r she published the "Rights of Women." The
increased merit of her later works somewhat confirms Southey's
declaration, made three years after her death, that "Mary Wollstonecraft
was but beginning to reason when she died."

The last book she finished and published during her life-time was her
"Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and
Denmark." Her journey, as has been explained in the last chapter, was
undertaken to attend to certain business affairs for Imlay. Landing in
Sweden, she went from there to Norway, then again to Sweden, and finally
to Denmark and Hamburg, in which latter places she remained a
comparatively short period. Not being free to go and come as she chose,
she was sometimes detained in small places for two or three weeks, while
she could stay but a day or two in large cities. But she had letters of
introduction to many of the principal inhabitants of the towns and
villages to which business called her, and was thus able to see something
of the life of the better classes. The then rough mode of travelling also
brought her into close contact with the peasantry. As the ground over
which she travelled was then but little visited by English people, she
knew that her letters would have at least the charm of novelty.

They were published by her friend Johnson in 1796. Hitherto, her work had
been purely of a philosophical, historical, or educational nature. The
familiar epistolary style in which she had begun to record her
observations of the French people had been quickly changed for the more
formal tone of the "French Revolution." These travels, consequently,
marked an entirely new departure in her literary career. Their success
was at once assured. Even the fastidious Godwin, who had condemned her
other books, could find no fault with this one. Contemporary critics
agreed in sharing his good opinion.

"Have you ever met with Mary Wollstonecraft's 'Letters from Sweden and
Norway'?" Southey asked in a letter to Thomas Southey. "She has made me
in love with a cold climate and frost and snow, with a northern
moonlight." The impression they produced was lasting. When, several years
later, he wrote an "Epistle" to A. S. Cottle to be published in the
latter's volume of "Icelandic Poetry," he again alluded to them. In
referring to the places described in northern poems he declared,--

"... Scenes like these
Have almost lived before me, when I gazed
Upon their fair resemblance