stence,
suffer, and die; men play like moths about a candle, and sink into
the flame; war and the 'thousand ills which flesh is heir to' mow
them down in shoals, whilst the more cruel prejudices of society
palsy existence, introducing not less sure, though slower decay."

Had Mary Wollstonecraft lived in the present time, she too would have
written hymns to Man. This is another of the many strange instances in
her writings of the resemblance between theories which she evolved for
herself and those of modern philosophers. She lived a century too soon.

The "Letters" were published in the same year, 1796, in Wilmington,
Delaware. A few years later, extracts from them, translated into
Portuguese, together with a brief sketch of their author, were published
in Lisbon, while a German edition appeared in Hamburg and Altona. The
book is now not so well known as it deserves to be. Mary's descriptions
of the physical characteristics of Norway and Sweden are equal to any
written by more recent English travellers to Scandinavia; and her account
of the people is valuable as an unprejudiced record of the manners and
customs existing among them towards the end of the eighteenth century.
But though so little known, it is still true that, as her self-appointed
defender said in 1803, "Letters so replete with correctness of remark,
delicacy of feeling, and pathos of expression, will cease to exist only
with the language in which they were written."

Shortly after her death, Godwin published in four volumes all Mary's
unprinted writings, unfinished as well as finished. This collection,
which is called simply "Posthumous Works of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin,"
may most appropriately be noticed here in connection with the more
complete productions of her last years.

Of the "Letters to Imlay," which fill the third and a part of the fourth
volume, nothing more need be said. They have been fully explained, and
sufficient extracts from them have been made in the account of that
period of her life during which they were written. The next in importance
of these writings is "Maria; or, The Wrongs of Woman," a novel. It is but
a fragment. Mary intended to revise the first chapters carefully, and of
the last she had written nothing but the headings and a few detached
hints and passages. Godwin, in his Preface, says, "So much of it as is
here given to the public, she was far from considering as finished; and
in a letter to a fri