had already commenced, but was forced to relinquish. He applied to Miss Martineau, with the result that the History was carried on and concluded with a vigour and impartiality which ensured its reception by the public, and did vast credit to her in her new character of historian.
To Charles Knight's series she contributed a useful little manual, How to Observe; and with that regard for usefulness in the abstract which ever characterized her labours, descended from her higher platform, to engage in the compilation of four "Guides,"—The Maid of all Work, The Housemaid, The Lady's Maid, and The Dressmaker. Her Household Education,—a very popular work,—originally appeared in The People's Journal; and she was also author of a Complete Guide to the Lakes.
I can only glance at the literary occupations in which the later years of the life of Miss Martineau was unceasingly employed. She wrote leading articles for the Daily News; reviews for the Westminster; a series of papers in Household Words, in which the industries of Birmingham,—a town in which she took a keen interest, her brother being a leading merchant and manufacturer there, and her nephews, at the present moment, ranking among its most useful and honourable citizens,—are treated of in a popular and engaging style ; social sketches for Once a Week; a work entitled British Rule in India (1857); another on army reform, England and her Soldiers (1859) Health, Husbandry and Handicraft (1861); pamphlets on political and educational questions, too numerous to particularize; and a free and epitomized translation of the Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte.
In 1846, she had purchased a little farm, the "Knoll," near Ambleside, and here she continued to reside, applying herself to agricultural matters with an energy and success, which showed her fitness also to conduct the practical business of common life. Here she employed her later years in the composition of an Autobiography, which was published after her death by Smith, Elder & Co. This she divides into six periods, of which the most interesting are the third and fourth, which include the space between her thirtieth and forty-third year. The book abounds with sketches of personal character, of which it may be said that the general tone is hardly characterized by the good-nature and liberality of interpretation which the reader might have wished to find. She has nothing kind, for instance, to say of the gifted family of the Kembles, who are shown forth, one and all, as conceited, vulgar and insincere. She accords to the distinguished artist. Sir Charles Eastlake, but a "limited understanding." Macaulay she pronounces to have had "no heart," and his nephew and biographer, Trevelyan, "no head." Thackeray, the snob-taker, was appropriately, a snob himself. She considers N. P. Willis a lying dandy. Lord Althorp she holds to be "one of nature's graziers." She falls foul of Earl Russell, and the whole Whig party as conceited incapables; and she pronounces Lord Brougham to be a creature at once obscene and treacherous. Lord Jeffrey was "one of the most egregious flatterers of vain women in general." Finally, she is equally unjust to herself, for she makes no attempt to set adequately before her readers the physical and other disadvantages under which she herself laboured. Her description of Sydney Smith is good when she depicts him in a morning call, sitting down "broad and comfortable" in the middle of her sofa, "with his hands on his stick, as if to support himself in a vast development of voice," and then beginning, "like the great bell of St. Paul's, making her start at
