Sara A. Underwood

“ Another interesting sign of the times is the influence exercised by two women, Miss Martineau and Miss Barrett (Mrs. Browning) , from their sick-rooms. The lamp of life which, if it had been fed only by their affections, depending on precarious human relations, would scarce have been able to maintain a feeble glare in the lonely prison, now shines far and wide over the nations, cheering fellow-sufferers and hallowing the joy of the faithful. “These persons need not health, nor youth, nor the charms of personal presence, to make their thought available. ”

“ HARRIET MARTINEAU. "FEELING, as I do, daily comfort in the knowledge of some things which I should once have shrunk from supposing, it would be weak—as foolish as cowardly— ever again to shrink from knowing anything that is true, or to have any preferences whatever among unascertained matters of speculation or fact. ”

“ Probably no living English writer has been more active or more efficient in moulding British opinion, and certainly none has been more beneficent in lifelong influence. England would be less humane and enlightened than she is to-day, if the brave and wise heart of Harriet Martineau had not for nearly fifty years helped to push forward the good cause of popular progress. ”

“ Miss Martineau has counted among her personal friends many of the best and most brilliant minds in England and America —friends whom no difference of opinions could alienate from this large-hearted, large-brained, womanly woman. She has proved herself philosopher, historian, novelist, and politician—and always philanthropist through all. Not until another generation, perhaps, will she be estimated at her highest worth ”

“ Slavery found in her "The Hour and the Man" a bitter denunciation and a vivid portrayal; and during the American Slaveholders’ Rebellion Miss Martineau’s pen supplied on the other side of the water the warmest, friendliest, and most earnest articles in behalf of the Union written by any one not a native-born American.
In every department of life, however high or humble, her searching mind, fertile brain, and ready pen have done good and effective service. She has written on the forest and game laws, on household education, and on health, husbandry, and handicraft. ”

“ However our prejudices may be disturbed at times, or our enthusiasm dampened, we are constrained to confess that we are reading facts of history, told by one who has studied them carefully, and weighed them impartially, and who, impelled alike by a sense of justice and a consciousness of her fitness for the task, proceeds to set them forth for the benefit of us all, without fear or favor, malice or exaggeration, in a forcible, clear, and graphic style, without any attempt at brilliant antithesis, or vain parade of uncalled-for embroidery ”

“ When my companions give me notice of distant objects by means of any of these senses—when they tell me what is growing in an invisible field or garden, or where there is music, or what people are saying on the farther side of a reach of the lake on a calm summer evening, I feel a sort of start, as if I were in company with sorcerers. ”

“ The same stern, unyielding love of truth, the same strict integrity of conscience, which caused her progenitors to give up home, friends, and wealth, and led them to try their fate in a foreign and uncongenial land, appears again in a somewhat different form in this brave, conscientious woman, their descendant, who has dared “for conscience’ sake” to avow in the face of a shocked Christianity her disbelief of an unproven revelation, her honest doubts of the so-called proofs of a creative, designing, and constantly interfering power called God. ”

“ It is a pleasant thing to have a daily purpose of raising and disciplining ourselves, for no end of selfish purchase or ransom, but from the instinctive tendency to mental and moral health.” If any Christian admirers of Miss Martineau find cause of grief in her openly expressed and honestly held opinions on theology, let them comfort themselves with the knowledge that if she has not “loved the Lord,” after their fashion, she has done infinitely better, in loving warmly, sincerely, and faithfully, her "fellow-men.” ”

“ Her voice is too low-toned, but agreeable, the suitable organ of a refined spirit. Her manners, without any elegance, are pleasing, natural, and kind. She seldom speaks unless addressed, but in reply to a single touch she pours out a rich stream. ”

“ If we feel a contentment in our own lot, which must be sound because it is derived from no special administration of our own affairs, but from the impartial and necessary operations of Nature, we cannot but feel, for the same reason, a new exhilaration on account of the unborn multitudes who will ages hence enter upon existence on better terms than those on which we hold it. ”

“ Her office is to take out the vital principle from forms once beautiful, when they begin to grow hideous with age, and to transfuse it into new forms of beauty, which we may love without fear and without disgust. ”

“ I can now hardly believe that it was I who once read Milton with scarcely any recoil from the theology; or, Paley's ‘Natural Theology’ with pleasure at the ingenuity of the mechanic-god he thought he was recommending to the admiration of his readers.”
Again, on pages 288-9: "What an emancipation it is—to have escaped from the little enclosure of dogma, and to stand —far indeed from being wise — but free to learn!”
And again, on page 256: “Science can abolish nothing but what is unreal, and then only in order to substantiate what is real. ”

“ The education given to the children was solid rather than showy, though the accomplishments fitted to their station in life were not overlooked or neglected; and Harriet, in spite of her increasing deafness, was sent to singing-schools, and was an accomplished performer upon the piano until her growing infirmity caused her to lose all relish for the amusement. ”

“ All through her literary career, theology and the basis of religious belief seem to have occupied the greater share of her attention and investigation, and to the thoroughness and fearlessness of these investigations is due the advanced position she has taken on these subjects; a position which is peculiarly hard for a woman to maintain, as she finds herself arrayed against all but an infinitesimal minority of her own sex, and is thus deprived of most of that affiliation and intellectual companionship which is peculiarly necessary to the feminine mind. ”

“ She is never brilliant, never says a thing that is engraven or cut in to your memory, but she talks on a greater variety of topics than any one I ever heard—agreeably, most agreeably, and with sense and information. She is womanly, strictly, with sympathies fresh from the heart, enthusiasms not always manifestly supported by reason ”

“ Harriet was a delicate, ailing child from birth, but possessed of a deeply reflective intellect, and strong, intense feelings. it may be that the strong mind proved too heavy a strain upon the weaker physical system, and so caused some of her later ailments. ”

“ Her aim in compiling and publishing this work is best stated by herself in the introductory pages, She says:
“The growth of a scientific taste among the working classes of this country is one of the most striking of the signs of the times. I believe no one can inquire into the mode of life of young men in the middle and operative classes without being struck with the desire that is shown and the sacrifices that are made to obtain the means of scientific study. ”

“ Her parents seem to have always encouraged a taste for all useful and scientific knowledge in their children, and to have cultivated in them a love for the beautiful in Nature, judging from fragmentary instances given incidentally by Miss Martineau in relating her own childish experiences. ”

“ I cannot forbear quoting from "Society in America” the following exquisite description of American forests, as a specimen of Miss Martineau's delicacy of expression, and her skill in word-painting:
“The English traveler finds himself never weary by day of prying into the forest from beneath its canopy ”

“ After a lapse of nearly forty years, during which time those rights have taken rapid strides toward recognition and adjustment, there can be found nothing in her statement of woman's demands and needs which is behind the most advanced ideas of the present day. ”

“ It is now more than twenty years since Miss Martineau first established herself at Ambleside, and in that quiet retreat some of her later books have been written. Among these is her "Complete Guide to the Lakes,” published in 1854. Whenever her health will permit, she takes pride and pleasure in those out-of-door pursuits which bring her face to face with Nature ”