Life is either a dull round of eating, drinking, and sleeping, or a spark
of ethereal fire just kindled. . . . The character of girls must depend
upon their reading as much as upon the company they keep. Besides the
intrinsic pleasure to be derived from solid knowledge, a woman ought to
consider it as her best resource against poverty.' This is a somewhat
caustic aphorism: 'A romantic woman is a troublesome friend, as she
expects you to be as imprudent as herself, and is mortified at what she
calls coldness and insensibility.' And this is admirable: 'The art of
life is not to estrange oneself from society, and yet not to pay too dear
for it.' This, too, is good: 'Vanity, like curiosity, is wanted as a
stimulus to exertion; indolence would certainly get the better of us if
it were not for these two powerful principles'; and there is a keen touch
of humour in the following: 'Nothing is so gratifying as the idea that
virtue and philanthropy are becoming fashionable.' Dr. James Martineau,
in a letter to Mrs. Ross, gives us a pleasant picture of the old lady
returning from market 'weighted by her huge basket, with the shank of a
leg of mutton thrust out to betray its contents,' and talking divinely
about philosophy, poets, politics, and every intellectual topic of the
day. She was a woman of admirable good sense, a type of Roman matron,
and quite as careful as were the Roman matrons to keep up the purity of
her native tongue.

Mrs. Taylor, however, was more or less limited to Norwich. Mrs. Austin
was for the world. In London, Paris, and Germany, she ruled and
dominated society, loved by every one who knew her. 'She is "My best and
brightest" to Lord Jeffrey; "Dear, fair and wise" to Sydney Smith; "My
great ally" to Sir James Stephen; "Sunlight through waste weltering
chaos" to Thomas Carlyle (while he needed her aid); "La petite mere du
genre humain" to Michael Chevalier; "Liebes Mutterlein" to John Stuart
Mill; and "My own Professorin" to Charles Buller, to whom she taught
German, as well as to the sons of Mr. James Mill.' Jeremy Bentham, when
on his deathbed, gave her a ring with his portrait and some of his hair
let in behind. 'There, my dear,' he said, 'it is the only ring I ever
gave a woman.' She corresponded with Guizot, Barthelemy de St. Hilaire,
the Grotes, Dr. Whewell, the Master of Trinity, Nassau Senior, the
Duchesse d'Orleans, Victor Cousin, and many other distinguished people.
Her translation of Ranke's History of the Popes is admirable; indeed, all
her literary work was thoroughly well done, and her edition of her
husband's Province of Jurisprudence deserves the very highest praise. Two
people more unlike than herself and her husband it would have been
difficult to find. He was habitually grave and despondent; she was
brilliantly handsome, fond of society, in which she shone, and 'with an
almost superabundance of energy and animal spirits,' Mrs. Ross tells us.
She married him because she thought him perfect, but he never produced
the work of which he was worthy, and of which she knew him to be worthy.
Her estimate of him in the preface to the Jurisprudence is wonderfully
striking and simple. 'He was never sanguine. He was intolerant of any
imperfection.