All this journalism was done at the same time that the heavy sustained task of the condensation of Comte's abstruse and bulky work was proceeding. When to all this we add in our recollection her home duties, and when the fact is borne in mind that it was her common practice to take immense walks, not infrequently covering from twelve to fifteen miles in the day, it will be seen that the mere industry and energy that she showed were most extraordinary. But, besides this, her work was of a high order of literary excellence, and full of intellectual power.
Such incessant labor is not to be held up as altogether an example to be imitated. There are some few whose duty it is to consciously moderate the amount of labor to which their mental activity impels them; and no one ought to allow the imperative brain to overtax the rest of the system. During the Irish journey, Harriet began to be aware of experiencing unusual fatigue. She gave herself no sufficient pause, however, either then or afterwards, until she could not help doing so.
After the publication of Comte she wrote a remarkable article for the Westminster Review (anonymous of course) on "England's Foreign policy." This appeared in the number for January, 1854. It dealt largely with the impending struggle between England and Russia. True Liberal as Harriet Martineau was, she hated with all her soul, not the Russian people, but the hideous despotism, the Asiatic and barbarian and brutal government of that empire. She foresaw a probable great struggle in the future between tyranny and freedom, in which Russia, by virtue of all her circumstances, will be the power against which the free peoples of the earth will have to fight. Not only, then, did she fully recognize the necessity for the immediate resistance, which the Crimean war was, to the encroachments on Europe of the Czar, but her article also included a powerful plea for the abolition of that system of secrecy of English diplomacy, by which it is rendered quite possible for our ministry to covertly injure our liberties, and to take action behind our backs in our names in opposition to our warmest wishes. The article, as a whole, is one of her most powerful pieces of writing, and had it been delivered as a speech in parliament, it would undoubtedly have produced a great effect, and have placed her high amongst the statesmen of that critical time.
In the April (1854) number of the same Review, there appeared an article from her pen upon "The Census of 1851." This paper was not a mere comment upon the census return, but an historical review of the progress of the English people from barbarism to the civilization of our century.
In the spring of this year she made a careful survey of the beautiful district around her home, in order to write a Complete Guide to the Lakes for a local publisher. She was already thoroughly acquainted with the neighborhood by means of her long and frequent pedestrian excursions, and reminiscences of these abound in this "Guide." The vivid description of a storm on Blake Fell, for instance, is a faithful account of an occurrence during a visit which a niece and nephew from Birmingham paid to her soon after her settlement at the lakes. The word-paintings of the scenery, too, were drawn, not from what she saw on one set visit only, but were the results of her many and frequent pilgrimages to those beauties of nature which she so highly appreciated. But still she would not write her "Guide" without revisiting the whole of the district.
The most interesting point about this book is that it reveals one feature of her character that all who knew her mention, but that very rarely appears in her writings. This is, her keen sense of humor. She dearly loved a good story, and could tell one herself with pith and point. Her laugh is said to have been very hearty and ready. Even when she was old and ill, she was always amusable, and her laughter at any little bit of fun would even then ring through her house as gaily as though the outburst had been that of a child's frank merriment. It is surprising that this sense of and enjoyment in the ludicrous so rarely appears in her writings. But I think it was because her authorship was to her too serious a vocation for fun to come into it often. She felt it almost as the exercise of a priestly function. It was earnest and almost solemn work for her to write what might be multiplied through the printing-press many thousand times over, and so uttered to all who had ears to hear. She showed that this was so by the greater deliberateness with which she expressed judgments of persons and pronounced opinions of any kind in her writings than in conversation. Similarly she showed it by the abeyance of her humor in writing; it was no more possible for her to crack jokes when seated at her desk than it would have been for a priestess when standing by her tripod. But this particular book, this "Guide, written for neighborly reasons," did not admit of the seriousness of her intellect being called into action, and the result is that it is full of good stories and lighted up with fun. Her enjoyment in such stories reveals that sense of humor which, however strongly visible in daily intercourse, rarely appears in her books in any other form than in her perfect appreciation of the line between the sublime and the ludicrous.
This summer brought her much annoyance of a pecuniary kind. Her generosity about money matters were repeatedly shown, from the time when she left her "Illustrations" in the hands of Mr. C. Fox, onwards; and she had now given what was for her means an extravagant contribution to the maintenance of the Westminster Review, taking a mortgage on the proprietorship for her only security. In the summer of 1854, Dr. Chapman, its publisher and editor, failed; and an attempt was made to upset the mortgage. Harriet Martineau gave Chapman the most kindly assistance and sympathy in his affairs at this juncture; not only overlooking the probable loss to herself, but exerting herself to write two long articles for the next number of the Review (October, 1854).
One of these essays is on "Rajah Brooke;" a name that has half faded out of the knowledge of the present generation, but which well deserves memory from the heroic devotedness, and courage, and governing faculty of the man. His qualities were those most congenial to Harriet Martineau; and, finding his enemies active and potent, she made a complete study of his case and represented it in full in an article which (like her previous one on "Foreign Policy") was so statesman-like and so wise, so calm and yet so eloquent, that it would have made her famous amongst the politicians of the day had it been delivered as a speech in the House, instead of being printed anonymously in a review with too small a circulation to pay its way.
Nor did generous aid to Dr. Chapman end here. He was disappointed of some expected contributions, and Miss Martineau wrote him a second long article for the same number—the one on "The Crystal Palace," which concludes the Westminster for October, 1854. Her two contributions amounted to fifty-four pages of print—truly a generous gift to an impecunious magazine editor.
It was now precisely ten years since her recovery from her long illness. The work done in that time shows how complete the recovery had been. Those ten happy years of vigor and of labor were, she was wont to say, Mr. Atkinson's gift to her. Well had she used these last years of her strength.