 CHAPTER II of Margaret Fuller, Marquesa Ossolly, by Julia Ward Howe. Life in Cambridge. Friendship of Dr. Hedge and James Freeman Clark. Dr. Hedge, a lifelong friend of Margaret, has given a very interesting sketch of her in her girlhood. He first met her when he was a student at Harvard, and she, a maiden of thirteen, in her father's house at Cambridge. Her precocity, mental and physical, was such that she passed for a much older person, and had already a recognized place in society. She was, at this time, in blooming and vigorous health, with a tendency to overstoutness, which the doctor thinks gave her some trouble. She was not handsome or even pretty, but her animated countenance at once made its own impression, and awakened in those who saw her a desire to know more of her. Fine hair and teeth, vivacious eyes, and a peculiarly graceful carriage of the head and neck, were points which redeemed her from the charge of plainness. This face of hers was, indeed, somewhat problematic in its expression, which carried with it the assurance of great possibilities, but not the certainty of their fulfillment. Her conversation was already brilliant and full of interest, with a satirical turn which became somewhat modified in after-life. Dr. Hedge fixes her stay in the Groton School at the years 1824, 1825, and mentions her indulgence in sarcasm as a source of her trouble to her in a school earlier attended, that of Dr. Park, of Boston. In the year 1826 his slight acquaintance with her grew into a friendship, which, as we have said, ended only with her life. During the seven years that followed he had abundant occasion to note her steady growth and the intensity of her inner life. This was, with her, as with most young persons, a period of romance and of dreams, of yearning and of passion. He thinks that she did not at this time pursue any systematic study. She read with the heart, and was learning more from social experience than from books. One leading trait of her life was already prominent. This was a passionate love of all beauties, both in nature and in art. If not corresponding to a scholar's idea of systematic study, Margaret's pursuit of culture in those years must have been arduous in many-sided. This we may partly gather from the books named and the themes touched upon in her correspondence with the beloved teacher who had brought her such near and tender help in her hour of need. To this lady, in a letter dated July 11, 1825, Margaret rehearses the routine of her daily life. I rise a little before five, walk an hour, and then practice on the piano till seven, when we breakfast. Next I read French, Sismondi's literature of the South of Europe till eight, then two or three lectures in Brown's philosophy. About half-past nine I go to Mr. Perkins school and study Greek till twelve, when, the school being dismissed, I recite, go home, and practice again till dinner at two. Sometimes, if the conversation is very agreeable, I lounge for half an hour over the dessert, though rarely so lavish of time. Then, when I can, I read two hours in Italian, but I am often interrupted. At six I walk or take a drive. Before going to bed I play or sing for half an hour, and about eleven retire to write a little while in my journal. Exercises on what I have read, or a series of characteristics which I am filling up according to advice. A year later she mentions studying Madame Distul, Epictetus, Milton, Racine, and Castilian ballads with great delight. She asks her correspondent whether she would rather be the brilliant Distul or the useful Edgeworth. In 1827 we find her occupied with a critical study of the elder Italian poets. She now mentions Miss Francis, Lydia Maria Child, as her intended companion in a course of metaphysical study. She characterizes this lady as a natural person, a most rare thing in this age of cant and pretension. Her conversation is charming, she brings all her powers to bear upon it. Her style is varied and she has a very pleasant and spirited way of thinking. Margaret's published correspondence with her dear teacher ends in 1830, with these words. My beloved supporter in those sorrowful hours, can I ever forget that to your treatment in that crisis of youth I owe the true life the love of truth and honour. From these years of pedagogy and of patience we must now pass to the time when this bud, so full of promise, unfolded into a flower rare and wondrous. The story of Margaret's early studies and the wide reach of her craving for knowledge already mark her as a creature of uncommon gifts. A devourer of books she had been from the start, but books alone could not content this ardent mind, at once so critical and so creative. She must also have life at first hand and feed her intelligence from its deepest source. Hence the long story of her friendships, so many and various, yet so earnest and efficient. What the chosen associates of this wonderful woman have made public concerning the interest of her conversation and the value of her influence, tasks to the utmost the believing powers of a time in which the demon of self-interest seems to unfold himself out of most of the metaphoric flowers of society. Margaret and her friends might truly have said, our kingdom is not of this world, at least according to what this world calls kingly. But what imperial power had this self-poised soul which could so widely open its doors and so closely shut them, which could lead in its train the brightest and purest intelligences and bind the sweet influences of starry souls in the garland of its happy hours. And here we may say her kingdom was not all of this world, for the kingdom of noble thought and affection is in this world and beyond it, and the real and ideal are at peace within its bounds. In the divided task of Margaret's biography it was given to James Freeman Clark to speak of that early summer of her life in which these tender and intimate relations had their first and most fervent unfolding. The Harvard student of that day was probably a personage very unlike the present revered pastor of the Church of the Disciples. Yet we must believe that the one was graciously foreshadowed in the other, and that Margaret found in him the germ of what the later world has learned so greatly to respect and admire. The acquaintance between these two began in 1829, and was furthered by a family connection which Margaret in one of her early letters playfully characterized as a cousinship in the thirty-seventh degree. During the two years immediately following the two young people either met or corresponded daily. In explaining the origin of this friendship Mr. Clark modestly says, She needed a friend to whom to speak of her studies, to whom to express the ideas which were dawning and taking shape in her mind. She accepted me for this friend, and to me it was a gift of the gods, an influence like no other. This intercourse was at first on both sides an entertainment sought and found. In its early stages Margaret characterizes her correspondent as a socialist by vocation, a sentimentalist by nature, and a channe night from force of circumstance and of fashion. Further acquaintance opened beneath the superficial interest the deeper sources of sympathy, and a valued letter from Margaret is named by Mr. Clark as having laid the foundation of a friendship to which he owed both intellectual enlightenment and spiritual enlargement. More than for these he thanks Margaret for having imparted to him an impulse which carried him bravely forward in what has proved to be the normal direction of his life. Although destined, after those early years of intimate communion, to live far apart and in widely different spheres of labor and of interest, the regard of the two friends never suffered change or diminution. And here we come upon a governing feature in Margaret's intercourse with her friends. She had the power of leading those who interested her to a confidence which unfolded to her the deepest secrets of their life. Now came in play that unexplained action of one mind upon another which we call personal magnetism and which is more distinctly recognized today than in other times as an element in social efficiency. It is this power which, united with intellectual force, gives leadership to individual men and enables the great orator to hold a mighty audience in the hollow of his hand. With Margaret at the period we speak of, the exercise of this power was intensive rather than extensive. The circumstance of the time had something to do with this. Here was a soul whose objects and desires boldly transcended the sphere of ordinary life. It could neither wholly contain nor fitly utter itself. Pulpit and platform were then interdicted to her sex. The mimic stage, had she thought of it, would have mocked her with its unreality. On single souls one at a time she laid her detaining grasp and asked what they could receive and give. Something noble she must perceive in them before she would condescend to this parlay. She did not insist that her friend should possess genius, but she could only make friends of those who, like herself, were seekers after the higher life. Worthiness of object commended even mediocrity to her, but shallow worldliness awakened her contempt. In the exercise of this discrimination she no doubt sometimes gave offence. Mr. Clark acknowledges that she not only seemed, but was, haughty and supercilious to the multitude, while to the chosen few she was the very embodiment of tender and true regard. It must also be acknowledged that this same magnetism which attracted some persons so strongly was to others as strongly repellent. Where she was least known this repulsion was most felt. It yielded to admiration and esteem where acquaintance went beyond the mere recognition of Margaret's air and manner, which made a stranger a little uncertain whether he would be amicably entertained or subjected to a reductio ad absurdum. As in any community impressions of personality are more likely to be superficial than thorough. It is probable that a very general misunderstanding which, at a later day, grew up between Margaret and the great world of a small New England city had its origin in a misconstruction of her manner when among strangers or on the occasion of a first introduction. To recall this shallow popular judgment of her is not pleasant, but some mention of it does belong to any summary of her life. With such friends as she had she had no reason to look upon herself as one who was neither understood nor appreciated. In her heart which instinctively sought the empire of universal love may have been grieved at the indifference and dislike which she sometimes encountered. Those who know how in some circles her name became a watchword for all that was eccentric and pretentious in the womanhood of her day will smile or sigh at the contrast between the portraitures of Margaret given in the volumes of the memoir and the caricature of her which was current in the mind of the public at large. These remarks anticipate the pains and distinctions of a later period. For the present let us confine our attention to the happy days at Cambridge, which Margaret may not have recognized as such, but which must have seemed bright to her when contrasted with the years of labour and anxiety which followed them. Mr. Clark tells us that Margaret and he began the study of the German language in 1832, moved thereunto by Thomas Carlisle's brilliant exposition of the merits of leading German authors. In three months' time Margaret had acquired easy command of the language, and within the year had read the most important works of Goethe and Schiller, with the writings also of Teak, Koener, Richter, and Novalis. Extracts from her letters at this time show that this extensive reading was neither hasty nor superficial. She finds herself happier in the companionship of Schiller than in that of Goethe, of whom she says, that perfect wisdom and merciless reason seem cold after those seducing pictures of forms more beautiful than truth. The elective affinities suggest to her various critical questions but does not carry her away with the sweep of its interest. From the immense superiority of Goethe she finds it a relief to turn to the simplicity of Novalis, a wondrous youth who has written only one volume and whose one-sidedness, imperfection, and glow seem refreshingly human to her. Koener becomes a fixed star in the heaven of her thought. Lessing interests her less. She credits him with the production of well-conceived and sustained characters and interesting situations, but not with any profound knowledge of human nature. I think him easily followed, strong but not deep. This was with Margaret, as Dr. Hedge has well observed, the period of romance. Her superiority to common individuals appeared in the fact that she was able to combine, with intense personal aspirations and desires, a wide outlook into the destinies of the human race. We find her, in these very days, engaged in surveying the level on which the public mind is poised. She turns from the poetic tragedy and comedy of life to study, as she says, the rules of its prose, and to learn from the talk of common people what elements and modes of thought go to make up the average American mind. She listens to George Thompson, the English anti-slavery orator, and is led to say that, if she had been a man, she should have coveted the gift of eloquence above all others, and this for the intensity of its effects. She thinks of writing six historical tragedies and devises the plan for three of them. Tales of Hebrew history it is also in her mind to compose. Becoming convinced that some fixed opinion on the subject of metaphysics is an essential aid to systemic culture, she addresses herself to the study of ficta and Jacobi, of Brown and Stewart. The first of these appeared to her incomprehensible. Of the second, she conjectures that his views are derived from some author whom she has not read. She thinks in good earnest of writing a life of Goethe, and wishes to visit Europe in order to collect the material requisite for this. Her appreciation of Dr. Channing is shown in a warm encomium on his work treating of slavery, of which she says, it has come like a breath born over some solemn sea which separates us from an island of righteousness. In summing up his account of this part of Margaret's life, Mr. Clark characterizes self-culture as the object in which she was content to lose sight of all others. Her devotion to this great end was, he says, wholly religious and almost Christian. She was religious in her recognition of the divine element in human experience, and Christian in her elevation above the sordid interests of life, and in her devotion to the highest standards of duty and of destiny. He admits, however, that her aim, noble as it was, long remained too intensely personal to reach the absolute generosity required by the Christian rule. This defect made itself felt outwardly by a certain disesteem of the vulgar herd, and in an exaggerated worship of great personalities. Its inner effects were more serious. To her darling desire for growth and development she sacrificed everything but manifest duty. The want of harmony between her outward circumstances and her inward longings so detained her thoughts that she was unable to pass beyond the confines of the present moment, and could not foresee that true growth must bring her, as it soon did, a great enlargement of influence and relation. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of Margaret Fuller, Marquesa Ossolly, by Julia Ward Howe. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Religious Beliefs. Margaret's Early Critics. First acquaintance with Mr. Emerson. It was to be expected that in such a correspondence as that between Margaret and James Freeman Clark the Court of Religious Belief would not remain untouched. For Margaret's own words, in letters and in her journal, we clearly gather that her mind, in this respect, passed through a long and wide experience. Fortunate for her was, in that day, the Unitarian Pulpit, with its larger charity and freer exegesis. With this fold for her spiritual home she could go in and out finding pasture, while by the so-called orthodox sects she would have been looked upon as standing without the bounds of all religious fellowship. The requirements of her nature were twofold. A religious foundation for thought was to her a necessity. Equally necessary was to her the untrammeled exercise of critical judgment and the thinking her own thoughts instead of accepting those of other people. We may feel sure that Margaret, even to save her own soul, would not and could not, have followed any confession of faith in opposition to her own best judgment. She would have preferred the hell of the free soul to the heaven of the slave. To combine this intellectual interpretation of religious duty with the simple devotion which the heart craves, is not easy for any one. We may be very glad to find that for her it was not impossible. Her attitude between these two points of opposition is indeed edifying. For, while she follows thought with the daring of a skeptic and fearlessly reasons concerning the highest mysteries, she yet acknowledges the insufficiency of human knowledge for themes so wonderful, and here, as nowhere else, bows her imperial head and confesses herself human. One thing we may learn from what Margaret has written on this subject, if we do not already know it, and this is that in any true religious experience there must be progress and change of attitude. This progress may be first initiated by the preponderance of thought, or by that of affection, but, as it goes on, the partiality of first views will be corrected by considerations which are developed by later study. Religious sincerity is, in the end, justified in all its stages, but these stages separately considered will appear more or less incomplete, and sometimes even irreligious. When first interrogated by her correspondent she says, I have determined not to form settled opinions at present. Loving or feeble natures need a positive religion, a visible refuge, a protection, as much in the passionate season of youth as in those stages nearer to the grave. But mine is not such. My pride is superior to any feelings I have yet experienced. My affection is strong admiration, not the necessity of giving or receiving assistance or sympathy. So much for the subjective side of the matter with Margaret at this time. The objective is formulated by her in this brief creed. I believe in eternal progression. I believe in a God, a beauty in perfection to which I am to strive all my life for assimilation. From these two articles of belief I draw the rules by which I strive to regulate my life. Tangible promises, well-defined hopes, are things of which I do not now feel the need. At present my soul is intent on this life, and I think of religion as its rule. Those last words are not in contrast with the general tone of religious teaching today, but when Margaret wrote them to James Freeman Clark, an exaggerated adjournment of human happiness to the glories of another world was quite commonly considered as essential to a truly Christian standpoint. Even at this self-sufficing period of her life, Margaret's journals were full of prayer and aspiration. Here are some of the utterances of this soul which she herself calls a proud one. Blessed Father, nip every foolish wish in blossom. Lead me any way to truth and goodness, but if might be I would not pass from idol to idol. Let no mean sculpture deform a mind disorderly, perhaps ill-furnished but spacious and life-warm. After hearing a sermon on the nature of duties, social and personal, she says, My heart swelled with prayer. I began to feel hope that time and toil might strengthen me to despise the vulgar parts of felicity and live as becomes an immortal creature. O, lead me, my father. Rude out false pride and selfishness for my heart. Inspire me with virtuous energy and enable me to improve every talent for the eternal good of myself and others. Seasons of bitter discouragement alternated at this time with the moments in which she felt not only her own power but also the excellence of her aims in life. Of one of these dark hours Margaret's journal gives a vivid description from which some passages may be quoted. The occasion was a New England Thanksgiving, a day on which her attendance at church was almost compulsory. This church was not, to her, a spiritual home, and on the day now spoken of the song of Thanksgiving made positive discord in her ears. She felt herself in no condition to give thanks. Her feet were entangled in the problem of life. Her soul was agonized by its unreconciled contradictions. I was wearied out with mental conflicts. I felt within myself great power and generosity and tenderness, but it seemed to me as if they were all unrecognized and as if it was impossible that they should be used in life. I was only one in twenty, the past was worthless, the future hopeless, yet I could not remember ever voluntarily to have done a wrong thing, and my aspirations seemed very high. Looking about in the church she envied the little children for their sense of dependence and protection. She knew not, she says, that none could have any father but God. Knew not that she was not the only lonely one, the selected Oedipus, the special victim of an iron law. From this intense and exaggerated self-consciousness the only escape was in fleeing from self. She sought to do this, as she had often done, by a long, quick walk, whose fatigue should worry out her anguish and enable her to return home in a state of prayer. On this day this resource did not avail her. All seemed to have reached its height. It seemed as if I could never return to a world in which I had no place to the mockery of humanities. I could not act apart nor seem to live any longer. The aspect of the outer world was in correspondence with these depressing thoughts. It was a sad and sallow day of the late autumn. Slow processions of clouds were passing over a cold blue sky. The hues of earth were dull and gray and brown, with sickly struggles of late green here and there. Sometimes a moaning gust of wind drove late reluctant leaves across the path. There was no life else. Driven from place to place by the conflict within her she sat down at last to rest, where the trees were thick about a little pool, dark and silent. All was dark and cold and still. Suddenly the sun broke through the clouds, with that transparent sweetness like the last smile of a dying lover which it will use when it has been unkind all a cold autumn day. And with this unlooked-for brightness passed into her soul a beam from its true sun, whose radiance, she says, never departed more. This sudden illumination was not, however, an unreasoning, unaccountable one. In that moment flashed upon her the solution of the problem of self, whose perplexities had followed her from her childish days. She comprehended at once the struggle in which she had been well nigh overcome, and the illusion which had, till then, made victory impossible. I saw how long it must be before the soul can learn to act under these limitations of time and space and human nature, but I saw also that it must do it. I saw there was no self, that selfishness was all folly, and the result of circumstance, that it was only because I thought self-real that I suffered, that I had only to live in the idea of the all, and all was mine. This truth came to me, and I received it unhesitatingly, so that I was for that hour taken up into God. My earthly pain at not being recognized never went deep after this hour. I had passed the extreme of passionate sorrow, and all check, all failure, all ignorance, have seemed temporary ever since. The progress of this work already brings us to that portion of Margaret's life in which her character was most likely to be judged of by the world around her, as already determined in its features and aspect, that this judgment was often a misjudgment is known to all who remember Margaret's position in Boston's society in the days of her lessons and conversations. A really vulgar injustice was often done her by those who knew of her only her appearance and supposed pretensions. Those to whom she never was a living presence may naturally ask of those who professed to have known her whether this injustice did not originate with herself, whether she did not do herself injustice by habitually presenting herself in an attitude which was calculated to heighten the idea, already conceived of her arrogance and overweening self-esteem. Independently of other sources of information, the statements of one so catholic and charitable as Mr. Emerson meet us here, and oblige us to believe that the great services which Margaret was able to render to those with whom she came into relation were somewhat impaired by a self-esteem which it would have been unfortunate for her disciples to imitate. The satirists of the time saw this, and Margaret, besides encountering the small shot of society ridicule, received now and then such a broadside as James Russell Lowell gave her in his Fable for Critics. Of this long and somewhat bitter tirade a few lines may suffice as a specimen. But here comes Miranda. Zeus, where shall I flee to? She has such a penchant for bothering me, too. She always keeps asking if I don't observe a particular likeness twist her in Minerva. She will take an old notion and make it her own, by saying it or in her sibiline tone, or persuade you to something tremendously deep, by repeating it so as to put you to sleep. And she may well defy an immortal to see through it, when once she has mixed up her infinite me through it. Here Miranda came up and said, Phoebus, you know, that the infinite soul has its infinite woe, as I ought to know having lived cheek by jowl since the day I was born with the infinite soul. These remarks, explanatory and apologetic, are suggested partly by Mr. Emerson's statements concerning the beginning of his acquaintance with Margaret, and partly by the writer's own recollections of the views of outsiders concerning her, which contrasted strongly with the feeling and opinion of her intimates. Mr. Emerson first heard of Margaret from Dr. Hedge, and afterwards for Miss Martino. Both were warm in their praise of her, and the last named was especially desirous to introduce her to Mr. Emerson, whom she very much wished to know. After one or more chance meetings it was arranged that Margaret should spend a fortnight with Mrs. Emerson. The date of this visit was in July, 1836. To the description of her person already quoted from Dr. Hedge, we may add a sentence or two for Mr. Emerson's record of his first impressions of her. She had a face and a frame that would indicate fullness and tenacity of life. She was then as always carefully and becomingly dressed, and of ladylike self-possession. For the rest her appearance had nothing prepossessing. Her extreme plainness, a trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids, the nasal tone of her voice, all repelled. And I said to myself, we shall never get far. But Margaret greatly esteemed Mr. Emerson, and was intent upon establishing a friendly relation with him. Her reputation for satire was well known to him, and was rather justified in his eyes by the first half-hour of her conversation with him. I believe I fancied her too much interested in personal history, and her talk was a comedy in which dramatic justice was done to everybody's foibles. I remember that she made me laugh more than I liked. Passing into a happier vein she unfolded her brilliant powers of repartee, expressed her own opinions, and sought to discover those of her companion. Soon her wit had effaced the impression of her personal unattractiveness. And the eyes which were so plain at first swam with fun and droleries, and the very tides of joy and superabundant life. He now saw that her satire was only the pastime and necessity of her talent, and as he learned to know her better, her plane of character rose constantly in his estimation, disclosing many moods and powers in successive platforms or terraces, each above each. Mr. Emerson likens Margaret's relations with her friends to the wearing of a necklace of social brilliance of the first water. A dreaded wave among the merely fashionable, her relations with men and women of higher tastes, were such that, as Mr. Emerson says, all the art, the thought, and the nobleness in New England seemed at that moment related to her, and she to it. In the houses of such friends she was always a desired guest, and in her various visitings she seemed like a queen of some parliament of love who carried the key to all confidences and to whom every question had been referred. Mr. Emerson gives some portraits which make evident the variety as well as the extent of Margaret's attraction. Women noted for beauty and for social talent, votaries of song, students of art and literature, and as well as women, vied with each other in their devotion to her. To each she assumed and sustained a special relation whose duties and offices she never neglected nor confounded. To each she became at once a source of inspiration and a court of appeal. The beneficence of her influence may be inferred from the lasting gratitude of her friends, who always remembered her as having wisely guided and counseled them. Any human life is liable to be modified by the supposition that its results are of great interest to someone whose concern in them is not a selfish one. Where this supposition is verified by corresponding acts, the power of the individual is greatly multiplied. This merciful, this providential interest Margaret felt for each of her many friends. There was no illusion in the sense of her value which they all and severally entertained. Where, we may ask, shall we look today for a friendliness so wide and so availing? We can only answer that such souls are not sent into the world every day. Few of us can count upon inspiring, even in those who are nearest and dearest to us, this untiring concern in our highest welfare. But such a friend to so many it would be hard to find. When we consider Margaret's love of literature and her power of making its treasures her own, we must think of this passion of hers for availing intercourse with other minds as indeed a providential gift which no doubt lavished in passing speech much that would have been eloquent on paper. But evidently had on society the immediate and intensified effect which distinguishes the living word above the dead letter. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of Margaret Fuller, Marquesa Ossolly, by Julia Ward Howe. The sleep-revox recording is in the public domain. ART STUDYS Removal to Grotton. Meeting with Harriet Martinot. Death of Mr. Fuller. Devotion to her family. Margaret's enthusiasm for art was in some measure the result of her study of Goethe. Yet she had in herself a love of the beautiful, and a sense of its office in life, which would naturally have led her far in the direction in which this great master gave her so strong an impulsion. In her multifarious reading she gave much time to the literature of art, and in those days had read everything that related to Michelangelo and Raphael, Cato di Canzì, Condivi, Vasari, Benvenuto Cellini, and others. The masters themselves she studied in the castes of the Boston Athenium, in the Brimmer collection of engravings, and in the contents of certain portfolios which a much esteemed friend placed at her service, and which contained all the designs of Michel and Raphael. The delight which Margaret felt in these studies demanded the sympathy of her elect associates, and Mr. Emerson remembers certain months as having been colored with the genius of these Italians. In 1839 Mr. Alston's numerous works were collected for a public exhibition which drew to Boston lovers of art from many distant places. In the same year some sculptures of Greeno and Crawford were added to the attractions of the Boston Athenium. In Margaret's appreciation of these works, if we may believe Mr. Emerson, a certain fanciful interpretation of her own sometimes took the place of a just estimate of artistic values. Yet he found her opinion worthy of attention as evincing her real love of beautiful things and her great desire to understand the high significance of art. He makes some quotations from her notes on the Athenian Gallery of Sculpture in 1840. Here she finds marble busts of Byron and Napoleon. The first, with all its beauty, appears to her sultry, stern, all-craving, all-commanding, and expressive of something which accounts for what she calls the grand failure of his scheme of existence. The head of Napoleon is, she says, not only stern, but ruthless. Yet this ruthlessness excites no aversion. The artist has caught its true character and given us here the Attila, the instrument of fate to serve a purpose not his own. She groups the poet and warrior together as having, the one in letters, the other in arms, represented more fully than any other the tendency of their time. They, more than any other, gave it a chance for reaction. Near these she finds a head of the poet Enneas and busts also of Edward Everett, Washington Alston, and Daniel Webster. Her comment upon this juxtaposition is interesting. Yet even near the Enneas and Napoleon our American men look worthy to be perpetuated in marble or bronze if it were only for their air of calm, unpretending sagacity. Mr. Henry James, Jr., writing of Nathaniel Hawthorne, speaks of the Massachusetts of forty or more years ago as poor in its aesthetic resources. Works of art, indeed, were then few in number, and the decorative industry, in its present extent, was not dreamed of. But in the intellectual form of appreciative criticism the Boston of that day was richer than the city of our own time. The first stage of culture is cultivation, and the art lovers of that day had sowed the seed of careful study, and were intent upon its growth in ripening. If possession is nine points of the law, as it is acknowledged to be, the knowledge of values may be said to be nine points of possession, and Margaret and her friends with their knowledge of the import of art and with their trained and careful observation of its outward forms had a richer feast in the castes and engravings of that time than can be enjoyed today by the amateur who, with a brick-a-brack taste and blasé feeling, haunts the picture-shops of our large cities, or treads the galleries in which the majestic ghosts of earnest times rebuke his flippant frivolity. We have lingered over these records of Margaret's brilliant youth, because their prophecies ate us greatly in the interpretation of her later life. The inspired maiden of these letters and journals is very unlike the Miss Fuller, who in those very days was sometimes quoted as the very embodiment of all that is ungraceful and unfeminine. How little were the beauties of her mind, the graces of her character, guessed at or sought for, by those who saw in her unlikeness to the popular or fashionable type of the time, matter only for derisive comment. It may not be unimportant for us here to examine a little the rationale of Margaret's position, and inquire whether the trait which occasioned so much animate version was not the concomitant of one of Margaret's most valuable qualities. This we should call a belief in her own moral and intellectual power, which impelled her to examine and decide all questions for herself, and which enabled her to accomplish many a brave work and sacrifice. This sense of her own power was answered by the common confession of weakness which then was, and still is, a part of the received creed of women on the level of good society. Did not the prone and slavish attitude of these women appear to Margaret as fatal to character as it really is? I am only a woman, was remark often heard in that day, as in this, from women to whom that only was not to be permitted. Only the guardian of the beginning of life, only the sharer in all its duties and inspirations. Culture and Christianity recognized as much as this, but the doctrine still remained an abstract one, and equal rights were scarcely thought of as a corollary to equal duties. Margaret never saw, though she foresaw, the awakening and recognition of the new womanhood which is already changing the aspect of civilized society. An eccentric in her own despite, she had dared assume her full height and to demand her proper place. Her position was as exceptional as was her genius. From the isolation of her superiority was it wonderful that she should consider it more absolute than it really was? This exaggerated sense of power is perhaps nothing more than the intensification of consciousness which certain exigencies will awaken in those who meet them with a special work to do, and a special gift to do it with. It must be remembered that Margaret's self-esteem did not really involve any disesteem of others. She honored in all their best traits, and her only ground of quarrel with humanity at large was its derogation from its own dignity, its neglect of its own best interests. Such a sense of human value as she possessed was truly a Christian gift, and it was in virtue of this that she was able to impart such exhilaration and hopefulness to those who were content to learn of her. But here, in our chronicle, the early morning hours are already over. The inward conquest which was sealed by the sunbeam of that sallow November day becomes the prelude to an outward struggle with difficulties which task to the utmost the strength acquired by our neophyte through prayer and study. In the spring of 1833 Margaret found herself obliged to leave the academic shades of Cambridge for the country retirement of Groton. Her father, weary with the long practice of the law, had removed his residence to the latter place, intending to devote his later years to literary labour and the education of his younger children. To Margaret this change was unwelcome, and the result showed it, at a later day, to have been unfortunate for the family. She did not, however, take here the position of a malcontent, but that of one who, finding herself removed from congenial surroundings, knows how to summon to her aid the hosts of noble minds with which her study has made her familiar. Her German books go with her, and Goethe, Schilling, and Jean-Paul sawlise her lonely hours. She reads works on architecture and books of travel in Italy, while sympathy with her father's pursuits leads her to interest herself in American history, concerning which he had collected much information with a view to historical composition. We find her also engaged in tuition. She has four pupils, probably the younger children of the family, and gives lessons in three languages five days in the week, besides teaching geography and history. She has much needlework to do, and the ill health of her mother and grandmother brings additional cares. The course of study which she has marked out for herself can only be pursued, she says, on three evenings in the week, and at chance hours in the day. It includes a careful perusal of Alfieri's writings and an examination into the evidences of the Christian religion. To this she is impelled by distressing skeptical notions of her own, and by the doubts awakened in her mind by the arguments of infidels and of deists, some of whom are numbered among her friends. The following letter, addressed by Margaret, to a much admired friend, will give us some idea of the playful mood which relieved her days of serious application. Groton, 1834 To Mrs. Almira B. Are you not ashamed, almost friendshipless clergywoman, not to have enlivened my long seclusion by one line? Does the author of the lecture delivered with much applause before the Brooklyn Lyceum despise and wish to cast off the author of Essay's Contamiliously Rejected by That Respected Publication, the Christian Examiner, that a little success should have such power to steal the female heart to base in gratitude? Oh, ally, ally, wilt thou forget that it was I? In happier hours thou hast full off diverted, who first fanned the spark of thy ambition into flame? Sinks thou that thou oweest not to those long sweeps over the inexpressive realities of literature, when thou wast obliged to trust my support, thy own opinions as yet scarce budding from thy heels or shoulders? Dost thou forget? But my emotions will not permit me to pursue the subject. Surely I must have jogged your conscience sufficiently. I shall follow the instructions of the great Goethe, and having in some degree vented my feelings address you as if you were what you ought to be. Still remains enveloped in mystery the reason why neither you nor my reverent friend came to bid me good-bye before I left your city, according to promise. I suspected the waiter at the time of having intercepted your card, but your long venomous silence has obliged me to acquit him. I had treasured up sundry little anecdotes touching my journey homeward, which, if related with dramatic skill, might excite a smile on your face, oh laughter-loving blue-stalking. I returned home under the protection of a Mr. Fullerton, fresh from London and Paris, who gave me an entirely new view of continental affairs. He assured me that the German Prince, A., was an ignorant pretender, in the face of my assurances that I had read and greatly admired his writings, and gave me a contemptuous description of Waldo Emerson dining in boots at Timothy Wiggins, Absolumenta Fermorir. All his sayings were exquisite, and then a sui generous mother whom I met with on board the steamboat. All my pretty pictures are blotted out by the rude hand of time. Verily, this checking of speech is dangerous. If all the matter I have been preserving for various persons is in my head, packed away, distributed among the various organs, how immensely will my head be developed when I return to the world? This is the first time in my life that I have known what it is to have nobody to speak to, sayadir, of my own peculiar little fancies. I bear it with strange philosophy, but I do wish to be written to. I will tell you how I pass my time without society or exercise. Even till two o'clock, sometimes later, I pour ideas into the heads of the little Fullers. Much runs out. Indeed, I am often reminded of the chapter on home education in the new monthly. But the few drops which remain mightily gladden the side of my father. Then I go downstairs and ask for my letters from the post. This is my only pleasure, according to the ideas most people entertain of pleasure. Do you write me an excellent epistle by return of mail, or I will make your headache by a minute account of the way in which the remaining hours are spent? I have only lately read the female sovereigns of your beloved Mrs. Jamison, and like them better than any of her works. Her opinions are clearly expressed, sufficiently discriminating, and her manner unusually simple. I was not dazzled by excess of artificial light, nor cloyed by spiced and sweetened sentiments. My love to your revered husband and four kisses to Edward, two on your account, one for his beauty, and one abstract kiss, symbol of my love for all little children in general. Write of him, of Mr. Blank's sermons, of your likes and dislikes, of any new characters sublime or droll you may have unearthed, and of all other things I should like. Affectionately your country friend, poor and humble, Margaret. In the summer of 1835 a great pleasure and refreshment came to Margaret, in the acquaintance of Miss Martinot, whom she met while on a visit to her friend, Mrs. Ferrar, in Cambridge. And speaking of this first meeting, Margaret says, I wished to give myself wholly up to receive an impression of her. What shrewdness in detecting various shades of character. Yet what she said of Hannah Moore and Miss Edgeworth greated upon my feelings. In a later conversation the barrier that separates acquaintance from friendship was passed, and Margaret felt, beneath the sharpness of her companion's criticism, the presence of a truly human heart. The two ladies went to church together, and the minister prayed for our friends. Margaret was moved by this to offer a special prayer for Miss Martinot, which so impressed itself upon her mind that she was able to write it down. We quote the part of it which most particularly refers to her new friend. May her path be guarded and blessed. May her noble mind be kept firmly poised in its native truth, unsullied by prejudice or error, and strong to resist whatever outwardly or inwardly shall war against its high vocation. May each day bring to this generous seeker new riches of true philosophy and of divine love, and amidst all trials give her to know and feel that thou, the all-sufficing, art with her, leading her on through eternity to likeness of thyself. The change of base which, years after this time, transformed Miss Martinot into an enthusiastic disbeliever would certainly not have seemed to Margaret an answer to her prayer, but as the doctrine that God reveals himself in many ways was not new to her, and as her petition includes the eternities, we may believe that she appreciated the sincerity of her friend's negations, and anticipated for her, as for herself, a later vision of the celestial city, whose brightness should rise victorious above the mists of speculative doubt. A serious illness intervened at this time, brought on, one might think, by the intense action of Margaret's brain, stimulated by her manifold and unremitting labours. For nine days and nights she suffered from fever, accompanied by agonizing pain in her head. Her beloved mother was at her bedside day and night. Her father, usually so reserved in expressions of affection, was moved by the near prospect of her death, to say to her, My dear, I have been thinking of you in the night, and I cannot remember that you have any faults. You have defects, of course, as all mortals have, but I do not know that you have a single fault. These words were intended by him as a viaticum for her, but they were really to be a legacy of love to his favourite child. Margaret herself anticipated death with calmness, and, in view of the struggles and disappointments of life, with willingness. But the threatened bolt was to fall upon a head dearer to her than her own. In the early autumn of the same year her father, after a two days illness, fell a victim to cholera. Margaret's record of the grief which this affliction brought her is very deep and tender. Her father's image was ever present to her, and seemed even to follow her to her room and to look in upon her there. Her most poignant sorrow was in the thought, suggested to many by similar afflictions, that she might have kept herself nearer to him in sympathy and in duty. The altered circumstances of the family indeed soon aroused her to new activities. Mr. Fuller had left no will, and had somewhat diminished his property by unproductive investments. Margaret now found new reason to wish that she belonged to the sterner sex, since, had she been eldest son instead of eldest daughter, she might have become the administrator of her father's estate and the guardian of her sisters and brothers. She regretted her ignorance of such details of business as are involved in the care of property, and determined to acquaint herself with him, reflecting that the same mind which has made other attainments can in time compass these. In this hour of trial she seeks and finds relief and support in prayer. May God enable me to see the way clear and not to let down the intellectual in raising the moral tone of my mind. Difficulties and duties became distinct the very night after my father's death, and a solemn prayer was offered then that I might combine what is due to others with what is due to myself. The spirit of that prayer I shall constantly endeavour to maintain. This death, besides the sorrow and perplexity which followed it, brought to Margaret a disappointment which seemed to her to bar the fulfilment of her highest hopes. She had for two years been contemplating a visit to Europe, with a view to the better prosecution of her studies. She had earned the right to this indulgence beforehand by assisting in the education of the younger children of the family. An opportunity now offered itself of making this journey under the most auspicious circumstances. Her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Farrar, were about to cross the ocean, and had invited her to accompany them. Ms. Martinault was to be of the party, and Margaret now saw before her not only this beloved companionship, but also the open door which would give her an easy access to literary society in England, and to the atmosphere of old world culture which she so passionately longed to breathe. With this brilliant vision before her, and with her whole literary future trembling, as she thought, in the scale, Margaret prayed only that she might make the right decision. This soon became clear to her, and she determined, in spite of the entreaties of her family, to remain with her care-worn mother, and not to risk the possibility of encroaching upon the fund necessary for the education of her brothers and sister. Of all the crownings of Margaret's life shall we not most envy her that of this act of sacrifice? So near to the Feast of the Gods she prefers the fast of duty, and recognizes the claims of family affection as more imperative than the gratification of any personal taste or ambition. Margaret does not seem to have been supported in this trial by any sense of its heroism. Her decision was, to her, only a following of the right, in which she must be content, as she says, to forget herself and act for the sake of others. We may all be glad to remember this example, and to refer to it those who find themselves in a maze of doubt between what they owe to the cultivation of their own gifts, what to the need and advantage of those to whom they stand in near relation. Had Margaret at this time forsaken her darkened household, the difference to its members would have been very great, and she herself would have added to the number of those doubting or mistaken souls who have been carried far from the scene of their true and appointed service by some dream of distinction never to be fulfilled. In the sequel she was not only justified, but rewarded. The sacrifice she had made secured the blessings of education to the younger members of her family. Her prayer that the lifting of her moral nature might not lower the tone of her intellect was answered, as it was sure to be, and she found near at hand a field of honour and usefulness which the brilliant capitals of Europe would not have offered her. Margaret's remaining days in Groton were passed in assiduous reading, and her letters and journals make suggestive comments on Goethe, Shelley, Sir James Macintosh, Herschel, Wordsworth, and others. Her scheme of culture was what we should now call encyclopedic and embraced most if not all departments of human knowledge. If she was at all mistaken in her scope, it was in this, that she did not sufficiently appreciate the inevitable limitations of brain power and of bodily strength. Her impatience of such considerations led her to an habitual overuse of her brilliant faculties which resulted in an impaired state of health. In the autumn of 1836 Margaret left Groton, not without acknowledgement of many precious lessons given there in faith, fortitude, self-command, and unselfish love. There, too, in solitude, the mind acquired more power of concentration and discerned the beauty of strict method. There, too, more than all, the heart was awakened to sympathize with the ignorant, to pity the vulgar, to hope for the seemingly worthless, and to commune with the divine spirit of creation. CHAPTER V. of Margaret Fuller, Marquesa Ossolly, by Julia Ward Howe Winter in Boston. A season of severe labour. Connection with Green Street School, Providence, Rhode Island. Editorship of the Dial. Margaret's Estiment of Alston's Pictures. Margaret's removal was to the point where a twofold labour was before her. She was engaged to teach Latin and French in Mr. Alcott's school, then at the height of its prosperity, and also intended to form classes of young ladies who should study with her French, German, and Italian. Mr. Alcott's educational theories did not altogether commend themselves to Margaret's judgment. They had in them, indeed, the germ of much that is today recognized as true and important. But Margaret considered him to be too much possessed with the idea of the unity of knowledge, too little aware of the complexities of instruction. He, on the other hand, describes her as a person clearly given to the boldest speculation, and of liberal and varied acquirements. Not wanting in imaginative power, she has the rarest good sense in discretion. The blending of sentiment and of wisdom in her is most remarkable, and her taste is as fine as her prudence. I think her the most brilliant talker of her day. Margaret now passed through twenty-five weeks of incessant labour, suffering the while from her head, which she calls a bad head, but which we should consider a most abused one. Her retrospect of this period of toil is interesting, and with its severity she remembers also its value to her. Meeting with many disappointments at the outset, and feeling painfully the new circumstances which obliged her to make merchandise of her gifts and acquirements, she yet says that she rejoices over it all, and would not have undertaken an iota less. Besides fulfilling her intention of self-support, she feels that she has gained in the power of attention, in self-command, and in the knowledge of methods of instruction, without in the least losing sight of the aims which had made hitherto the happiness and enthusiasm of her life. Here is, in brief, the tale of her winter's work. To one class she gave elementary instruction in German, and that so efficiently that her pupils were able to read the language with ease at the end of three months. With another class she read in twenty-four weeks Schiller's Don Carlos, Artists, and Song of the Bell, Goethe's Hermann und Oratea, Goethe's von Berligingen, Iphigenia, First Part of Faust, and Clavigo, Lesson's Nathan Devise, Mina, and Emilia Galotti, Parts of Teak's Phantasis, and nearly all of the first volume of Richter's Titan. With the Italian class, she read parts of Tasso, Petrarch, Ariosto, Alfieri, and the whole hundred cantos of Dante's Divina Comedia. Besides these classes she also had three private pupils, one of them a boy unable to use his eyes in study. She gave this child oral instruction in Latin and read to him the history of England and Shakespeare's plays in connection. The lessons given by her in Mr. Alcott's school were, she says, valuable to her, but also very fatiguing. Though already so much over-tasked, Margaret found time and strength to devote one evening every week to the Vivavoche translation of German authors for Mr. Channing's benefit, reading to him mostly from Divetta and Herder. Much conversation accompanied these readings, and Margaret confesses that she finds therein much food for thought, while the doctor's judgments appear to her deliberate and his sympathies somewhat slow. She speaks of him as entirely without any assumption of superiority towards her, and as trusting to the elevation of his thoughts to keep him in his place. She also greatly enjoyed his preaching, the force and earnestness of which seemed to her to purge as by fire. If Margaret was able to review her winter's work with pleasure, we must regard it with mingled wonder and dismay. The range and extent of her labours were indeed admirable, combining such extremes as enabled her to minister to the needs of the children in Mr. Alcott's school, and to assist the studies of the most eminent divine of the day. If we look only at her classes in literature, we shall find it wonderful that a woman of twenty-six should have been able to give available instruction in directions so many and various. On the other hand, we must think that the immense extent of ground gone over involved too rapid a study of the separate works comprised in it. Here was given a synopsis of literary work which, properly performed, would fill a lifetime. It was no doubt valuable to her pupils through the vivifying influence of her enthusiastic imagination, which may have enabled some of them, in later years, to fill out the sketch of culture so boldly and broadly drawn before their eyes. Yet, considered as instruction, it must from its very extent have been somewhat superficial. Our dismay would regard the remorseless degree in which Margaret, at this time, must have encroached upon the reserves of her bodily strength. Some physicists of today ascribe to women a peculiar power of concentrating upon one short effort, an amount of vital force which should carry them through long years, and which, once expended, cannot be restored. Margaret's case would certainly justify this view, for while a mind so vigorous necessarily presupposes a body of uncommon vigour, she was after this time always a sufferer, and never enjoyed that perfect equipoise of function and of power which we call health. In the spring of the year 1837 Margaret was invited to fill an important post in the Green Street School at Providence, Rhode Island. It was proposed that she should teach the elder girls four hours daily, arranging studies and courses at her own discretion, and receiving a salary of one thousand dollars per annum. Margaret hesitated to accept this offer, feeling inclined rather to renew her classes of the year just past, and having in mind also a life of Goethe which she greatly desired to write, and for which she was already collecting material. In the end, however, the prospect of immediate independence carried the day, and she became the Lady Superior, as she styles it, of the Providence School. Here a nearer view of the great need of her services stimulated her generous efforts, and she was rewarded by the love and reverence of her pupils, and by the knowledge that she did indeed bring them an awakening which led them from inert ignorance to earnest endeavour. This record of her stay in Providence is enlivened by portraits of some of the men of Mark who came within her kin. Among these was Tristan Burgess, already old, whose baldness, she says, increases the fine effect of his appearance, for it seems as if the locks had retreated that the contour of his strongly marked head might be revealed. The eminent lawyer, Whipple, is not, she says, a man of the Webster class, but is in her eyes first among men of the class immediately below, and wears a pervading air of ease and mastery which shows him fit to be a leader of the flock. John Neal of Portland speaks to her girls on the destiny and vocation of woman in America, and in private has a long talk with her concerning woman, wiggism, modern English poets, Shakespeare, and particularly Richard III, concerning which play the two actually had a fight. Mr. Neal, she says, does not argue quite fairly, for he uses reason while it lasts, and then helps himself out with wit, sentiment, and assertion. She hears a discourse and prayer from Joseph John Gurney of England, in whose matter and manner she finds herself grievously disappointed. Quakerism has at times looked lovely to me, and I had expected at least a spiritual exposition of its doctrines from the brother of Mrs. Frye, but his manner was as wooden as his matter. His figures were paltry, his thoughts narrowed down, and his very sincerity made corrupt by spiritual pride. The poet, Richard H. Dana, in those days gave a course of readings from the English dramatists, beginning with Shakespeare. Margaret writes, the introductory was beautiful. All this was arrayed in a garb of most delicate grace, but a man of such genuine refinement undervalues the cannon blasts and rockets which are needed to rouse the attention of the vulgar. His naive gestures, the rapt expression of his face, his introverted eye, and the almost childlike simplicity of his pathos carry one back into a purer atmosphere, to live over again youth's fresh emotions. Her resume of him ends with these words. Mr. Dana has the charms and the defects of one whose object in life has been to preserve his individuality unprofamed. Margaret's connection with the Green Street School in Providence lasted two years. Her success in this work was considered very great, and her brief residence in Rhode Island was crowned with public esteem and with many valued friendships. Her parting from the pupils here was not without tears on both sides. Although engaged to teach the elder girls, Margaret's care had extended over the younger ones and also over some of the boys. With all she exchanged an affectionate farewell, in which words of advice were mingled. To the class of girls which had been her a special charge, she made a farewell address whose impressive sentences must have been long remembered. Here are some of them. I reminded them of the ignorance in which some of them had been found, and showed them how all my efforts had necessarily been directed to stimulating their minds, leaving undone much which, under other circumstances, would have been deemed indispensable. I thanked them for the moral beauty of their conduct, more witness than an appeal to conscience had never failed, and told them of my happiness in having the faith thus confirmed that young persons can be best guided by addressing their highest nature. I assured them of my true friendship, proved by my never having cajoled or caressed them into good. All my influence over them was rooted in reality. I had never softened nor palliated their faults. I had appealed not to their weakness but to their strength. I had offered to them always the loftiest motives, and had made every other end subservient to that of spiritual growth. With a heartfelt blessing I dismissed them. In those days appeared Miss Martino's book on America, of which we may say that its sharply critical tone stirred the national consciousness, and brought freshly into consideration the question of negro slavery, the discussion of which had been by common consent banished from good society in the United States. Miss Martino dared to reprobate this institution in uncompromising language, and, while showing much appreciation of the natural beauties of the country, was generally thought to have done injustice to its moral and social characteristics. While Margaret regarded with indignation the angry abuse with which her friend's book was greeted on this side of the Atlantic, she felt obliged to express to her the disappointment which she herself had felt on reading it. She acknowledges that the work has been garbled, misrepresented, scandalously ill-treated. But she speaks of herself as one of those who, seen in the book, a degree of presumptuousness, irreverence, inaccuracy, hasty generalization, and altruism on many points which they did not expect, lament the haste in which you have written, and the injustice which you have consequently done to so important a task, and to your own powers of being and doing. Among other grievances Margaret especially felt the manner in which Miss Martinot had written about Mr. Alcott. This she could not pass over without comment. A true and noble man, a philanthropist, whom a true and noble woman, also a philanthropist, should have been delighted to honor. A philosopher, worthy the palmy times of ancient Greece, a man whom the worldlings of Boston hold in as much horror as the worldlings of ancient Athens did Socrates. They smiled to hear their verdict confirmed from the other side of the Atlantic by their censor, Harriet Martinot. Margaret expresses in this letter the fear lest the frankness of her strictures should deprive her of the regard of her friend, but says, If your heart turns from me, I shall still love you, still think you noble. In 1840 Margaret was solicited to become the editor of the dial, and undertook for two years the management of the magazine, which was at this time considered the organ of the transcendentalists. The dial was a quarterly publication, somewhat nebulous in its character, but valuable as the expression of fresh thought, stimulating to culture of a new order. Like the transcendental movement itself, it had in it the germs of influences which in the course of the last forty years have come to be widely felt and greatly prized. In the newness of its birth and origin it needed nursing fathers and nursing mothers, but was fed mostly, so far as concerns the general public, with neglect and ridicule. Margaret, besides laboring with great diligence in her editorship, contributed to its pages many papers on her favorite points of study, such as Goethe, Beethoven, Romantic Poetry, John Sterling, etc. Of the dial Mr. Emerson says, Good or bad it cost a good deal of precious labor from those who served it, and from Margaret most of all. As there were no funds behind the enterprise contributors were not paid for their work, and Margaret's modest salary of two hundred dollars per annum was discontinued after the first year. The magazine lived four years. In England and Scotland it achieved a success to steam, and a republication of it in these days is about to make tardy amends for the general indifference which allowed its career to terminate so briefly. Copies of the original work, now a literary curiosity, can here and there be borrowed from individuals who have grown old in the service of human progress. A look into the carefully preserved volumes shows us the changes which time has wrought in the four decades of years which have elapsed, quite or nearly, since the appearance of the last number. A melancholy touches us as we glance hither and thither among its pages. How bright are the morning hours marked on this dial? How merged now in the evening twilight and darkness? Here is Ralph Waldo Emerson, with life's meridians still before him. Here are printed some of his earliest lectures and some of the most admired of his poems. Here are the graceful verses of Christopher P. Cranch, artist and poet. Here are the Channing cousins, nephews of the great man by different brothers. One, William Henry Channing, then as always, fervid and unrelinquishing in faith. The other, William Ellery, a questioner who, not finding himself answered to his mind, has ceased to ask. Here is Theodore Parker, a youthful critic of existing methods and traditions, already familiar with the sacred writings of many religions. A. Bronson Alcott appears in various forms, contributing days from a diary, orphyxanes, and so on. Here are from various authors, papers entitled Social Tendencies, The Interior or Hidden Life, The Pharisees, Prophecy, Transcendentalism and Progress, Leaves from a Scholar's Journal, Ethnic Scriptures, The Preachings of Buddha, Outworld and Inworld, Hennings which themselves afford an insight into the direction of the speculative thought and fancy of the time. An article on the Hollis Street Council presents to us the long-forgotten controversy between Reverend John Pierpont and his congregation to settle which a conference of the Unitarian clergy was summoned. Another, entitled Shard and Street and Bible Conventions, records the coming together of a company of mad men, mad women, men with beards, dunkers, muggletonians, come-outers, groaners, agrarians, Seventh-day Baptists, Quakers, abolitionists, Calvinists, Unitarians and philosophers, to discuss church discipline and the authenticity of the Bible. Among those present were Dr. Channing, Father Taylor, Mr. Alcott, Mr. Garrison, Jones-Verry and Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman. The chronicler says that the assembly was characterized by the predominance of a certain plain, Sylvan strength and earnestness, while many of the most intellectual and cultivated persons attended its councils. Mrs. Little and Mrs. Lucy Sessions took a pleasing and memorable part in the debate, and that flea of conventions, Mrs. Abigail Folsom, was but too ready with her interminable scroll. In the July number of the year 1842, many pages are devoted to a rehearsal of the entertainments of the past winter, which treats of Fanny Elsler's dancing, Brahms singing, oratorios, symphony concerts, and various lectures. Among these last, those of Mr. Lyle, afterwards Sir Charles, are curtly dismissed as a neat article, while those of Henry Giles are recognized as showing popular talent. Among Margaret's own contributions to the dial, the article on Goethe and that entitled The Great Lawsuit are perhaps the most noteworthy. We shall find the second of these expanded into the well-known Woman in the Nineteenth Century, of which mention will be made hereafter. The one first name seems to demand some notice here, the fine discrimination of its criticism, showing how well qualified the writer was to teach the women of her day the true appreciation of genius, and to warn them from the idolatry which worships the faults as well as the merits of great minds. From a lover of Goethe such sentences as the following were scarcely to have been expected. Pardon him, world, that he was too worldly. Do not wonder, heart, that he was so heartless. Believe, soul, that one so true, as far as he went, may yet be initiated into the deeper mysteries of soul. Naturally, of a deep mind and shallow heart, he felt the sway of the affections enough to appreciate their working in other men, but never enough to receive their inmost regenerating influence. Margaret finds a decline of sentiment and poetic power in Goethe, dating from his relinquishment of Lily. After this period, we find in him rather a wide and deep wisdom than the inspiration of genius. His faith that all must issue well wants the sweetness of piety, and the God he manifests to us is one of law or necessity, rather than of intelligent love. The mastery that Goethe prizes seems to consist rather in the skillful use of means than in the clear manifestation of ends, yet never let him be confounded with those who sell all their birthright. He became blind to the more generous virtues, the nobler impulses, but ever in self-respect was busy to develop his nature. He was kind, industrious, wise, gentlemanly, if not manly. Margaret with bold and steady hand draws a parallel between Dante's Paradiso and the second part of Goethe's Faust. She prefers the grandly humble reliance of old Catholicism to the loophole redemption of modern sagacity. Yet she thinks that Dante, perhaps, had not so hard a battle to wage as this other great poet. The fiercest passions she finds less dangerous to the soul than the cold skepticism of the understanding. She sums up grandly the spiritual ordeals of different historical periods. The Jewish demon assailed the man of us with physical ills. The Lucifer of the Middle Ages tempted his passions, but the Mephistopheles of the 18th century made the finite strive to compass the infinite, and the intellect attempt to solve all the problems of the soul. Among Margaret's published papers on literature and art is one entitled A Record of Impressions Produced by the Exhibition of Mr. Alston's Pictures in the Summer of 1839. She was moved to write this, she says, partly by the general silence of the press on a matter of so much import in the history of American art, and partly by the desire to analyze her own views and to ascertain, if possible, the reason why, at the close of the exhibition, she found herself less a gainer by it than she had expected. As Margaret gave much time and thought to art matters, and as the Alston exhibition was really an event of historic interest, some consideration of this paper will not be inappropriate in this place. Washington Alston was at that time, had long been, and long continued to be, the artist saint of Boston. A great personal prestige added its power to that of his unquestioned genius. Beautiful in appearance, as much a poet as a painter, he really seemed to belong to an order of beings who might be called, too bright and good for human nature's daily food. He had flown into the hard