quite out of place in a congress of sages; and the efforts to sustain him in the rôle of unappreciated genius have been wholly abortive. The one thing he did discredits such an estimate of him, and the fact that he did nothing else still further discredits it. Men with doctrines as unpopular as his have conquered admiration; yet, in cultivated English society, inquire for Henry George Atkinson, and there may be remembrance of him as one who had a little cheap notoriety many years ago, which a peculiar relation with Miss Martineau gave him, and little more is known of him. Left to himself, he sank to a natural obscurity, out of which she had lifted him for a brief period. Yet this man Harriet Martineau, immeasurably his superior, whom they of regal intellect most justly honored, accepted as her philosopher! At his feet she sat down as a learner!

The result of this intellectual mésalliance was a book on The Laws of Man's Nature and Development. It comprised a series of letters that passed between them, in which Mr. Atkinson assumed the tone of the most confident of masters, and Miss Martineau that of the most docile of disciples. It was in large part a crude and superficial handling of man's deepest and dearest faiths. "Philosophy finds no God in nature," it tells us, "no personal being or creator, nor sees the want of any; nor has God revealed himself miraculously." The belief in another life is a harmless delusion" so long as it does not interfere with our conduct in this." "Free will! the very idea is enough to make a Democritus fall on his back and roar with laughter, and a more serious thinker almost despair of bringing men to their reason." The doctrine of moral responsibility is declared "untrue and immoral." The outlook for man's better condition is not in allegiance to a high and Holy One, not in incentives enkindled by the hope of immortality, not in obedience to the sense of obligation, not in all together; but in the study of the laws of man's nature,

which in their last statement are physical laws. The clue to this study, the light among lights of superlative brightness, is mesmerism.

The book, bearing simply the name of Henry George Atkinson, had surely fallen flat. Had the name of Harriet Smith or of Harriet Jones been coupled with his, its fate had been no better. It bore, however, with his the name of Harriet Martineau, at that time the most prominent woman in England. The attention that it received and the impression that it made were, therefore, out of all proportion to its interior significance. In such cases, too, names do not stand for individuals alone, but for family and affiliations also. Miss Martineau was not merely Miss Martineau; she was the sister of James Martineau, who was fast becoming one of the most potent forces in English thought and letters; she was a member of a circle; she had come out from a sect of which, or of whose tendencies, however absurdly, she was held to be representative. These circumstances gave significance to her position and weight to her words.

Mr. Martineau was at that time one of the editors of the Prospective Review, and the book required notice in its pages. Thoroughly to have reviewed the book could not have been a labor of love to any one of his editorial associates. Besides, in the general division of labor, the treatment of books and subjects of a speculative character was peculiarly his office. Most unwillingly, therefore, he sat down to the task it seemed ignoble to shirk, and the result was the article on Mesmeric Atheism. It was a trenchant and searching review, certainly within the requirements of polemical morality, but remorseless in the exposure of flimsy logic and shallow sophistry. It was not merely an answer to the book; it was its complete annihilation. Of his sister he spoke most gently, but Atkinson fared somewhat hardly at his hands. He

had offered himself as a philosopher; his credentials had been examined and he was dismissed as a charlatan. At this treatment of her hero Miss Martineau was deeply offended, and to the end of her life repelled all offers of reconciliation.

Such is the story of that estrangement which, with various coloring and distortion, is known as widely as the sufferers from it. It suggests questions of mental peculiarity and moral temperament for which I will not pause. I will here only remark that the measure of offence conceived seems far beyond any rational estimate of the offence committed. A brother's refusal to destroy a sister's letters because they are dear to him may be a mistake; but surely it would oftener give pleasure than provoke resentment. A few passages in the criticism might have been more gently toned, though the admirers of Miss Martineau could hardly plead her example in asking it. To the plea sometimes put forth that the criticism did violence to private affection, the answer is obvious: Truth, like the Christ, knows no private affection, a dictum which Harriet Martineau surely would have allowed. And I cannot help feeling that she would have been truer to herself and to her great intellect and heart, if, instead of thus resenting, she had kindled with admiration for the brother whose affection, often tried and always true, could not deflect him from that unsparing truth which his conscience summoned him to declare.

CHAPTER VI

LONDON

THE decade of the fifties was with Mr. Martineau a period of great literary activity, and in it he brought forth some of the noblest of his essays. The papers on Hamilton, Mill, Mansel, Comte, Lessing, Schleiermacher, the remarkable paper on Personal Influences on Present Theology, were all within this period. He wrote for the National Review, the Prospective, and the Westminster, commonly three or four papers yearly, elaborate and brilliant discussions of great problems of thought. This writing alone would seem task sufficient for high talent when ordinarily industrious. In his case it was the by-play of one who kept regular appointment with the pulpit and the professor's chair.

As has often been the case with distinguished English. men of letters, he won his first more emphatic recognition in America. In 1852 Crosby and Nichols of Boston brought out a volume of his essays with the title of Miscellanies, under the editorial care of Thomas Starr King. In 1858 the American Unitarian Association brought out another and fuller volume entitled Studies of Christianity, edited by William R. Alger. A little later he was invited to visit Boston and give a course of lectures before the Lowell Institute, and had he come these profound and brilliant books would have prepared for him a flattering welcome. He gave the invitation a favorable answer; but the first interest of our people was drafted into the stern

issues of the Civil War, Mr. Martineau, like many another Englishman, was of South-side sympathy, and the engagement was postponed to another day that never dawned.

There came a change. University College had been established in London on that broad principle of "free learning" which Manchester New College had struggled so long and so heroically to make secure. To a certain extent the two institutions became competitors, and Manchester New College suffered from the competition. Lay students were attracted to the younger and better equipped institution. The decision was made to make the rival an ally; and in 1853 Manchester New College was moved to London. She here gave up in the main her secular courses, for which the confederate institution could the better care, and confined herself to theology and allied studies.

This change brought extra tax upon Mr. Martineau. Manchester was one hour from Liverpool; London was six hours; and this long journey must be taken to keep appointment with his classes. He was obliged to make longer and less frequent visits, compressing into a day or two days work that would better have been distributed through four or five. Of course the arrangement was wearisome and unsatisfactory.

For four years, however, it continued, until 1857, when he was invited to come to London and devote all his time to the College. The invitation was accepted; and the relations with his church, which twenty-five years of faithful toil had consecrated, were sundered. On the second of August he gave his parting sermon, in which he told his people that the one deep faith that had determined his word and work among them was the "living union of God with our Humanity." This further passage for its touch of mental history should be quoted: "Long did this faith pine obscurely within me, ere it could find its way to any