object in life shall be the cultivation of my intellectual powers, with a view to the instruction of others by my writings," and the object assumed still higher importance when, from the teachings of Mr. Atkinson, she came to believe that "all moral evil, and much, and possibly all, physical evil arises from intellectual imperfection, from ignorance and consequent error."

Her writings were naturally coloured by her varying religious opinions, which were most personal when she fancied them most philosophic, and never materially modified a strongly devotional nature for whom faith, either in God or man, was a necessity. She was brought up as a strict Unitarian, and in her school-days came under the influence of Lant Carpenter, and through him of Hartley and Priestley; but the great talks with her brother Dr. James Martineau on things spiritual, supplemented by travel and diligent study of the theologies, led her gradually, through necessarianism and a denial of revelation, to become a disciple of positive philosophy, that is, of Mr. Henry G. Atkinson, "the only person of the multitude she had known who clearly apprehended the central truth, the grand conception, the inestimable recognition, that science (or the knowledge of fact, inducing the discovery of laws) is the sole and the eternal basis of wisdom, -and therefore of human morality and peace." Under this influence she maintained that "the form of the constitution of the human mind requires the supposition of a First Cause," and that it cannot "signify whether the one human faculty of consciousness of identity be preserved and carried forward" after death, "when all the rest of the organisation is gone to dust, or so changed as to be in no respect properly the same." Mr. Atkinson, doubtless, was a clear-headed and thoroughly sincere thinker; but his philosophy, much influenced by that of Comte, was not particularly original or profound. His pupil was more sensitive to the magnetism of a strong and upright personality than to vigour of intellect, however remarkable.

Miss Martineau was herself, indeed, in no sense of the word a scholar. In the strangely frank biography of herself, which she prepared for the Daily News, she confessed that "her original power was nothing more than was due to earnestness and intellectual clearness within a certain range. With small imaginative and suggestive powers, and therefore nothing approaching to genius, she could see clearly what she did see, and give a clear expression to what she had to say. In short, she could popularise, while

she could neither discover nor invent. She could sympathise with other people's views, and was too facile in doing so; and she could obtain and keep a firm grasp of her own, and, moreover, she could make them understood." Her talents were those of a first-class journalist and, without obtaining a thorough grasp or profound knowledge of any subject, she completely satisfied the demand for information at any price just then so prevalent.

She could tell her readers what they ought to think and know without troubling them to go through any process of reasoning for themselves, and thus it was that philosophers welcomed her abstracts or illustrative tales, that politicians requested her to write up their projected measures, that newspaper editors continually “asked for more," and that nations entreated her to justify them in the eyes of the English people. She had a phenomenal capacity for hard work, and a marvellous power of rapidly assimilating impressions; so that her most hasty digests have an air of lucidity and completeness. Her style is admirable of its kind, clear, rapid, and concise; the phrases pithy and suggestive, the sentences well modulated, the thoughts definite and sincere. Her facility increased with practice, and the Biographical Sketches have been justly called "masterpieces in the style of the vignette." They are, indeed, telling portraits of character, but it must be admitted that, in manner at least, Miss Martineau's judgments are sometimes over-confident and pugnacious, partly perhaps because she knew herself to be, as a woman, in advance of her contemporaries, and had suffered from the fact.

The Hour and the Man is a clever historical romance, some of the characters in Deerbrook are well drawn, and all rightminded children must love the Playfellow series, but, as she herself admits, "the artistic aim and qualifications were absent; she had no power of dramatic construction; nor the poetic inspiration on the one hand, nor critical calculation on the other, without which no work of the imagination can live none of her novels or tales have, or ever had, in the eyes of good judges or in her own, any character of permanence." Her gift to literature

was for her own generation. She is the exponent of the infant century in many branches of thought:—its eager and sanguine philanthropy, its awakening interest in history and science, its rigid and prosaic philosophy.

But her genuine humanity and real moral earnestness give a value to her more personal utterances, which do not lose their

charm with the lapse of time. After stating that we have no right to crave for personal immortality, she adds :- "The real and justifiable and honourable subject of interest to human beings, living or dying, is the welfare of their fellows, surrounding them or surviving them. About this I do care and supremely." Her care for men included a care for "faith, the noblest of human faculties." However persistently she might run counter to the orthodoxies of her day, the most striking characteristic of that admirable book of travel, Eastern Life: Past and Present, for instance, is its reverence-its reverence for what has made men noble in the past, and is therefore, to her mind, permanently worthy of honour. Her hatred of slavery and of other social evils nearer home enabled her to join hands with some whom the world called fanatics, while her "own idea of an innocent and happy life was a home of her own among poor improvable neighbours, with young servants whom she might train and attach to herself." The postman who scribbled "try Miss Martineau on an envelope addressed to "The Queen of modern Philanthropists was not deceived in his estimate.

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Her nature was, in fact, essentially affectionate, and the busy woman, whose independence of thought and action made her the victim alternately of pity and of abuse, enjoyed many pleasant memories of life-long friendships as she paced her favourite terrace in front of "The Knoll," dreaming of "the magnificent coast of Massachusetts in autumn, the blue Nile, the brown Sinai, or the gorgeous Petra, the grand canal under a Venetian sunset, or Malta in the glow of noon," and gazing in imagination upon imagery of the glorious hierarchy of the sciences."

"the

R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON.

CAIRO

AFTER an early cup of coffee, we usually mounted our donkeys for a ride of two hours before the table-d'hôte breakfast. I like donkey-riding in Cairo. I never tried it out of Egypt, except for a few miles in Palestine; but I do not suppose it is the same thing anywhere else. The creatures are full of activity; and their amble is a pleasant pace in the streets. Side saddles, more or less tattered, may be hired with Cairo donkeys now. Mrs. Y. took her saddle from England; and I was fortunate enough to buy one, in good repair, on my arrival at Cairo, which would serve for either horse or donkey. The little rogues of donkeyboys were always ready and eager, close by the hotel,-hustling each other to get the preference,—one displaying his English with "God save the Queen ros bif"; another smiling amiably in one's face; and others kicking and cuffing, as people who had a prior right, and must relieve us of encroachers. Then off we

went briskly through the Ezbekeeyeh, under the acacias, past the water-carriers, with their full skins on their left shoulder, and the left hand holding the orifice of the neck, from which they could squirt water into the road, or quietly fill a jar at pleasure ;-past the silent smoking party, with their long chibouques or serpentine nargeelehs;-past the barber, shaving the head of a man kneeling and resting his crown on the barber's lap; - past the veiled woman with her tray of bread,—thin, round cakes ;—past the red and white striped mosque, where we looked up to the gallery of the minaret, in the hope of the muezzin coming out to call the men to prayer;-past a handsome house or two, with its rich lattices, its elaborate gateway, and its shade of trees in front, or of shrubs within the court, of which we might obtain a tempting glimpse ;-past Shepherd's hotel, where English gentlemen might be seen going in and out, or chatting before the door;-past a row of artisan dwellings, where the joiner, the weaver, and the

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maker of slippers were at work, with their oriental tools, and in their graceful oriental postures; - and then into the bazaars. But before I had reached the bazaars, I was generally in a state of vexation with myself for my carelessness about surrounding objects. I hardly know what it is in these Eastern countries which disposes one to reverie; but I verily thought, the whole journey through, and especially at Cairo, that I was losing my observing faculties, so often had I to rouse myself, or to be roused by others, to heed what was before my eyes. I did not find it so on our route to Egypt, nor in crossing France on our return; so my own experience would lead me to suppose that there is something in the aspect of Oriental life and scenery which meets and stimulates some of one's earliest and deepest associations, and engages some of one's higher mental faculties too much to leave the lower free. The conflict was not agreeable, however;—the longing to have for one's own for ever every exquisite feature of the scene; and presently, the discovery that one had passed through half a dozen alleys without seeing anything at all; and all for pondering something which might be as well thought over at home! By dint of incessant self-flapping and endless rides, however, I arrived at last at knowing and remembering almost every peculiar object at Cairo ;-of such, I mean, as offer themselves to the eye in the streets. I really do not know how I can convey my own impression of what I saw so well as in the words of my memoranda put down at the time. "Cairo streets are wholly indescribable; their narrowness, antiquity, sharp lights, and arcades of gloom, carved lattices, mat awnings, mixture of hubbub and fatalist quietude in the people, to whom loss of sight appears a matter of course; the modes of buying and selling ;-all are in my mind, but cannot be set down." Again: "Went with my party to shop: a most amusing affair. I bought a Tuscan straw hat for 4s. 6d., while a common and not large saucepan, copper tinned, was priced 12s. It was awkward waiting while Mr. E. bought brown shoes,-the way was so narrow, and our donkeys were five, and horses and laden camels were continually passing, thrusting us among the very merchandise and then there was the smart and repeated crack of the courbash, which gives warning that a carriage is coming, and that we must plunge into the nearest alley: and then there was a cart or two; and all the while there was some staring, though not much, and clouds of flies from a fruiterer's shop."