CHAPTER VI. · Part 2

Mary Wollstonecraft did not find it difficult to agree with Rousseau that many women had sunk to a state of deep degradation, but, she asked: "A qui la faute?" It was man who brought her there, and she expected man to lift her on to a more exalted plane.

The Julie of Rousseau's "_Nouvelle Héloise_" impresses us as another inconsistency. She displays, it is true, the characteristic submissiveness to a characteristically masterful parent, and the usual notions of virtue consisting chiefly in the preservation of reputation which Mary attacks so vigorously in the _Rights of Women_, but Julie has far more individuality than the average young woman of the period. She rather leads her lover than he her. The _Nouvelle Héloise_, however, displays Rousseau's sentimental vein, and is therefore more directly irrational than anything else he wrote. The Sophie of _Emile_ is partly the creation of his intellect, the Julie of the _Nouvelle Héloise_ almost exclusively that of his sentiment.

In the fifth book of _Emile_, therefore, sentimentality only plays an occasional part. Rousseau's intellect assigns to woman the place which she ought to fill in society. A writer on female education, says Lord John Morley, may consider woman as destined to be a wife, or a mother, or a human being; as the companion of man, as the rearer of the young, or as an independent personality, endowed with talents and possibilities in less or greater number, and capable as in the case of men of being trained to the best or the worst use, or left to rust unused[46]. Rousseau insists upon the first, makes little of the second, and utterly ignores the third. Emile is brought up to be above all a man; Sophie, however, is given no chance of attaining the necessary qualifications for womanhood and motherhood and is merely educated to be an obedient and submissive companion to her husband. Her opinions are modelled upon Emile's, and in no matter of importance, not even in religion, is she allowed to choose for herself. The last is an emphatic denial of the faculty of Reason in women. That a woman of this stamp, accustomed to mental and moral dependence, is all unfit to educate her own children, is self-evident, nor did Rousseau destine her for this task. As soon as the child has been weaned, the mother passes out of the educational scheme, her place and that of the father being taken by the instructor.

Mary Wollstonecraft regards women in the first place as human beings and asserts their right to be educated. They are in possession of the faculty of Reason, which in them is as capable of being perfected as in their lord and master, man. Their conduct and manners, however, show that their minds are in no healthy state. Having been taught that their chief aim in life is to make a wealthy marriage, they sacrifice everything to beauty and attractiveness of appearance. Instead of cherishing nobler ambitions, they are satisfied to remain in that state of perpetual childhood in which the tyranny of man has purposely kept them. The relative education has made them utterly dependent on masculine opinion. Rousseau, who calls opinion the tomb of virtue in men, recommends it to women as its "high throne", thus introducing a sexual code of morality. They know that the flattering sense of physical superiority makes man prefer them feeble and clinging for protection, and accordingly they cultivate physical weakness and dependence. A puny appetite is considered by them "the height of human perfection". Why did not Rousseau extend his excellent advice regarding outdoor sports and games to girls? They would not care for dolls if their involuntary confinement within doors did not incapacitate them from healthier pursuits. Thus the physical inferiority of women is partly of man's own creation, and might be to a large extent remedied.

Once the right of being educated has been granted to women, they must of necessity develop into suitable companions to their husbands and affectionate parents to their children. To assert that woman's only duty consists in catering for the happiness of her lord and master is taking a sordid view of her possibilities. Granting that woman has a soul, and that the promise of immortality applies also to her, it follows naturally that the cultivation of that soul is her chief business in life. The prevailing notion of a sexual character, therefore, is subversive of all morality. Soldiers, who like women are sent into the world before their minds have been stored with knowledge or fortified by principles, show the same deplorable lack of common sense.

Scattered through the book are a number of rather desultory remarks from which may be gathered the author's notions regarding the baleful influence of slavery upon the moral aspirations of her sex. Nearly all contemporary authors agreed that woman's chief aim ought to be "to please". Among their number were Mrs. Barbauld, Mrs. Piozzi, Mme de Genlis and Mme de Staël. From the first the notion was inculcated that the chief object is to make an advantageous match, "it is acknowledged that they spend many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments, meanwhile strength of mind and body are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves--the only way women can rise in the world--by marriage."

The cardinal virtues of the sex are therefore those qualities which are best calculated to make them acceptable to men, as gentleness, sweetness of temper, docility and a "spaniel-like" affection. Men complain, and with reason, of the follies and caprices of women, forgetting that they are the natural outcome of an ignorance which is very far removed from innocence.

The education of women, such as it is, consists only in some kind of preparation for social life, instead of being considered the first step to form a rational being, advancing by gradual steps towards perfection. Thus a woman is methodically prepared for the bondage that awaits her, and never gets an opportunity of asserting her better possibilities. A sexual character is established by artificial means, and in this circumstance Mary sees the chief cause of woman's moral decay, for which she herself is only partly responsible.

All her life she remains powerless to get away from the shackles of first impressions. Her conduct is regulated by absurd notions of a specially feminine virtue, chastity, modesty and propriety. Instead of realising that virtue--which surely ought to be the same for women as for men--is nothing but love of truth and fortitude, she confounds with it reputation. Respect for the opinion of the world is considered one of her chief duties, for does not Rousseau himself declare that reputation is no less indispensable than chastity?

For true modesty--which is only that purity of thought which is characteristic of cultivated minds--she substitutes the coquettish affectations which are to draw the lover on while seemingly rejecting him. The insincerity of these principles of daily conduct tend to develop in the female mind that cunning which Rousseau calls natural and accordingly recommends! For a woman to show her actual feelings is to be guilty of the most flagrant breach of modesty.

Where writers have granted to man the monopoly of reason, they have given to woman as a substitute that which is delicately termed "sensibility", but is in reality nothing but a morbid sort of sensuality, the consequence of devouring novels which have the effect of inflaming the senses, and the only antidote to which is healthy exercise.

Mary Wollstonecraft, like the Bluestocking moralists, regarded the quality of sensibility with favour only when regulated by Reason. In her enjoyment of the beauty of natural scenery, according to her own analysis, it is her very reason which "obliged her to permit her feelings to be her criterion." (Letters from Sweden). But it was one of her chief contentions that far too much stress was laid on the cultivation of that kind of sensibility in women which in its very exaggeratedness leads to the worst excesses of sentimentalism. The eighteenth century interpretation of the term "sensibility" with its concomitant absurdities awakened in her feelings of intense disgust. All Rousseau's errors in her opinion arose from its source. To indulge his feelings, and not to imbibe moral strength at the fountain of Nature, or to satisfy a thirst for scientific investigation, he sought for solitude when meditating the rapturous but dangerous love-scenes of the _Nouvelle Héloise_. No doubt these scenes were in her mind when she wrote: "Love such as the glowing pen of genius has traced, exists not, or only resides in those exalted, fervid imaginations that have sketched such dangerous pictures." She only sees in them "sheer sensuality under a sentimental veil." The sentimentalists who, like Richardson and Rousseau, laid bare the play of the human passions to a reading public consisting almost entirely of women, whose minds were not sufficiently occupied to keep their imagination within bounds, "set fire to a house for the sake of making the pumps play."

Morbid sensibility, in its exaggerated tenderness over insignificant trifles and corresponding indifference to real social evils, excludes from the mind all sense of moral duty.

Two writers of Mary Wollstonecraft's time had shown a more than usual narrowness of views. They were the Rev. Dr. James Fordyce, author of a number of sermons addressed to women, and Dr. Gregory, who had written a "_Legacy to his Daughters_." The former proceeded from the propositions which had formed the basis of Rousseau's argument. He is so thoroughly convinced of the all-round superiority of man, that he assumes the natural folly of woman to be the cause of all matrimonial differences. He feels sure that women who behave to their husbands with "respectful observance", studying their humours and overlooking their mistakes, submitting to their opinion, passing by little instances of unevenness, caprice or fashion, and relieving their anxieties will find their homes "the abode of domestic bliss."

Fordyce held the principal charm of women to be a sickly sort of delicacy which, as it flatters the vanity of the male, is not wholly without effect even in our days, in spite of all Mrs. Fawcett may say to the contrary. Men of sensibility, he says, "desire in every woman soft features and a flowing voice, a form not robust, and demeanour delicate and gentle." This hint could only have the effect of making women more insipid than even Rousseau's Sophie, who at least after her marriage shared her husband's outdoor exercise. But the worst part of Fordyce's argument is that passage in which he advises young women to remember that the devout attitude of pious recollection (in prayer) is most likely to conquer a man's heart. When a clergyman thus by well-meant advice perverts his flock, what are we to expect from the grosser bulk of mankind!

As Mary Wollstonecraft justly points out, there is about these sermons, for all their sentimental posing and bombastic phrasing, a certain sneaking voluptuousness which would strike a modern woman as most insulting; a confident tone of proprietorship which could not fail to stimulate any woman of independent temper into revolt. Mrs. Rauschenbusch points out that Dr. Fordyce was acting in accordance with the tendencies of the Church in advocating that meekness and bearing of injuries without retaliation which are taught by the Gospel.

What particularly galled Mary was the hypocritical prostration of men before woman's charms, that mock politeness which seemed to her the most cruel proof of the degradation of her sex. The description of women by Fordyce as "smiling, fair innocents", and the frequent use of terms like "fair defects", "amiable weakness", etc. where women were concerned, sounded to her as an insult.

In Gregory's "_Legacy to his Daughters_" the case was slightly different. The author was an affectionate father, whose anxiety to shield his motherless girls induced him to become an author. That an honest, well-intentioned man like he should be capable of writing such trash makes us realise the hopelessness of Mary's task. He openly recommends dissimulation. For a woman to show what she feels must be termed indelicate. A girl should be careful to hide her gaiety of heart, "lest the men who beheld her might either suppose that she was not entirely dependent on their protection for her safety, or else entertain dark suspicions as to her modesty." In the lives of the poor Gregory girls Mrs. Grundy was omnipotent!

Unreserved praise, on the contrary, is bestowed upon Mrs. Catherine Macaulay's "_Letters on Education with Observations on Religion and Metaphysical Subjects_", which had appeared in 1790, shortly before their author's death. Mrs. Macaulay had been among the opponents of Burke in a vindication of a French government which owed its authority to the will of a majority; and also in matters educational her views coincided with those of Mary Wollstonecraft. She believed in co-education up to a certain age, which has the obvious advantage of making the daily intercourse between people of different sexes less strained and more natural not only in early youth, but also later in life, when the relations between the sexes ought to be based upon mutual appreciation and esteem. Like Mary Wollstonecraft, she protested against what she called "the absurd notion of a sexual excellence", which not only excluded the female sex from every political right, but left them hardly a civil right to save them from the grossest injuries. It was an unlucky circumstance indeed that the only woman who might have granted Mary the full support of her reputation as the author of a very successful work on the "_History of England from the Accession of James the First to that of the Brunswick Line_" should have been removed by death at a time when that support might have been of so much value to one who felt forsaken by the majority of her own sex.[47]

Mary Wollstonecraft pleads the necessity of giving woman an education like that which is granted to man, that she may learn to take Reason for her guide. Only then will she be able to perform the specific duties of her sex. But there is a weightier argument for the cultivation of Reason in women. Their deplorable deficiency in this quality has so far made them consider only earthly interests and disqualified them from looking beyond the affairs of this world to the promise of that eternity for which only the soul can fit them. It is in pointing out the evil consequences to the soul of a life devoted to pleasure that Mary's pleadings attain their greatest depth of pathos and intensity. The profound piety of her character makes her protest against this sordid view of life.

"Surely" she exclaims, "she has not an immortal soul who can loiter life away merely employed to adorn her person that she may amuse the languid hours and soften the cares of a fellow-creature who is willing to be enlivened by her smiles and tricks when the serious business of life is over."

Once a woman has attained her aim of a profitable marriage, the circumstances of which almost exclude the possibility of love, she turns all her "natural" cunning to account to establish a sort of mock tyranny over her master. She lives in the enjoyment of her present influence, forgetting that adoration will cease with the loss of her charms, and that woman is "quickly scorned when not adored". In later years there will be no sound basis of friendship arising from equality of tastes to take its place, no reflection to be substituted for sensation, and their earthly punishment consists in a miserable old age. Even when married to a sensible husband, who thinks for her, what will be the fate of a woman who is left a widow with a large family? "Unable to educate her sons, or to impress them with respect, she pines under the anguish of unavailing impotent regret." The passage in which she pictures her ideal of rational womanhood, who, far from being rendered helpless by her husband's death, rises to the occasion and devotes herself with a strong heart to the discharge of her maternal duties, finally reaping the reward of her care when she sees her children attain a strength of character enabling them to endure adversity, is a piece of true eloquence. "The task of life fulfilled, she calmly waits for the sleep of death, and rising from the grave, may say: "Behold, thou gavest me a talent, and here are five talents".[48]

There never was a more fervent champion of marriage and domesticity than Mary. The sanctity of matrimony needed no enforcement by means of a wedding ceremony, but consisted in the mutual affection and esteem which was felt. Hence her violent criticism of loveless marriages contracted from mercenary motives and her severe condemnation of the harshness with which society treated poor ruined girls.

The twelfth chapter of the _Rights of Women_ contains a plea for national education. Mary is here seen treading in the steps of Talleyrand, and forsaking her old masters Locke and Rousseau. They both advocate a private education. Locke wants to educate the "gentleman", making his scheme practicable in isolated applications, but disregarding the bulk of the nation.

Rousseau, who did regard the mass of the people in matters of political speculation, entirely loses sight of the public interest in favour of the private in his educational scheme, thus reducing it to mere abstract speculation, incapable of extensive realisation. But Mary Wollstonecraft adopts the more practical view of the active socialist. The children of the nation are to be educated without the slightest reference to class distinction, and they ought to be brought up together. The exclusive teaching of a child by a tutor will make him acquire a sort of premature manhood, and will not tend to make him a good citizen. He is to be a member of society, and it will not do to regard him as a unit, complete in himself. The same view limits the freedom of the individual to what is compatible with the rights of others. To ignore the duties of the individual towards society would be to build the entire structure of education upon an unsound basis.

This plea for co-education will be seen to be a recantation from former opinions expressed in the "_Original Stories_". The latter had their rise chiefly in the experience gained of boarding-schools during her stay at Eton with the Priors. They seemed to her absolute hotbeds of vice and folly, where an utter want of modesty introduced the most repulsive habits. The younger boys delighted in mischief, the older in every form of vice. The colleges were full of the relics of popery, the 'mouth-service', which makes all religion but a cold parade of show, and the educators themselves were very poor champions of true religion. What Mary saw at Eton confirmed her in the belief that dayschools were to be preferred, as the only way of combining the advantages of private and public education.

That important part of education which aims at awakening the affections can only be given in the home of loving parents, and only that man can be a good citizen who has first learned to be a good son and brother. A country day-school, affording the best opportunities for unstinted physical exercise, might be expected to be productive of the greatest benefit to young pupils. The division of the educational task between school and home will moreover leave the children the necessary amount of freedom which is denied them when living the cramped lives of boarding-schools.

To make women the companions of men, and to remove the unhealthy atmosphere of an artificial separation of the sexes which produces indelicacy in both, she thinks it necessary that boys and girls should be brought up together. All children should be dressed regardless of class and submitted to the same rules of discipline. They should not be made to remain in the schoolroom for longer than an hour, and be taken out into the schoolyard, or better still, for walks. A good deal of outdoor instruction of the kind Rousseau described might be given by means of spectacular illustration.

At the age of nine comes the first great change in the daily routine. The two sexes will still be together in the morning, engaged in common pursuits, but the afternoon will find the girls bent over their needlework, millinery, etc., while the boys' further instruction will depend on their choice of a trade. Special schools ought to be established for those whose superior abilities render them fit to pursue some course of scientific studies.

Being thus together will take the edge off that unnatural restraint which too often marks the relations between children of a different sex. The position of the teachers--not ushers--should be such as to render them entirely independent of their pupils' parents. The usher's ambiguous position of mixed authority and submission frequently rendered him an object of ridicule to the children. Talleyrand, from whom Mary in all probability borrowed this suggestion, even wanted to make the children independent of their masters in respect of punishment, by having it inflicted only after the offender had been tried and found guilty by his peers.

It will be seen that the "_Vindication of the Rights of Women_" touches upon a great many points which at the present time have become foregone conclusions, but which, nevertheless, were in Mary's days daring speculations, which were received with anything but general approval.

If it should now appear to us that some of her conclusions were rather too sweeping, that the very physical inferiority of woman which she is willing to grant makes it impossible for her to combine in her person the wife, the mother and the social woman, and that a too ardent application of her theories of the social possibilities of her sex is responsible for some abominations of the public hustings, who, banging their fists on the table, "refuse to be the playthings of men any longer"--it should be remembered that she insisted with equal emphasis upon the cultivation of the female qualities, and that it was not granted her to be taught moderation by the repulsive spectacle of female extremism in later times! Moreover, in the introduction to the first edition of the _Vindication_, she expresses her disgust of "masculine women". And yet the type of a "masculine woman" in Mary's days, with her "ardour in hunting, shooting and gaming", was not nearly so objectionable as her modern sister.

It is, indeed, very difficult to find anything to praise in the _Vindication_ when viewed as a literary effort. Mary Wollstonecraft herself clearly did not regard it as such. The importance of the object by which she was animated made her disdain to cull her phrases or polish her style, wishing rather to persuade by the force of her arguments than dazzle by the elegance of her language. Unfortunately the former is not inconsiderably weakened by a deplorable tendency to reiteration, and a general desultoriness and lack of system which cannot fail to strike the reader. The "flowery diction" which she professed herself anxious to avoid, but did not succeed in completely banishing, is responsible for a great deal of the turgidity and false rhetoric which disfigure certain passages.

Godwin, whose unemotional nature enabled him to judge of his wife's work without prejudice and whose _Memoirs_ contain a most sincere and therefore valuable criticism, although admiring the courage of her convictions, the disinterestedness of her motives and the originality of her contentions, finds fault with what he calls "the stern and rugged nature" of certain passages which will probably impress the modern reader as coarse and indelicate. Her great devotion to the cause may account for the "amazonian" temper which fills some parts of her book, more especially the "animadversions" on the opinions of those of her opponents whose "backs demanded the scourge". Her disapproval of Lord Chesterfield's moral standpoint has already been referred to. Mary Wollstonecraft was not in the habit of mincing matters, and her sincerity and consequent frankness brought her the ill-will of many.

The publication of the _Rights of Women_ at once brought Mary into prominence. Unfortunately, the scare of a French invasion and the trial of the reformers were most unfavourable to the spread of any new ideas in England. From her sisters she had little sympathy, and "poor Bess" rather spitefully alluded to information she had received to the effect that "Mrs. Wollstonecraft was grown quite handsome" and intended going to Paris. For this trip to France there were several causes. In the first place she felt intensely interested in the march of events there, which were hastening to a crisis, Louis XVI being a prisoner in the hands of the Convention. The second motive--perhaps the principal--was connected with her friendship for Mr. Fuseli, the celebrated Swiss painter; but whether she hoped to make the trip in company with the Fuselis and her friend Johnson, as Mr. Kegan Paul supposes[49], or wanted to get away from the influence of the artist, with whom Godwin informs us she was in love, is uncertain. The end was that she went to Paris alone in December 1792, and boarded at the house of Mme Filliettaz, a lady in whose school Eliza and Everina had been teachers, but who was absent from home, so that Mary's French was put to the severe test of conversation with the servants.

She now became a close spectator of the progress of that Revolution which upon the whole had her sympathy. Yet it was with mingled feelings that she saw the chariot pass her house in which the royal prisoner was conveyed to his trial a few days after her arrival. The sight of Louis going to meet death with more dignity than she expected from his character, brought before her mind the picture of his ancestor Louis XIV, entering his capital after a glorious victory, and pity, her ruling passion, interceded for the poor victim who had to pay for the crimes of his forefathers.

Economy prescribed her removal from the Filliettaz mansion to less pretentious quarters at Neuilly, where she was left a great deal to herself, save for an occasional visit to her English friends in Paris Miss Williams and Mrs. Christie. It was at the latter's house that a meeting took place which decided the next few years of her life.

Her days at Neuilly were thus spent in retirement. She had a devoted old gardener to wait upon her and generally went out for a walk in the evening, the hours of daylight being given up to the composition of a new work, combining history with philosophy and inspired by the stirring events to which she was such a close witness. Although not published until some years after, "_An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, and the Effect it has produced in Europe_" was written in the first months of 1793 at Neuilly. The Advertisement with which it opens declares the author's intention of extending the work to two or three more volumes, a considerable part of which, it informs us, had already been written; but Godwin assures us that no part of the proposed continuation was found among her papers after her death. The only existing volume both in style and method shows a very decided advance upon the earlier _Vindication_. Mary's narrative powers were even greater than her capacity for philosophy, and her imagination had been fired by the thrilling accounts she had received from her Parisian friends of the march of events.

The greater freedom and fluency of the style, the greater cogency of the reasoning and the dignity of the narrative render the volume very pleasant reading, the more so, as it shows great moderation and impartiality as far as actual facts are concerned. That the delineations of personal character are not always felicitous may be due to the fact that the author obtained all her information from witnesses who were not free from the prejudices which strong party-feelings awaken. On the whole, however, Mary succeeded in placing herself above her subject and in proving that time had taught her to modify her extreme views and made her readier to grant certain concessions. The book is a compromise between her former principles of abstract philosophy and those of gradual evolution. Although unwilling to abandon her original view that "Reason beaming on the grand theatre of political changes, can prove the only sure guide to direct us to a favourable or just conclusion", and that the erroneous inferences of sensibility should be carefully guarded against, yet she felt sufficient appreciation for her old enemy Burke's principle of growth to admit that the Revolution was the natural consequence of intellectual improvement, gradually proceeding to perfection.

Never before had her hopes been so sanguine. It seemed to her that the time was at hand for the final overthrow of the tremendous empire of superstition and hypocrisy. What, in comparison with the great end in view, were the inevitable horrors of the Revolution, produced by desperate and enraged factions? There is not a single page in the history of man but is tarnished by some foul deed or bloody transaction. That the vices of man in a savage state make him appear an angel compared with the refined villain of artificial life finds its cause in those unjust plans of government which exist in every part of the globe. A simpler and more effective political system would be sure to check those evils, and a faithful adherence to the new principles will lead mankind towards happiness.

Her feelings for mankind, however strong, were not powerful enough to interfere with the coolness of her judgment, and the light of her reason which was so soon to be temporarily eclipsed by the conflict of passions a thousand times more powerful because proceeding from within, was never obscured by the contemplation of social evils, which could not disturb her optimistic faith.

The history of the French Revolution is traced down to the king's removal to Paris, where he was sent to stand for trial. It is, upon the whole, a successful attempt at impartial narrative not only of the course of events in Paris, but also of the causes which produced them, the author indulging in a minute survey of the state of French society and politics previous to and during the catastrophe. The severity of the judgment she passes on the king and more especially on Marie Antoinette has been commented upon. Here especially it should be remembered that she had everything from hearsay. What she heard of the character and actions of the queen struck her as characteristic of the type of womanhood she had so violently attacked in the _Rights of Women_. She saw in Marie Antoinette the product of education by a priest, who had instilled into her all those vices which Mary held in abhorrence. She was devoted to a life of pleasure, vain of her good looks, but dead to intelligence and benevolence, using the fascination of her cultivated smiles and artificial weakness to exercise the tyranny of sex over a sensual, besotted husband, whose depravity she completed; an artificial dissembler, regarding only decorum, without any reference to moral character, making free with the nation's money to support a worthless brother, and depraving the morals of those around her; in short, Mary Wollstonecraft regarded her as the Babylonian scarlet woman, a sort of "painted Jezebel." Her judgment is diametrically opposed to that of Burke, who went into such raptures over the beauty and dignity of the queen, and gave vent to such a burst of indignation at her sad and ignominious fate that Thomas Paine saw fit to remind him that "while pitying the plumage, he was forgetting the dying bird."

The outer revolution which was to assert the rights of the species was followed by an inner revolution in the individual which came to constitute the tragedy of Mary Wollstonecraft's life. The Father of Nature, whom she thanked for having made her so intensely alive to happiness, had also implanted in her breast an overwhelming capacity for sorrow, and after a short taste of the former, the latter became her portion to such an extent that life seemed to her unendurable.

The letter to Mr. Johnson referring to the king's trial was the last news her friends in England received from her for eighteen months. In February 1793 war broke out between England and France and Mary's nationality made it advisable for her to keep close. Among her new acquaintances was an American, Captain Gilbert Imlay, and the tenderness which about this time she began to cherish for him, was no doubt fostered by a sense of loneliness. Moreover, that affection for Mr. Fuseli which she had so resolutely suppressed,--Fuseli was happily married--left her more vulnerable than before to Cupid's arrows, in addition to which Imlay was to her the representative of that nation which embodied her ideals of liberty and virtue. She gave herself up body and soul to the all-devouring passion of love, and Reason, seeing another in full possession of the field, "with a sigh retired."

Mr. Imlay had served as a captain in the revolutionary army during the War of Independence, and derived some slight literary fame from the publication of a short monograph on the state of America, entitled "_Topographical Description of the Western Territory of North America_." He was, therefore, a man of some accomplishments, which makes his subsequent behaviour to Mary all the more unpardonable.

At the time of Mary's first meeting him he appears to have been in business--probably his line was timber--and the dealings of his trade claimed a great deal of his time and nearly all his attention. Circumstances putting marriage out of the question,--a wedding-ceremony would have betrayed that nationality she was so anxious to conceal--she consented to live with him as his wife by virtue of their mutual affections. His correspondence shows that he regarded her as his lawful wife, and as Mary fully expected the alliance to be of a permanent nature, and believed him capable of that affection which Reason causes to subside into friendship after the first flame of passion is spent, she was acting in full accordance with the views she had repeatedly expressed.[50]

The letters which she wrote him in the first stage of their growing intimacy are full of exquisite tenderness. Her repeated "God bless you", which Sterne says is equal to a kiss, shows the depth of her feelings towards him. Seldom was a purer, more unselfish love wasted upon a more unworthy recipient. Imlay was a "mere man", of a cheerful disposition and to a certain extent good-natured, but easy-going, self-indulgent, inconstant and incapable of appreciating a noble love which he himself could not cherish. He evidently looked upon his relation to Mary as the amusement of a day,--she lavished upon him that which might have made a greater soul happy for life. She tried to draw him up to her level and failed; her efforts to cure him of his sordid love of money which so disgusted her only irritated him, and made him anxious to cast off the bonds of a union of which he soon began to tire. Their agreement had been entered upon in a different spirit, and it was Mary who paid the full penalty of disillusionment. A letter he wrote to Mrs. Bishop in November 1794, when the estrangement had already begun, at a time when Mary was deeply conscious of the fact that he neglected her for business and perhaps worse, in which he states that he is "in but indifferent spirits occasioned by his long absence from Mrs. Imlay and their little girl" shows that he cannot even be acquitted from the charge of absolute hypocrisy.

Such was the individual whom Mary had appointed the sole keeper of her possibilities of happiness. Love had come to her late in life, but when it did, it took the shape of that complete surrender in which consists woman's greatest bliss and which she had never thought possible. It came as a revelation and brought experience in its train. Who shall describe the anguish of her heart when after a short spell of ecstatic bliss, the inevitable truth began to dawn upon her! Mary was not an essentially sensual woman; almost from the first she looked for that sympathy of the mind which was not forthcoming. She found him wanting, and the recognition of this probably irritated him, and ultimately made him transfer his easy-going affections to those who were less exacting. He was far too matter-of-fact to sympathise with or even understand her moments of tenderness, and too much occupied with his business to be much of a companion to her. In the month of September, after a few months together, he went to Hâvre. Then it was that Mary's troubles began.

In her letters she repeatedly protested against his prolonged absences. She grew to hate commerce, which kept him away from her. His promise "to make a power of money to indemnify her for his absence", failed to produce any impression. Perhaps there was already then the vague fear of a possible desertion haunting her. She was in expectations, and the tenderness with which her letters refer to the coming event would stamp a repetition of her hopes and fears as an indelicacy. For the first time in her life, the champion of the rights of women was happy in acknowledging the superiority of a man. "Let me indulge the thought that I have thrown out some tendrils to cling to the elm by which I wish to be supported." Well might she say that this was talking a new language for her! The feelings, so long pent up and cheated of their birthright by tyrannical Reason, were indeed asserting themselves with a vengeance!

The undefined dread of coming disaster makes her letters more and more insistent. Grief and indignation at Imlay's neglect struggle for the mastery. At last he wrote to ask her to join him at Hâvre. The irritation he had felt against her--which she humbly ascribed to the querulous tone of her correspondence--had worn away and there was a brief renewal of happiness when in the spring of 1794 a little girl was born, to whom the name of Fanny was given in commemoration of the friend of Mary's youth.

In the course of the following August Imlay went to Paris, where Mary joined him in September, at the end of which month he proceeded to London on business. The extensive trade he was carrying on with Sweden and Norway at this time completely engrossed him. Mary's first letters after this fresh separation were cheerful and pleasant, although she was subject to occasional fits of depression. The conviction that Imlay was about to forsake her does not appear to have taken root until the closing month of the year. The days of the Terror were now over, and people once more breathed freely. Mary made an heroic effort to let the future take care of itself and to concentrate her attention upon her little girl, who developed an early fondness for scarlet coats and music, and on one occasion wore the red sash in honour of J. J. Rousseau, her mother confessing that "she had always been half in love with him."

Imlay's letters now became few and far between. His business-schemes were unsuccessful, and Mary took the opportunity to point out to him the absurdity of thus wasting life in preparing to live. The tone of her correspondence betrays a growing indignation at his treatment of her, which appeared in spite of herself and which repeated protestations of unalterable affection could not hide. "I do not consent to your taking any other journey," she writes, "or the little woman and I will be off the Lord knows where." She wants none of his cold kindness and distant civilities, but wishes to have him about her, enjoying life and love. The picture of sweet domesticity, of parents sharing the sacred duty of education, of pleasant evenings of homely tenderness spent at the fireside, recurred to her mind with a sense of aching regret. She would far sooner struggle with poverty than go on living this unnatural life of separation. Too proud to be under pecuniary obligations to a neglectful husband, she began to consider the possibility of having to provide for herself and her child.

When at last he allowed her to join him in England, she no longer cherished false hopes, but begged him to tell her frankly whether he had ceased to care. But Imlay wanted her support for his business-schemes. He asked her to go to Sweden and Norway for him to attend to his interests and Mary consented with a heavy heart, hoping that a complete change of surroundings might afford distraction, if not amusement, for she was feeling utterly worn out and ill.

Imlay kept up the melancholy farce a few months longer. Mary wrote him a series of long epistles from Scandinavia, into which, as a means of keeping her mind concentrated upon other matters, she inserted elaborate descriptions of the voyage, of the countries in which she was travelling, and of their inhabitants.

Of these letters, the descriptive portions of which were published in 1796, Godwin speaks highly. Their perusal caused him to change his opinion of the author of the _Rights of Women_. Their first, and so far only, meeting--in November 1791--had not prepossessed him in her favour. She seemed to him to monopolize the conversation, and prevented him from listening to Tom Paine, who never was a great talker, and whom she reduced to absolute silence. But he now learned to think highly of her literary talent. The passages dealing with personal affairs had of course been omitted, and afterwards found their way into Godwin's _Posthumous Edition of the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft_, and also into Mr. Kegan Paul's collection of _Letters to Imlay_. The tone of despair has on the whole given way to one of resigned melancholy. In spite of the sadness which prevailed in Mary's heart, the change was doing her good, and her health was improving rapidly. Before her arrival at Tonsberg in Sweden, she had felt very ill, a slow fever preyed on her every night. One day she found "a fine rivulet filtered through the rocks and confined in a basin for the cattle." The water was pure, and she determined to turn her morning-walks towards it and seek for health from the nymph of the fountain. She also wished to bathe, and there being no convenience near, took to rowing as a pleasant and at the same time useful exercise.

While thus the flush of health was returning to her cheeks, she found it easier to arrive at a conclusion. She made up her mind that there should be an end to all uncertainty. Imlay was put before a dilemma. Either they must live together after her return, or part forever. Still he kept flattering her with the hope that he might join her at Hamburg, for a trip to Switzerland, the country of her dreams since the days of Neuilly. But he did not keep his word, and when Mary landed at Dover in October 1795, she realised that all was over and that Imlay had entered into a new connection with an actress.

Then it was that Mary made up her mind to die. The harrowing details of her fruitless attempt at suicide may be found in Godwin's _Memoirs_ and also in Mr. Kegan Paul's work. After her rescue she learnt to live for her child's sake, and not to flinch from the sacred duties which tied her to life. Imlay passed out of her sphere, and she parted with him in peace. But the sufferings through which he had made her pass had stamped themselves indelibly upon her heart.

The "_Letters written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark_" met with a favourable reception. Being the narrative of foreign travel, they mark a new departure in her literary career. She held with Rousseau that travelling, as the completion of a liberal education, ought to be adopted on rational grounds.[51] The writing of a journal was to her a means of keeping the mind employed, and preventing it from dwelling overmuch on painful recollections of disappointed hopes. Her works of education and reform had been so full of the militant spirit, and her correspondence with Imlay so replete with the anguish of unrequited love, that she had not yet come to recognise the soothing effect upon the mind of a close communion with Nature. It is in the Scandinavian correspondence that the Nature-element is first met with. The contemplation of the grand coast-scenery gave her that peace and quiet for which her heart yearned. It did not bring her forgetfulness of present troubles, but it gave her the necessary strength to meet them without flinching. In her little boat, surrounded by the glorious works of Nature, she found herself for the first time capable of grappling with her problem, which the sense of human insignificance reduced to its true proportions.

The nature of her worship stamps her as the true spiritual child of Jean-Jacques. The writers of an earlier period had been able to appreciate only what is congenial in nature. The forbidding austerity of the snow-clad mountains of Switzerland had produced no raptures in Goldsmith's breast, and Cowper's English landscape owed its attractiveness to its suggestion of peaceful harmony. Rousseau had been the first to love Nature also in her sterner moods and aspects; like Wordsworth, "the sounding cataract haunted him like a passion", and the _Nouvelle Héloise_ contains the faithful record of the impressions produced upon him by the grandeur of the Valais mountains. Some of Mary's nature-descriptions--notably those of the Trolhaettan Falls, and of the rocky Norwegian coast--afford a parallel to these passages. She was deeply impressed by the wonders of Nature she witnessed, and by the exquisite loveliness of the short northern summer. "In the evening the western gales which prevail during the day, die away, the aspen leaves tremble into stillness, and reposing Nature seems to be warmed by the moon, which here assumes a genial aspect; and if a light shower has chanced to fall with the sun, the juniper, the underwood of forest, exhales a wild perfume, mixed with a thousand nameless sweets, that, soothing the heart, leave images in the memory which the imagination will ever hold dear."

There is an anticipation of Wordsworth in the last line of the above passage. Mary recognises in Nature "the nurse of sentiment", producing melancholy as well as rapture, as it touches the different chords of the human soul like the changing wind which agitates the aeolian harp.

Her worship of Nature, like that of Wordsworth, contains an element of profound piety. When she wrote her letters from Sweden, Mary had reached that stage in her religious life which is marked by a complete silence as far as dogma is concerned. Yet this silence should not be misconstrued into indifference. Her feelings on the subject were not of the nature of a systematic creed, and therefore never took an external organisation. They remained perfectly subjective in their vagueness, like the natural religion of Rousseau with which they have so much in common. Mary did not care to become an apostle of faith, to her religion was rather a matter of the inner life, which wanted no outlet into the world, but remained locked up in itself. She believed that her rational powers enabled her to discover certain portions of Truth, but that the mystery which veiled the presence of God could not be removed by Reason, but remained a matter of the heart. There is no touch of rationalism, or anything but pure sentiment, in the passage in which she describes her return from Fredericshall in a perfect summer night. "A vague pleasurable sentiment absorbed me, as I opened my bosom to the embraces of Nature, and my soul rose to its author, with the chirping of the solitary birds, which began to feel, rather than see, advancing day."

A great deal of attention is paid in the letters to the national character of the inhabitants of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, which she holds to be the result chiefly of the climatic conditions. Never had she seen the blessings of civilisation more clearly demonstrated than by the utter lack of them among the Scandinavians. Especially in Sweden, civilisation was at that time in its earliest infancy, and what struck Mary from the first was the ignorance of the people. What she saw of their manners and customs was not calculated to make her fall in love with Rousseau's golden age of simplicity. They were full of vices, and their very virtues had their origin in considerations of a lower order. They were hospitable, but their hospitality, arising from a total want of scientific pursuits, was merely the outcome of their inordinate fondness of social pleasures, "in which, the mind not having its proportion of exercise, the bottle must be pushed about."

Being ignorant of the advantages of the cultivation of the mind, they were content to remain as they were: ignorant, sluggish and indifferent to social progress. They moved in a narrow sphere, did not care for politics, had no interest whatever in literature and no topics of conversation, and were strangely incapable of appreciating the charms of Nature. Mary's experience was chiefly gained in the small provincial towns. They necessarily presented to her--so she thought--the worst side of the picture. To her, the ideal condition was "to rub off in a metropolis the rust of thought, and polish the taste which the contemplation of Nature had rendered just." But no place seemed to her so disagreeable and unimproving as a small country-town.

The refined amusements of a cultivated society being thus inaccessible to the Swede, he will choose them of the coarsest kind. Meals occupy a prominent place in the daily routine, and a good many hours are wasted at table. A "visiting-day" means a severe strain upon the powers of digestion, and to make matters worse, the brandy-bottle,--the bane of the country--passes round freely.

What Mary saw of wedded life in Sweden did not give her a high opinion of Swedish morals. The men were generally inconstant, and also the women lacked chastity--the product of the mind. The statement that in later life "the husband becomes a sot, whilst the wife spends her time in scolding the servants", likewise finds its explanation in the _Rights of Women_ as the natural result of vacancy of mind where youthful beauty and animal spirits have gone the way of all flesh!

Neither has the treatment of servants Mary's sympathy. "They are not termed slaves; yet a man may strike a man with impunity because he pays him wages." But the lot of female servants is immeasurably harder. Their having to eat a different kind of food from their masters strikes Mary as a remnant of barbarism.

The general appearance of the women is not prepossessing. Too much attention to the delights of a well-provided table makes them fat and unwieldy and soon changes the natural pink of their complexions to a sallow hue. They are uncleanly of their persons, and vanity is more inherent in them than taste. Their ignorance is even more profound than that of the males, and Mary once had the compliment paid her that "she asked men's questions."

The peasantry of Sweden impressed her as more really polite and obliging than the better-situated classes, whose cold politeness consisted chiefly in tiresome ceremonies.

In Norway, however, the unmistakable signs of a coming dawn were noticeable. A river forms the boundary between the two countries, and yet, what a difference in the manners of the inhabitants of the two sides! Instead of the sluggishness and poverty of the Swede, here are industry and consequent prosperity. It is the patient labour of men who are only seeking for a subsistence which affords leisure for the cultivation of the arts and sciences that lift man so far above his first state. The world requires the hand of man to perfect it, and as this task naturally unfolds the faculties he exercises, it is physically impossible that he should remain in Rousseau's golden age of stupidity. And although the cultivation of science in Norway is as yet in its earliest stages--the time for universities having not yet come--yet a bright future is awaiting her.

Norway seemed to Mary Wollstonecraft the country of the greatest individual freedom. The king of Denmark, it is true, was an absolute monarch, but the state of imbecility to which illness had reduced him placed the reins of government into the hands of his son the prince royal and of his wise and moderate minister Count Bernstorff. Under their almost patriarchal authority every man was left to enjoy an almost unlimited amount of freedom. The law was mild, and the lot of those it sentenced to hard labour not unnecessarily hard. She found in Norway no accumulation of property such as existed in Sweden, resulting in the abject poverty of the submerged tenth. Rich merchants were made to divide their personal fortunes among their children; and the distribution of all landed property into small farms,--one of the ideals hesitatingly put forward by Mary in the _Rights of Women_--produced a degree of equality which was found nowhere else in Europe. The tenants occupied their farms for life, which made them independent. There was every hope that drunkenness, the inherent vice of generations, would before long disappear, giving place to gallantry and refinement of manners; "but the change will not be suddenly produced."

The Norwegians love their country, but they have not yet arrived at that point where an enlarged understanding extends the love they cherish for the land of their birth to the entire human race. They have not much public spirit. However, the French Revolution meets with a great deal of sympathy among the people of Norway, who follow with the most lively interest the successes of the French arms. "So determined were they," says Mary, "to excuse everything, disgracing the struggle of freedom by admitting the tyrant's plea necessity, that I could hardly persuade them that Robespierre was a monster."

Mary hoped that the French Revolution would have the effect of making politics a subject of discussion among them, "enlarging the heart by opening the understanding," and leading to the cultivation of that public spirit the absence of which she regretted.

Although the women of Norway were not much more cultivated than their Swedish sisters, regarding custom and opinion to such an extent that Mary's educational advice was not listened to lest "the town might talk", and on the plea that "they must do as other people did"--yet they compared favourably with the latter in the matter of personal appearance and cheerfulness of disposition. They had rosy complexions, and were pronouncedly fond of dancing. They were very strict in the performance of their religious duties; yet showed the greatest toleration; nor was the Norwegian Sunday remarkable for that stupid dulness which characterises the English Sabbath, the outcome of that fanatical spirit which Mary feared was gaining ground in England.

The same lack of public spirit which Mary commented upon in her description of the national character of the Norwegians, also struck her when observing the manners and customs of the Danes in their capital. There had been a huge fire, destroying a considerable portion of the town, and held by some to be the work of Pitt. It was the general opinion, that the conflagration might have been smothered in the beginning by pulling down several houses before the flames had reached them, to which, however, the inhabitants would not consent. Mary found among the Danes a great many vices. The men led dissolute lives, and utterly neglected their wives, who were reduced to the state of mere house-slaves. Their only interest was love of gain, which, in rendering them over-cautious, sapped their energy. A visit to a theatre showed Mary the state of the dramatic art in Denmark and the gross taste of the audience, and the fact that well-dressed women took their children to witness the execution of a criminal as a favourite kind of entertainment, filled her with unutterable disgust. "And to think that these are the people," she exclaims, "who found fault with the late Queen Matilda's education of her son!" Matilda, it appears, had carried some of Rousseau's principles into effect, which, however, had found no favour at the court.

The ignorance and coarse brutality which she found among the Danes were instrumental in changing Mary's opinions of the French. The Parisian festivals were rendered more interesting by the sobriety of those who took part in them, a Danish merry-making, however, generally degenerated into a drunken bacchanal. "I should have been less severe," she says, "in the remarks I have made on the vanity and depravity of the French, had I travelled towards the north before I visited France."

The antipathy with which she had always regarded the dealings of business was increased by the experience she gained during her stay in Scandinavia. At Gotheburg and at Hamburg the contrast between opulence and penury which the war had called forth filled her with indignation, and at Laurvig, in Norway, the lawyers proved to be all great chicaners. It seemed to her that traffic was necessarily allied with cunning. The gulf which now yawned between her and Imlay was widened by the circumstance that she was unable to feel anything but contempt for what he had made his chief object in life. She was willing to admit that England and America to a certain extent owed their liberty to commerce, which created a new species of power to undermine the feudal system. But let them beware of the consequence, the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank!

Shortly after the final rupture with Imlay Mary renewed her acquaintance with Godwin in the house of their mutual friend Miss Hayes. She took a fancy to him, and in the following month of April called upon him in Somers Town, having herself taken a lodging in Pentonville. In Godwin's _Memoirs_ the description of their friendship, "melting into love" may be found. A temporary separation in July 1796, when Godwin made an excursion into Norfolk, had its effect on the mind of both parties. As Godwin says, it "gave a space for the maturing of inclination," and both realised that each had become indispensable to the other.

They did not at once marry. Godwin, in his _Political Justice_, had declared himself against marriage, which compels both parties to go on cherishing a relation long after both have discovered their fatal mistake. Moreover, marriage is a contract for life, and binding to both parties; and no rational being can undertake to promise that his opinions will undergo no change in the future. Mary's ideas of marriage we have seen to be different, nor did she change her mind under Godwin's influence. But she had been much and rudely spoken of in connection with Imlay, and she could not resolve to do anything that might revive that painful topic, and therefore agreed to keep their relations a secret from the world.

Mary's pregnancy, however, became their motive for complying with a ceremony to which Godwin in a letter to Mr. Wedgwood, refers as follows: "Nothing but a regard for the happiness of the individual, which I had no right to injure, could have induced me to submit to an institution which I wish to see abolished, and which I would recommend to my fellowmen never to practise but with the greatest caution." The marriage took place at Old St. Pancras Church on March 29th, 1797, but was not declared till the beginning of April. Godwin records with some bitterness that certain of his friends, among whom were Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Siddons, from this moment treated him with coldness.

In accordance with Godwin's ideas of cohabitation he engaged an apartment about twenty doors from their house in Somers Town, where he pursued his literary occupations and sometimes remained for days together. The notes which passed between the two lovers in their five months of married life show that upon the whole they were very happy, although they had one or two slight differences. Their most serious trouble in those days were the constant financial embarrassments. In June Godwin went on a long excursion with his friend Montagu, and the letters of both husband and wife are full of the most affectionate solicitude. The time of Mary's confinement was now rapidly approaching, but her health was quite good, and she concentrated a good deal of energy upon a novel which she had begun in the first period of her intimacy with Godwin. It engrossed her mind for months, and she wrote and rewrote several chapters of it with the most elaborate care. When she died, the work, to which she gave the name of "_Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman_", was unfinished, in spite of which circumstance Godwin decided to include the fragment in his edition of her posthumous works.

A long and circumstantial account of Mary's last days is given in Mr. Kegan Paul's "_William Godwin; His Friends and Contemporaries_." Suffice it to say, that she gave birth to a daughter Mary on the 30th of August, 1797, and in spite of the constant attendance of some of the best doctors in London, died eleven days later.

In the year following her death, Godwin published his _Memoirs_. They are an admirable piece of writing; yet they did not produce the effect he hoped for: that of making the principles and motives by which she was actuated in life better understood and more generally appreciated. The disfavour with which his personality was regarded in many circles on account of his radicalism rendered him all unfit for the task. Fortunately, later generations have done justice to the impartiality of his judgments. We, at least, realise what the unstinted praise of a man of Godwin's sincerity means, although to us her character and actions require no vindication.

Perhaps without being aware of it himself, Godwin paid his deceased wife the greatest compliment in his power when insisting on the astonishing degree of soundness which pervaded her sentiments, enabling her to supplement her husband's deficiencies. Both he and Mary carried farther than to their common extent the characteristics of the sexes to which they belonged. Godwin, while stimulated by the love of intellectual distinction, was painfully aware of his lack of what he calls "an intuitive sense of the pleasures of the imagination." Women, he says, who are more delicate and susceptible of impression than men, in proportion as they receive a less intellectual education, are more unreservedly under the empire of feeling."

If this estimate of women is correct, it proves the superiority of Mary Wollstonecraft over the other members of her sex. For the fact that her great natural gifts, joined to her boundless energy enabled her to attain an intellectual level far beyond the reach of others, did not in any sense detract from the warmth of her heart and the intensity of her feelings, by which she proved herself above all a tender, loving woman, thoroughly capable of constituting the happiness of a husband who was himself a leader of men.

When two years after Mary's death Godwin published "_St. Leon_," he gave in his idealised description of the married life of St. Leon and Margaret what he felt to be a faithful account of their short spell of matrimonial happiness. Well might he say of his Margaret that the story of her life is the best record of her virtues.

It has been the aim of the present study to prove Mary Wollstonecraft the spiritual child and heir to the French philosophers of her own and of the preceding century--to a Poullain de la Barre, a Fénelon, a Mme de Lambert, a d'Holbach, who ventured to propose a scheme for the improvement of the deplorable conditions of an erring and suffering womanhood. More extreme in her views, and more determined in her claims than her Bluestocking sisters, she stands out the one great apostle of female emancipation among the revolutionary leaders who held out the hope of lasting social improvement to all mankind. That she aimed too high and failed to find that recognition among her contemporaries to which her spirit of ready sacrifice entitled her, lends her a certain tragic dignity which adds materially to the interest felt by posterity in her striking personality.

And yet her work certainly was not done in vain, although it was left to a later generation to build the huge structure of modern feminism on the ruins of a hope which, together with even more comprehensive ideals, had been blasted by the rude winds of Reaction. This structure the present generation beholds with feelings which are not wholly unmixed, for it is as yet full of imperfections, and much remains to be done. But those who feel doubtful of the final issue, may turn to Mary Wollstonecraft, to borrow from her that unshakable faith in evolution and progress which to her became a kind of religion which never forsook her.

FOOTNOTES:

[36] C. Kegan Paul, _William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries_.

[37] See Letter from Mary to Everina, dated from Dublin, March 24th. 1788, with which compare the following severe judgment by Hannah More in her _Strictures_: "It is worthy of remark that 'Depart from me, I never knew you', is not the malediction denounced on the sceptic or the scoffer, but on the high professor, on the unfruitful worker of "miracles", on the unsanctified utterer of "prophecies", for even acts of piety, wanting the purifying principle, however they may dazzle men, offend God. Cain sacrificed, Balaam prophesied, Rousseau most sublimely panegyrised the son of Mary...." Those who lacked true humility did not fall within the range of Hannah More's compassion.

[38] E. Dowden, _The French Revolution and English Literature_.

[39] W. Godwin, _Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Women_.

[40] "A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind." (_A Vindication_, Chapter on _Duty to Parents_).

[41] The creation of congenial surroundings, and the bringing about of circumstances which involuntarily lead the pupil to draw certain illuminating inferences, is recommended also in _Emile_, where the preceptor relies largely upon them. There seems nothing to be said against them, unless it were that the pupil might sooner or later discover that he was "being sold", which might be attended with awkward consequences!

[42] The position of servants very naturally called for discussion in the great liberty scheme. The treatment of female servants never failed to interest Mary. Many years later, Godwin treated the subject in an essay.

[43] Mr. Falkland, the "high-spirited and highly cultured" gentleman of the dramatis personae, utilises all the advantages of his superior rank to crush his enemy Caleb and finds the law upon his side.

[44] See H. W. Brailsford, _Shelley, Godwin and their Circle_.

[45] This rule, which also applies to property, and may be traced to the _Contrat Social_, strikes the keynote of what was the common view of the social reformers. Mary's scheme of enfranchisement advocates the admission of women to the different professions to ensure their social independence.

[46] See Morley's _Rousseau_.

[47] See Lilly Bascho, _Englische Schriftstellerinnen in ihre Beziehungen zur französischen Revolution_. (_Anglia 41)._

[48] Curiously enough, Hannah More,--who refers to the education of the children as "the great object to which those who are, or may be mothers, are especially called"--unwittingly copies Mary Wollstonecraft where she says: "In the great day of general account, may every Christian mother be enabled, through Divine grace, to say, with humble confidence, to her Maker and Redeemer, Behold the children whom thou hast given me!"

[49] C. Kegan Paul, Memoir to the "_Letters to Imlay_".

[50] "We are soon to meet, to try whether we have mind enough to keep our hearts warm". (_Letter to Imlay_, August 1793).

[51] When Emile's education is almost completed, he is sent abroad for the final touch. In this way he obtains full command of the principal languages of Europe.

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STELLINGEN

1. There never was a more fervent champion of marriage and domesticity than Mary Wollstonecraft, who twice lived with a man to whom she was not married.

2. The Bluestocking assemblies differed in their essential qualities from the French salons both of the seventeenth and of the eighteenth century.

3. British influence was a potent factor in the intellectual revolt which preceded the French Revolution.

4. Those who, like St. Marc Girardin and Lord John Morley, observe that in the fifth Book of Rousseau's "_Emile_" we are confronted with the oriental conception of women, do its author an injustice.

5. The views expressed in Paine's "_Rights of Man_" regarding the attitude of Burke towards democracy are open to criticism.

6. Mr. R. H. Case's interpretation of the text of Shakespeare's "_The Tragedy of Coriolanus_", Act I, Scene IX, l. 45:

When steel grows soft as the parasite's silk, Let him be made an overture for the wars!

is quite plausible.

7. The popularity of Tennyson's poetry is largely due to circumstances which are independent of his greater poetic qualities.

8. There is a strong element of romance in Richardson's so-called "realistic" novels.

9. Behoudens het geven van eene beknopte historische inleiding is het niet wenschelijk het onderwijs in de Engelsche letterkunde aan onze middelbare scholen en gymnasia uit te strekken tot die perioden welke vallen vóór Shakespeare.