turned from her coldly; but those
who eagerly reopened their doors to her were in the majority. One old
friend who failed at this time, when his friendship would have been most
valued, was Fuseli. Knowles has published a note in which Mary reproaches
the artist for his want of sympathy. It reads as follows:--

When I returned from France I visited you, sir, but finding myself
after my late journey in a very different situation, I vainly
imagined you would have called upon me. I simply tell you what I
thought, yet I write not at present to comment on your conduct or
to expostulate. I have long ceased to expect kindness or affection
from any human creature, and would fain tear from my heart its
treacherous sympathies. I am alone. The injustice, without alluding
to hopes blasted in the bud, which I have endured, wounding my
bosom, have set my thoughts adrift into an ocean of painful
conjecture. I ask impatiently what and where is truth? I have been
treated brutally, but I daily labor to remember that I still have
the duty of a mother to fulfil.

I have written more than I intended,--for I only meant to request
you to return my letters: I wish to have them, and it must be the
same to you. Adieu!

MARY.

CHAPTER XII.

WILLIAM GODWIN.

William Godwin was one of those with whom Mary renewed her acquaintance.
The impression they now made on each other was very different from that
which they had received in the days when she was still known as Mrs.
Wollstonecraft. Since he was no less famous than she, and since it was
his good fortune to make the last year of her life happy, and by his love
to compensate her for her first wretched experience, a brief sketch of
his life, his character, and his work is here necessary. It is only by
knowing what manner of man he was, and what standard of conduct he
deduced from his philosophy, that his relations to her can be fairly
understood.

William Godwin, the seventh child of thirteen, was the son of a
Dissenting minister, and was born March 3, 1756, at Wisbeach,
Cambridgeshire. He came on both sides of respectable middle-class
families. His father's father and brother had both been clergymen, the
one a Methodist preacher, the other a Dissenter. His father was a man of
but little learning, whose strongest feeling was disapprobation of the
Church of England, and whose "creed was so puritanical t