committee of that body rejected it, on the ground that facts could not be clothed with advantage in the garb of fiction. Perhaps this is generally true. The novelist may take history, if he chooses, as the foundation of his story, but it will always be read with the suspicion that facts have been moulded,—as, indeed, they generally are,—to suit the writer's idea of poetic justice or artistic development. Thus, very little is gained; and though the book may keep its place as a work of imagination, it will fail, however truthful it may be, as a relation of historical or biographical facts.
However this may be, between those who objected to the teaching of political science by the aid of fiction, and those who did not want fiction to have any didactive purpose, the authoress encountered no small amount of discouragement and difficulty before she found a publisher with sufficient enterprise for the proposed undertaking. At last, however, the first volume or number of the Illustrations of Political Economy saw the light, and proved by its immediate and great success, that its writer had formed no undue estimate of her own abilities, or erroneous judgment as to the propriety of her method of treating the subject. The succeeding volumes were expected with impatience; edition after edition was exhausted; and the tales were translated, one by one, into French and German. As felicitous illustrations of important truths they are of great and enduring value; and they will doubtless continue to be read for their interest as works of fiction and admired for the ingenuity which the writer has shown in avoiding that artificiality of construction which seems necessitated by the restriction of a plot to the special object which it is intended to subserve.
To this series, may be added six tales, entitled Illustrations of Taxation; and four others, called Poor Law and Paupers. These are, perhaps, unequal in merit; but they were no doubt the means of inducting many a reader into the mysteries of Political and Social Economics, who, but for the attractive guise of the mystagogue, would never have ventured to lift the veil.
To make adequate pause at each landmark in the literary career of so industrious and prolific a writer as Miss Martineau would require a volume. In 1837, she paid a visit to the United States, where she remained for a period of two years. This sojourn resulted in the production of her Society in America, which is full of interesting details as to the politics, domestic economy and social life of that country ; and, a year later, to a work entitled Retrospect of Western Travel, in which are recorded those more personal impressions which did not find place in the earlier work, and reminiscences of the eminent persons with whom she had come in contact. In 1839, appeared her first novel, Deerbrook, in the orthodox three-volume form; a production which, perhaps, hardly sustained the reputation which her political tales had gained her as a writer of fiction—certainly not as a teacher of social economy. To her next novel, which exhibits a marked improvement in dramatic interest and constructive skill, may be applied the remarks which I have already made on the propriety of employing fiction to enforce or illustrate fact. This novel. The Hour and the Man, of which the sable patriot, Toussaint L'Ouverture, is the hero, would probably have attained a higher estimation, if it had appeared professedly as a simple biography. Lamartine, it will be remembered, has also chosen, as the subject of a drama, the career of this extraordinary man, who has, once for all, vindicated the capacity of
