She had the unusual capacity which the gods only are said to give--that of seeing herself as others saw her. She saw her own life and intellectual power in its strength and in its limitation, as though she stood away from them and looked at them; she saw them, as it were, palpable and apart from herself. Of imagination, which sheds sunshine over style, she had little. Her pictures were etchings rather than paintings. Her strength lay in directness of expression and practical thought She saw social facts and their influences, their nature and sequences, with a vividness no other writer of her day did. When she had completed the translation of Comte's "Positive Philosophy," she placed at my disposal twenty-five copies to give to persons unable to buy them, but able to profit by them; and to extend the knowledge of its principles. She offered me the publication of an edition of "Household Education." No book like it had been written before, and none since. Four hundred copies were sold by my arrangement. The book was mainly intended for women. The review of it for the _Reasoner_* was written by my wife, as I advocated that women should take their own affairs in the press into their own hands, and give their own opinion on what concerned them. Miss Martineau's object in writing "Household Education" was, she told me, "to indicate that, in her opinion, education should be on a philosophical basis," adding: "I should see the great point of it is ignoring rank in so important a matter as the development of human beings. It was written for Buckingham Palace and the humblest cottage where life is decently conducted." Miss Martineau lived twenty-two years after receiving prognostications of early decease. Had she not been a woman of courage she would have died, as was suggested to her. She understood that she must accept new conditions of life. She had a bed made in a railway carriage, and went down with her maids to Ambleside, and never left her house except to take air and get the relief which the smoking of a cigarette gave her, as she sat on summer evenings just outside the open windows of her sitting-room. She might have given herself greater liberty, for she did not die of heart ailment after all. * Reasoner, vol. vi. pp. 378-9 and 390. As I have seen in women of thought, Harriet Martineau, like George Eliot, grew handsomer as she grew older, and acquired that queenly dignity, such as is seen in George Richmond's painting of Miss Martineau in mature years. She devoted all her diversified genius to inspire public affairs with loftier aims and persistent purpose. She was one of those Christians mentioned by Shakespeare who "mean to be saved by believing rightly."* Harriet Martineau did, and these words of Flavius might be her epitaph. * "Twelfth Night," act iii., scene 2. CHAPTER XVI. THE THREE NEWMANS [Illustration: Newman]