t helpful companionship, she explored and
mastered this tough science. Her views prevailed, and floated her into
distinction. We have no space to allude to the details of the rest of
her career, one of the principal events of which was her visit to
America in 1834. It lasted more than two years, and was commemorated by
Miss Martineau, on her return, in no less than six volumes. Mrs. Chapman
deals with it largely in her supplementary memoir, treating chiefly,
however, of the visitor's relations with the Abolition party. Miss
Martineau evidently exaggerates both the odium which she incurred and
the danger to which she exposed herself by these relations. They were
natural ones for an ardently liberal Englishwoman to form, for the
Abolitionists, to foreign eyes, must at that time have represented the
only eminent feeling, the only sense of an ideal, visible amid the
commonplace prosperity of American life. In her last pages Miss
Martineau indulges some gloomy forebodings as to the future of the
United States, which offers, she says, the only instance on record "of a
nation being inferior to its institutions." This was written in 1855; we
abstain from hazarding a conjecture as to whether she would think better
or worse of us now.

* * * * *

We have two good novels, one very foreign and the other very domestic.
The first is by Auerbach,[3] whose high purpose and truly ideal
treatment of the narrative all who have read "On the Heights" will
remember with pleasure. He preserves the same style essentially in this
story, although it is of an entirely different character. A painter
visiting a country village in company with a young scholar and
philosopher who is an assistant librarian and is called the
collaborator, paints as a Madonna the beautiful daughter of the keeper
of the village inn. He falls in love with her, attracted no less by her
unconcealed love for him than by her beauty. He takes her to town with
him, a town where there is a little German court, very refined
_esthetik_, and very high-dried old manners. The poor girl drives him
almost mad with her awkwardness, her ignorance of polished life, and
her independence. It does not help the matter that in the latter
respect she wins the favor of others, even of the Prince himself. After
a while he avoids her, takes to wine-drinking, and comes home drunk.
She sees her position, and from what he is suffering, and she goes back
to h