Few can walk alone. The staff of Christianity is the necessary support of human weakness. An acquaintance with the nature of man and virtue, with just sentiments on the attributes, would be sufficient, without a voice from heaven, to lead some to virtue, but not the mob. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: _Hints_, in ‘Posthumous Works.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Her character sketched by her daughter.] Mary Wollstonecraft was one of those beings who appear once perhaps in a generation, to gild humanity with a ray which no difference of opinion nor chance of circumstances can cloud. Her genius was undeniable. She had been bred in the hard school of adversity, and having experienced the sorrows entailed on the poor and the oppressed, an earnest desire was kindled within her to diminish these sorrows. Her sound understanding, her intrepidity, her sensibility, and eager sympathy, stamped all her writings with force and truth, and endowed them with a tender charm that enchants while it enlightens. She was one whom all loved who had ever seen her.... “Open as day to melting charity,” with a heart brimful of generous affection, yearning for sympathy, she had fallen on evil days, and her life had been one course of hardship, poverty, lonely struggle, and bitter disappointment. MARY SHELLEY: quoted in ‘William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries,’ by C. Kegan Paul. * * * * * [Sidenote: Appearance.] Of all the lions or _literati_ I have seen here, Mary Imlay’s countenance is the best, infinitely the best: the only fault in it is an expression somewhat similar to what the prints of Horne Tooke display--an expression indicating superiority; not haughtiness, not sarcasm, in Mary Imlay, but still it is unpleasant. Her eyes are light brown, and although the lid of one of them is affected by a little paralysis, they are the most meaning I ever saw.... As for Godwin himself, he has large, noble eyes, and a _nose_--oh, most abominable nose! Language is not vituperatious enough to describe the effect of its downward elongation. ROBERT SOUTHEY: _Letter to J. Cottle, March, 1797_, in the former’s ‘Life and Correspondence,’ edited by Rev. C. C. Southey, M. A. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1849. * * * * * [Sidenote: Mary and Godwin.] Coleridge asked me if I had ever seen Mary Wollstonecraft, and I said, I had once for a few moments, and that she seemed to me to turn off Godwin’s objection to something she advanced with quite a playful, easy air. He replied that “this was only one instance of the ascendency which people of imagination exercised over those of mere intellect.”... He had a great idea of Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s powers of conversation; none at all of her talents for book-making. WILLIAM HAZLITT: _My First Acquaintance with Poets_, in ‘Sketches and Essays,’ edited by Wm. Carew Hazlitt. London: Bell and Daldy, 1869.