In one respect, the system of education of the mother appears to have had merit.  All her children were vigorous and healthy.  This seems very much to depend upon the management of our infant years.  It is affirmed by some persons of the present day, most profoundly skilled in the sciences of health and disease, that there is no period of human life so little subject to mortality, as the period of infancy.  Yet, from the mismanagement to which children are exposed, many of the diseases of childhood are rendered fatal, and more persons die in that, than in any other period of human life.  Mary had projected a work upon this subject, which she had carefully considered, and well understood.  She has indeed left a specimen of her skill in this respect in her eldest daughter, three years and a half old, who is a singular example of vigorous constitution and florid health.  Mr. Anthony Carlisle, surgeon, of Soho-square, whom to name is sufficiently to honour, had promised to revise her production.  This is but one out of numerous projects of activity and usefulness, which her untimely death has fatally terminated.

The rustic situation in which Mary spent her infancy, no doubt contributed to confirm the stamina of her constitution.  She sported in the open air, and amidst the picturesque and refreshing scenes of nature, for which she always retained the most exquisite relish.  Dolls and the other amusements usually appropriated to female children, she held in contempt; and felt a much greater propensity to join in the active and hardy sports of her brothers, than to confine herself to those of her own sex.

About the time that Mary completed the fifth year of her age, her father removed to a small distance from his former habitation, and took a farm near the Whalebone upon Epping Forest, a little way out of the Chelmsford road.  In Michaelmas 1765, he once more changed his residence, and occupied a convenient house behind the town of Barking in Essex, eight miles from London.  In this situation some of their nearest neighbours were, Bamber Gascoyne, esquire, successively member of parliament for several boroughs, and his brother, Mr. Joseph Gascoyne.  Bamber Gascoyne resided but little on this spot; but his brother was almost a constant inhabitant, and his family in habits of the most frequent intercourse with the family of Mary.  Here Mr. Wollstonecraft remained for three years.  In September 1796, I accompanied my wife in a visit to this spot.  No person reviewed with greater sensibility, the scenes of her childhood.  We found the house uninhabited, and the garden in a wild and ruinous state.  She renewed her acquaintance with the market-place, the streets, and the wharf, the latter of which we found crowded with barges, and full of activity.