n's fitness for them. Thus she writes:--

"No employment of the mind is a sufficient excuse for neglecting
domestic duties; and I cannot conceive that they are incompatible.
A woman may fit herself to be the companion and friend of a man of
sense, and yet know how to take care of his family."

The intense love of sincerity in conduct and belief which is a leading
characteristic in the "Rights of Women" is also manifested in these early
essays. Mary exclaims in one place,--

"How many people are like whitened sepulchres, and careful only
about appearances! Yet if we are too anxious to gain the
approbation of the world, we must often forfeit our own."

And again she says, as if in warning:--

"... Let the manners arise from the mind, and let there be no
disguise for the genuine emotions of the heart.

"Things merely ornamental are soon disregarded, and disregard can
scarcely be borne when there is no internal support."

Another marked feature of the pamphlet is the extremely puritanical
tendency of its sentiments. It was written at the period when Mary was
sending sermon-like letters to George Blood, and breathes the same spirit
of stern adherence to religious principles, though not to special dogma.

But perhaps the most noteworthy passage which occurs in the treatise is
one on love, and in which, strangely enough, she establishes a belief
which she was destined some years later to confirm by her actions. When
the circumstances of her union with Godwin are remembered, her words seem
prophetic.

"It is too universal a maxim with novelists," she says, "that love
is felt but once; though it appears to me that the heart which is
capable of receiving an impression at all, and can distinguish,
will turn to a new object when the first is found unworthy. I am
convinced it is practicable, when a respect for goodness has the
first place in the mind, and notions of perfection are not affixed
to constancy."

Though not very wonderful in itself, the "Education of Daughters" is, in
its choice of subject and the standards it upholds, a worthy prelude to
the riper work by which it was before very long followed.

The next work Mary published was a volume called "Original Stories from
Real Life; with Conversations calculated to regulate the Affections and
form the Mind to Truth and Goodness." This was written while her
experience as schoo