The death of Harriet Martineau on Tuesday, at the age
of seventy-three, will cause regret wherever the English language is spoken. We are unable to take her friends' estimate of her powers, preferring to accept her own, as given in another column, but she was the only woman who ever succeeded considerably in political writing. Her attacks on the old Poor Law contributed greatly to its fall, her sketch of the effects produced by slavery was widely circulated in the States ; and her history of England during the Peace from 1815 to 1845 is a remarkable compilation, most useful to those who want to know clearly the current of
English opinion during those years. Her fictions, some Poor-Law stories excepted, are poor, and her theological disquisitions not much better than most feminine writings on theology. Except in this department, however, her great powers of expression were steadily applied on the right side, and had considerable weight with a certain class of statesmen, who wanted their floating ideas put into clear formulas, and the world there- fore is decidedly the better for having held Harriet Martineau.
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