forms of marriage, it was not in a wilful and passionate spirit.  There are reasons for believing that she was somewhat touched in her youth with the individualistic theories of the time, which made so many men and women of genius reject the restraints imposed by society, as in the case of Goethe, Heine, George Sand, Shelley and many another; yet she does not appear to have been to more than a very limited extent influenced by such considerations in regard to her own marriage.  The matter for surprise is, that one who regarded all human traditions, ceremonies and social obligations as sacred, should have consented to act in so individualistic a manner.  She makes Rufus Lyon say—­and it is her own opinion—­that “the right to rebellion is the right to seek a higher rule, and not to wander in mere lawlessness.”  Her marriage, after the initial act, had in it nothing whatever of lawlessness.  She believed there exists a higher rule than that of Parliament, and to this higher law she submitted.  To her this was not a law of self-will and personal inclination, but the law of nature and social obligation.  That she was not overcome by the German individualistic and social tendencies may be seen in the article on “Weimar and its Celebrities,” in the Westminster Review, where, in writing of Wieland as an educator, she says that the tone of his books was not “immaculate,” and that it was “strangely at variance, with that sound and lofty morality which ought to form the basis of every education.”  She also speaks of the philosophy of that day as “the delusive though plausible theory that no license of tone, or warmth of coloring, could injure any really healthy and high-toned mind.”  In the article on “Woman in France,” she touches on similar theories.  As this article was written just at the time of her marriage, one passage in it may have a personal interest, and shows her conception of a marriage such as her own, based on intellectual interest rather than on passionate love.  She is speaking of

the laxity of opinion and practice with regard to the marriage tie.  Heaven forbid [she adds] that we should enter on a defence of French morals, most of all in relation to marriage!  But it is undeniable that unions formed in the maturity of thought and feeling, grounded only on inherent fitness and mutual attraction, tended to bring women into more intelligent sympathy with men, and to heighten and complicate their share in the political drama.  The quiescence and security of the conjugal relation are, doubtless, favorable to the manifestation of the highest qualities by persons who have already attained a high standard of culture, but rarely foster a passion sufficient to rouse all the faculties to aid in winning or retaining its beloved object—­to convert indolence into activity, indifference into ardent partisanship, dulness into perspicuity.

Her conception of marriage may have been affected by that presented by Feuerbach in his Essence of