her
reluctance to resent his neglect, her affection which could survive so
many proofs of the man's unworthiness. The strongest passion in her
generous nature was maternal tenderness. It won her the enduring love of
the children whom she taught as a governess. It caused her mind to be
busied with the problem of education as its chief preoccupation. It
informs her whole view of the rights and duties of women in her
_Vindication_. It inspired the charming fragment entitled _Lessons for
Little Fanny_, which is one of the most graceful expressions in English
prose of the physical tenderness of a mother's love. If she despised the
artificial sensibility which in her day was admired and cultivated by
women, it was because her own emotions were natural and strong. Her
intellect, which no regular discipline had formed, impressed the
laborious and studious Godwin by its quickness and its flashes of sudden
insight--its "intuitive perception of intellectual beauty."

The _Vindication_ is certainly among the most remarkable books that have
come down to us from that opulent age. It has in abundance most of the
faults that a book can have. It was hastily written in six weeks. It is
ill-arranged, full of repetitions, f