from the effects of which she would
escape as the wife of a citizen of the United States. But she did not
marry. She witnessed many of the horrors that came of the loosened
passions of an untaught populace. A child was born to her--a girl whom
she named after the dead friend of her own girlhood. And then she found
that she had leant upon a reed. She was neglected; and was at last
forsaken. Having sent her to London, Imlay there visited her, to explain
himself away. She resolved on suicide, and in dissuading her from that
he gave her hope again. He needed somebody who had good judgment, and
who cared for his interests, to represent him in some business affairs in
Norway. She undertook to act for him, and set out on the voyage only a
week after she had determined to destroy herself.

The interest of this book which describes her travel is quickened by a
knowledge of the heart-sorrow that underlies it all. Gilbert Imlay had
promised to meet her upon her return, and go with her to Switzerland. But
the letters she had from him in Sweden and Norway were cold, and she came
back to find that she was wholly forsaken for an actress from a strolling
company of players. Then she went up the river to drown herself. She
paced the road at Putney on an October night, in 1795, in heavy rain,
until her clothes were drenched, that she might sink more surely, and
then threw herself from the top of Putney Bridge.

She was rescued, and lived on with deadened spirit. In 1796 these
"Letters from Sweden and Norway" were published. Early in 1797 she was
married to William Godwin. On the 10th of September in the same year, at
the age of thirty-eight, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin died, after the birth
of the daughter who lived to become the wife of Shelley. The mother also
would have lived, if a womanly feeling, in itself to be respected, had
not led her also to unwise departure from the customs of the world. Peace
be to her memory. None but kind thoughts can dwell upon the life of this
too faithful disciple of Rousseau.

H. M.

LETTER I.

Eleven days of weariness on board a vessel not intended for the
accommodation of passengers have so exhausted my spirits, to say nothing
of the other causes, with which you are already sufficiently acquainted,
that it is with some difficulty I adhere to my determination of giving
you my observations, as I travel through new scenes, whilst warmed with
the impression they have made o