those of so many members of the circle in which she moved. In unravelling the curious tangle of relationships, intrigues, suicides, and attempted suicides, of the remarkable group of personalities to whom Mary Wollstonecraft belonged, one is sickened for ever, as Mr. Matthew Arnold has said, of the subject of irregular relations. Mary Wollstonecraft's great merit, however, lies in this, that with a detachment of mind from the prejudices and errors of her time, in regard to the position of women, that was quite extraordinary, she did not sanction any depreciation of the immense importance of the domestic duties of women. She constantly exalted what was truly feminine as the aim of woman's education and training; she recognised love and the attraction between the sexes a cardinal fact in human nature, and "marriage as the foundation of almost every social virtue." Hence very largely from her initiative the women's rights movement in England has kept free from the excesses and follies that in some other countries have marred its course. Mary Wollstonecraft, in her writings as well as in her life, with its sorrows and errors, is the essentially womanly woman, with the motherly and wifely instincts strong within her, and caring for all she claims and pleads for on behalf of her sex, because she is convinced that a concession of a large measure of women's rights is essential to the highest possible conception and fulfilment of women's duties. In words that recall Mazzini's memorable saying, "the sole origin of every right is in a duty fulfilled,"
