The autobiography contains a small gallery of statues of contemporaries, of note in their time, sculptured from life, as perfect in their way as Grecian statues. Their excellencies are generously portrayed for admiration, and their defects described for the guidance of survivors. Not like the false eulogies of the dead, which, by pretending perfection, lie to the living, where silence on errors or deficiencies are of the nature of deceit, and sure to be resented when the truth comes to be known. Only that admiration is lasting which is fully informed.
No character of Lord Brougham so striking and true as hers, has ever been drawn. Eminent biographers and critics, including Carlyle, have delineated him, but her portrait—drawn twenty years before theirs appeared—Professor Masson assured me her character of Brougham was the most perfect of all.
Her two-sided estimate gave discomfort to those content with obliqueness in knowledge, but those who have the impartial instinct seek reality, by which no one is deceived. The light and shade of character, like the light and shade of a painting, alone give distinctiveness and truth. But whoever delineates so must suffer no distorting tints of pique, or spite, or prejudice on his palate.
Miss Martineau entered into a correspondence on "Man's Nature and Development," with Mr. Henry G. Atkinson, which, when published, was reviewed by her brother, Dr. James Martineau, in the Prospective Review No. xxvi., Art 4, for which he selected the offensive and ignorant title of "Mesmeric Atheism." It was misleading, because mesmerism has no theology. It was ignorant, because neither Mr. Atkinson nor Dr. Martineau's sister were Atheists. Their disavowal of Atheism was in the book before him.
CHAPTER XV. HARRIET MARTIN EAU—FURTHER INCIDENTS IN HER SINGULAR CAREER
If the reader is curious to know what really were the opinions of these two distinguished offenders (H. Martineau and H. G. Atkinson), I recite them. In the book Dr. Martineau reviewed, Mr. Atkinson said:—
"I am far from being an Atheist I do not say there is no God, but that it is extravagant and irreverent to imagine that cause a Person."
Miss Martineau herself writes in the same series of letters:—
"There is no theory of a God, of an author of Nature, of an origin of the universe, which is not utterly repugnant to my faculties; which is not (to my feelings) so irreverent as to make me blush; so misleading as to make me mourn."