The introductory volume of the _History of the Peace_ was published soon after the Atkinson _Letters_. The next work which she undertook was a great labor--the rendering into English of Comte's _Positive Philosophy_. What she accomplished with this book was not a mere translation, nor could it be precisely described as a condensation; it was both these and more. Comte had propounded his groundwork of philosophy and his outline of all the sciences in six bulky volumes, full of repetitions, and written in an imperfect French style. Harriet Martineau rendered the whole substance of these six volumes into two of clear English, orderly, consecutive, and scientific in method as in substance. So well was her work accomplished that Comte himself adopted it for his students' use, removing from his list of books for Positivists his own edition of his course, and recommending instead the English version by Miss Martineau. It thus by-and-bye came to pass that Comte's own work fell entirely out of use, and his complete teachings became inaccessible to the French people in their own tongue; so that twenty years afterwards, when one of his disciples wished to call public attention to the master's work as teaching the method of social science by which the French nation must find its way back to prosperity after the great war, he was constrained to ask Harriet Martineau's permission to re-translate her version. Comte wrote her the warmest expressions of his gratitude; but this he owed her on another ground besides the one of the value of her labors in popularizing his work so ably. While she was laboring at her task, Mr. Lombe, then High Sheriff of Norfolk, sent her a cheque for L500, which he begged her to accept, since she was doing a work which he had long desired to see accomplished, but which he knew could not possibly be remunerative to her. She accepted the money, but with her customary generosity in pecuniary affairs, she employed more than half of it in paying the whole expenses of publication, and arranged that the proceeds of the sale, whatever they might be, should be shared with M. Comte.