Martineau in relating her own childish experiences.
Harriet was a delicate, ailing child from birth, but possessed of a deeply reflective intellect, and strong, intense feelings. it may be that the strong mind proved too heavy a strain upon the weaker physical system, and so caused some of her later ailments. “I have never,” she says, “had the sense of smell, nor, therefore, much sense of taste ; and before I was twenty I had lost the greater part of my hearing. When my companions give me notice of distant objects by means of any of these senses—when they tell me what is growing in an invisible field or garden, or where there is music, or what people are saying on the farther side of a reach of the lake on a calm summer evening, I feel a sort of start, as if I were in company with sorcerers.”
With these drawbacks upon social intercourse and enjoyment, combined with her natural taste and inclination for study, she necessarily gave free play to her reflective
