As a journalist Margaret Fuller filled a very special position. She was the editor of the Dial, a professedly transcendental organ; and in the numbers of this periodical is to be found a great amount of her literary labours. She wrote also for other journals; but her work upon the Dial must be regarded as essentially part of her life, for she had to do with the originating of the periodical, and it was intended to bear the impress of those ideas with which she had identified herself. The transcendentalists, who were conspicuous during what is called "the period of transcendental agitation," from 1835 to 1850, formed themselves into a club, which met under various names, and acquired a certain fame. Among its members are to be found many well-known names. At one time Bronson Alcott, the pedlar, schoolmaster, and thinker, was regarded as the leader of this little gathering; but since then that position has been considered as belonging to Mr. Emerson. In conversation among them arose the idea that a journal was needed for the expression of freer thought than that allowed by the general press. This idea took shape in 1840, when the first number of the Dial appeared. Margaret, as we have said, was the editor, with Emerson and George Ripley to aid her. In the autumn of 1840, at one of the meetings of the Transcendental Club at Mr. Emerson's house in Concord, was also dis

cussed the idea of the community which was afterwards carried into real life at Brook Farm, and immortalised in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Blithedale Romance."

In this volume we are admitted to that other side of Margaret's character which runs so strangely by the side of her life as a journalist and practical worker. In the

a

Blithedale Romance " she is called "Zenobia," and is full of the queenliness, personal vigour, and rich scholarly power with which the name of the princess of ancient Palmyra is associated. Hawthorne's story is, of course, a romance avowedly, and to be accepted as such. At the same time we may be permitted to see in "Zenobia" study of one view of Margaret's character; and it is no small gain to place by the side of the writings upon her by her other friends a picture made by so clear-minded and true an artist. "The name Zenobia," he says, "accorded well with something imperial which her friends attributed to this lady's figure and deportment. . . . She took the appellation in good part, and even encouraged its constant use: which, in fact, was thus far appropriate, that our Zenobiahowever humble looked her new philosophy-had as much native pride as any queen would have known what to do with." Doubtless it is scarcely fair to use any description of Zenobia as applicable to Margaret; indeed, in detail, the portrait of the woman appears to

have been pointedly unlike. But it is impossible to resist the impression that the colouring of the whole, even in these personal detalis, is taken from Margaret. "We seldom meet with women now-a-days, and in this country, who impress us as being women at all; their sex fades away and goes for nothing in ordinary intercourse. Not so with Zenobia. One felt an influence breathing out of her, such as we might suppose to come from Eve when she was just made, and her creator brought her to Adam, saying, 'Behold! here is a woman.' Not that I would convey the idea of especial gentleness, modesty, and shyness, but of a certain warm and rich characteristic which seems, for the most part, to have been refined away out of the feminine system." Margaret Fuller was not beautiful; yet she could so force outward the beauty of her spirit as to call forth something strangely akin to personal admiration. The vigour and powerful individuality of Zenobia's character produces now and again a jarring, discordant, barbaric effect.

grace,

It is

The bent of her disposition would have led her to snatch aside the veil which ever hangs between man and man. We find Hawthorne tenderly holding the veil in place, so that human nature by this suggestive vagueness might appear the more beautiful. We all know the charm and excitement of uncertainty; to an intensely imaginative mind the dimness of the depths which lie in the human soul must make these depths the more fascinating for speculation. Margaret, in place of speculation, seems to desire a plumb line with which to measure the soul, its shallows and its deeps. But, though she is perhaps a shade impatient with this author, whose force was essentially the delicate and subdued force of a tender artist; when he approaches the subject of woman's ideal character-in the delineation of which Margaret is herself so eminent-her appreciation is instant. She recognises then that under the subtle colouring the anatomy is vigorously correct. His ideal is no more sentimental or dreamy than her own. "In these " ("The Birth Mark" and "Rapaccini's Daughter" "shines the loveliest ideal of love and the beauty of feminine purity (by which we mean no mere acts or abstinences, but perfect single truth, felt and done in gentleness) which is its root."

Margaret's appreciation, as might be expected from so strong a nature, is most easily called forth by strength. She finds in Mrs. Browning an intellect which she can unhesitatingly admire. She shows her reverence for a mighty character in her "Life of Beethoven." She says of him, "Like all princes, he made many ingrates, and his powerful, lion-like nature was that most capable of suffering from the amazement of witnessing baseness.

Unbeloved, he could love; deceived in other men, he yet knew

himself too well to despise human nature; dying from ingratitude, he could still be grateful." A being like this, who could cover a deeply loving soul with a front of endurance which made him seem a man of granite among the weak and wicked beings who surrounded him, calls from her a genuine sympathy of soul. As a biographer, she is deeply sympathetic; as a critic, very thorough and genuine. She does not belong to that modern variety of reviewer who glances between uncut leaves, and makes a critique in general terms.

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Horace Greeley, under whom she worked for the New York Tribune, bears testimony to what he calls the "absolute truthfulness" of her writings. "Perfect conscientiousness," he says, was an unfailing characteristic of her literary efforts. Even the severest of her critiques -that on Longfellow's poems-for which an impulse in personal pique has been alleged, I happen with certainty to know had no such origin. When I first handed her the book to review, she excused herself, assigning the wide divergence of her views of poetry from those of the author and his school as her reason. She thus induced me to attempt the task of reviewing it myself. But day after day fled by, and I could find no hour that was not absolutely required for the performance of some duty that would not be put off, nor turned over to another. At length I carried the book back to her in utter despair of ever finding an hour in which even to look through it; and at my renewed and earnest request she reluctantly undertook its discussion. The statements of these facts is but an act of justice to her memory."

on

Mr. Frothingham, a recent writer "Transcendentalism in New England," gives Margaret her place among these ardent thinkers as the

critic. Emerson he considers the seer, Bronson Alcott the mystic, Theodore Parker the preacher, and George Ripley he calls the man of letters. It is perhaps a little strange among this galaxy of enthusiasts to find the only prominent woman christened with the cold name of critic. As a foil to this idea of her as a stern intellectualist, we get from William Ellery Channing a charming picture of her as the "woman in her own home. "In 1839" he says," I had met Margaret upon the plane of intellect. In the summer of 1840, on my return from the west, she was to be revealed in a new aspect.

"It was a radiant and refreshing morning when I entered the parlour of her pleasant house, standing upon a slope beyond Jamaica Plain to the south. She was absent at the moment, and there was opportunity to look from the windows on a cheerful prospect, over orchards and meadows to the wooded hills and the western sky. Presently Margaret appeared, bearing in her hand a vase of flowers, which she had been gathering in the garden. After exchange of greetings her first words were of the flowers, each of which was symbolic to her of emotion, and associated with the memory of some friend. I remember her references only to the Daphne odora, the Provence rose, the sweet-scented verbena, and the heliotrope, the latter being her chosen emblem. From flowers she passed to engravings hanging round the room There were

gems, too, and medallions and seals to be examined, each enigmatical, and each blended by remembrances with some fair hour of her past life.

"Talk on art led the way to Greece and the Greeks, whose nythology Margaret was studying afresh. She had been culling the blooms of that poetic land, and

could not but offer me leaves from her garland. . . . . Next Margaret spoke of the friends whose generosity had provided the decorations on her walls and the illustrated books for her table-friends who were fellow students in art, history, or science-friends whose very life she shared. Her heart seemed full to overflow with sympathy for their joys and sorrows, their special trials and struggles, their peculiar tendencies of character, and respective relations. The existence. of each was to her a sacred process, whose developments she watched with awe, and whose leadings she reverently sought to aid. She had scores of pretty anecdotes to tell, sweet bowers of sentiment to open, significant lessons of experience to interpret, and scraps of journals or letters to read aloud, as the speediest means of introducing me to her chosen circle. There was a fascinating spell in her piquant descriptions. Frost-bound

New England melted into a dreamland of romance beneath the spicebreeze of her Eastern narrative. Sticklers for propriety might have found fault at the freedom with which she confided her friends' histories to one who was a comparative stranger to them; but I could not but note how conscientiousness reined in her sensibilities and curbed their career as they reached the due bound of privacy. She did but realise one's conception of the transparent truthfulness that will pervade advanced societies of the future, where the very atmosphere shall be honourable faith.

"Nearer and nearer Margaret was approaching to a secret throned in her heart that day; and the preceding transitions were but a prelude of her orchestra before the entrance of the festal group. Unconsciously she made these preparations for paying worthy honours to

a high sentiment. She had lately heard of the betrothal of two of her best-loved friends, and she wished to communicate the graceful story in a way that should do justice to the facts and to her own feelings. It was by a spontaneous impulse of her genius, and with no voluntary foreshaping, that she had grouped the previous tales; but no drama could have been more artistically constructed than the steps whereby she led me onward to the dénouement; and the look, tone, words with which she told it, were fluent with melody as the song of an improvisatrice.

"Scarcely had she finished when, offering some light refreshmentas it was now past noon-she proposed a walk in the open air.. For a time she was silent, entranced in delighted communion with the exquisite hue of the sky, seen through interlacing boughs and trembling leaves, and the play of shine and shadow over the wide landscape. But, soon arousing from her reverie, she took up the thread of the morning's talk. My part was to listen for I was absorbed in contemplating this, to me, quite novel form of character. It has been seen how my early distaste for Margaret's society was gradually changed to admiration. Like all her friends, I had passed through an avenue of sphinxes before reaching the temple. As, leaning on one arm, she poured out her stream of thought, turning now and then, her eyes full upon me, to see whether I caught her meaning, there was leisure to study her thoroughly. . . . She certainly had not beauty; yet the high-arched dome of the head, the changeful expressiveness of every feature, and her whole air of mingled dignity and impulse, gave her a commanding charm. Especially characteristic were two physical traits: The first was a

contraction of the eyelids almost to a point-a trick caught from nearsightedness and then a sudden dilation, till the iris seemed to emit flashes; an effect, no doubt, dependent on her highly magnetized condition. The second was a singular pliancy of the vertebræ and muscles of the neck, enabling her by a mere movement to denote each varying emotion; in moments of tenderness or pensive feeling, its curves were swanlike in grace, but when she was scornful or indignant it contracted and made swift turns like that of a bird of prey. Finally, in the animation, yet abandon, of Margaret's attitude and look, were rarely blended the fiery force of northern and the soft languor of southern races. We walked

As for

back to the house amid a rosy sunset, and it was with no surprise that I heard her complain of an agonising nervous headache, which compelled her at once to retire, and call for assistance. myself, while going homeward, I reflected with astonishment on the unflagging spiritual energy with which, for hour after hour, she had swept over lands and seas of thought, and, as my own excitement cooled, I became conscious of exhaustion, as if a week's life had been concentrated in a day.

"The interview thus hastily sketched may serve as a fair type of our usual intercourse. Always I found her open-eyed to beauty, fresh for wonder, with wings poised for flight and fanning the coming breeze of inspiration."

Margaret did actually several times sojourn in that Brook Farm which was the basis of the "Blithedale Romance;" but, apparently from what little she herself says of it, not so much to gain experience, or to enter into the actual spirit of the community, as to converse with those friends who were dwelling in

it. But, indeed, her records are almost always of that character; the interchange of thought was with her so vivid a delight and so ever fresh an experience, that her accounts of going hither or thither resolve themselves naturally into records of choice conversation.

"Those who know Margaret only by her published writings know her least; her notes and letters contain more of her mind; but it was only in conversation that she was perfectly free and at home."

This peculiar power of hers led to the special work to which she gave herself for a considerable period, when her labours as editor of the Dial had come to an end. This journal had what Mr. Emerson describes as the "fault of being too secondary or bookish in its origin." He tells us a melancholy history in the few words which he devotes to it: "... the workmen of sufficient culture for a poetical and philosophical magazine were too few; and, as the pages were filled by unpaid contributors, each of whom had, according to the usage and necessity of this country, some paying employment, the journal did not get his best work, but his second best. Its scattered writers had not digested their theories into a distinct dogma, still less into a practical measure which the public could grasp; and the magazine was so eclectic and miscellaneous that each of its readers and writers valued only a small portion of it. For these reasons it never had a large circulation, and it was discontinued after four years." Thus ends the brief career of that journal which had been received by a few with "almost a religious welcome," and the charge of which Margaret had been so "eagerly solicited to undertake" in the midst of an atmosphere of "hope and affection." She gave herself to it, in a "spirit which spared no