In short, there is to be found in the pages of this strangely curious and tell-tale volume, abundant evidence that the woman who could collect, transcribe, and find an interest in preserving such "secrets," as many of those here, must, according to English nineteenth-century codes and feelings, have been lost to every sense of decency, and deplorably ignorant of the laws, and even of the true nature of morality. But there is no reason to think that Catherine fell in these respects at all lower than the general level of her age and country. There is ample proof, on the contrary, that in these, as in all other matters, Catherine was essentially a woman of her time—in no respect in advance of her time, or behind it; but furnishing a full and fair expression and type of her age and class, as is ever the case with vigorous, bustling, strong, practical natures of her stamp. The men, who are before their time, whose domain is the future, to their utter exclusion from all dominion over the present, are of another sort. [Sidenote: BIOGRAPHIC JUDGMENTS.] The writers and readers of biographies are, as it seems to the author of the present, too much wont to feel themselves called upon to express, or at least to form a judgment, as to the amount of moral approbation or condemnation to be awarded to the object of their examination. They continually suffer their thoughts to be drawn from the legitimate and useful study of their subject, by a constant consideration of the judgment to be passed on such or such individual soul by the one all-seeing Judge, alone competent to solve any such question. They talk of "making allowance," as the phrase goes; and spend much weighing on the quantum of such allowance admissible. Vain speculation surely, and quite beside the purpose! Not on the ground of "charitable construction" being due, and of "judging not," &c. (for lack of charity towards a fellow-creature, or other evil passion whatever, can hardly find place in our thoughts of one, whose exit from our scene was four centuries ago), but because such questions are insoluble, and if they were soluble, would be unprofitable. For we are not in the position of the bedside physician, whose duty is to alleviate the pangs of the sufferer, and to struggle against the individual malady by individual appliances. We are in the place of the _post-mortem_ anatomist, who, without reference to the sufferings of the deceased, has only to ascertain that a certain amount of mischief to the machine he is examining, resulted from such and such circumstances. And this information is useful only on account of his persuasion that other similar machines will be in like circumstances similarly affected.