justice, or anything else fundamental to the system
there delivered; but that I apprehend domestic and private
affections inseparable from the nature of man, and from what may be
styled the culture of the heart, and am fully persuaded that they
are not incompatible with a profound and active sense of justice in
the mind of him that cherishes them."

When Godwin met Mary, after her desertion by Imlay, he was forty years of
age, in the full prime and vigor of his intellect, and in the height of
his fame. She was thirty-seven, only three years his junior. She was the
cleverest woman in England. Her talents had matured, and grief had made
her strong. She was strikingly handsome. She had, by her struggles and
sufferings, acquired what she calls in her "Rights of Women" a
_physionomie_. Even Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Reveley, hard as life had gone
with them, had never approached the depth of misery which she had
fathomed. The eventful meeting took place in the month of January, 1796,
shortly after Mary had returned from her travels in the North. Miss Hayes
invited Godwin to come to her house one evening when Mary expected to be
there. He accepted her invitation without hesitation, but evinced no
great eagerness.

"I will do myself the pleasure of waiting on you Friday," he
wrote, "and shall be happy to meet Mrs. Wollstonecraft, of whom I
know not that I ever said a word of harm, and who has frequently
amused herself with depreciating me. But I trust you acknowledge in
me the reality of a habit upon which I pique myself, that I speak
of the qualities of others uninfluenced by personal considerations,
and am as prompt to do justice to an enemy as to a friend."

The meeting was more propitious than their first some few years earlier
had been. Godwin had, with others, heard her sad story, and felt sorry
for her, and perhaps admired her for her bold practical application of
his principles. This was better than the positive dislike with which she
had once inspired him. But still his feeling for her was negative. He
would probably never have made an effort to see her again. What Mary
thought of him has not been recorded. But she must have been favorably
impressed, for when she came back to London from her trip to Berkshire,
she called upon him in his lodgings in Somer's Town. He, in the mean
time, had read her "Letters from Norway," and they had given him a higher
respect fo