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232 The writer of the biographical sketch in “Half-hours with Freethinkers” says:

“Mrs. Martin was born at Bristol in 1812. She was brought up under strict religious training. She early evinced fine powers, with all the enthusiasm and emotional nature which frequently culminates in ardent religious feeling, but, fortunately, with a natural receptivity to truth, a spirit of inquiry, a love of mankind, and a horror of inhumanity, which neutralized the ardor of her unthinking affections and her imagination.”

She early showed evidences of genius, and a taste for literature. When only twenty-four, she edited for some time a paper entitled the Bristol Magazine. She was a ready, facile writer, with a fine, discriminating mind. Her attention was early directed to religion, which for a person of her temperament had peculiar attractions, and it was not until several years after her marriage that, having, after careful investigation, found, as she judged, good reason