ing,
she ceased to hold the conception of a God with any human attributes
whatever; also of any principle or practice of Design; 'of an
administration of life according to human wishes, or of the affairs of
the world by the principles of human morals.' All these became to her
as mere visions; beliefs necessary in their day, but not philosophically
nor permanently true. Miss Martineau was not an Atheist in the
philosophic sense; she never denied a First Cause, but only that this
Cause is within the sphere of human attributes, or can be defined in
their terms.

Then, for another thing, she ceased to believe in the probability of
there being a continuance of conscious individual life after the
dissolution of the body. With this, of course, fell all expectation of a
state of personal rewards and punishments. 'The real and justifiable and
honourable subject of interest,' she said, 'to human beings, living and
dying, is the welfare of their fellows surrounding them or surviving
them.' About that she cared supremely, and about nothing else did she
bring herself to care at all. It is painful to many people even to hear
of a person holding such beliefs as these. Yet it would plainly be the
worst kind of spiritual valetudinarianism to insist on the omission from
even the shortest account of this remarkable woman, of what became the
very basis and foundation of her life for those thirty years of it,
which she herself always counted the happiest part of the whole.

Although it was Mr. Atkinson who finally provided her with a positive
substitute for her older beliefs, yet a journey which Miss Martineau
made in the East shortly after her restoration to health (1846) had done
much to build up in her mind a historic conception of the origin and
order of the great faiths of mankind--the Christian, the Hebrew, the
Mahometan, the old Egyptian. We need not say more on this subject. The
work in which she published the experiences of the journey which was
always so memorable to her, deserves a word. There are few more
delightful books of travel than _Eastern Life, Past and Present_. The
descriptions are admirably graphic, and they have the attraction of
making their effect by a few direct strokes, without any of the wordy
elaboration of our modern picturesque. The writer shows a true feeling
for nature, and she shows a vigorous sense, which is not merely pretty
sentiment, like Chateaubriand's, for the vast historic associations of
those ol