prompted pride to retaliatory measures.  She paid slight heed, moreover, to the trim palings of etiquette, but swept through the garden-beds and into the doorway of one’s confidence so cavalierly, that a reserved person felt inclined to lock himself up in his sanctum.  Finally, to the coolly-scanning eye, her friendships wore a look of such romantic exaggeration, that she seemed to walk enveloped in a shining fog of sentimentalism.  In brief, it must candidly be confessed, that I then suspected her of affecting the part of a Yankee Corinna.

But soon I was charmed, unaware, with the sagacity of her sallies, the profound thoughts carelessly dropped by her on transient topics, the breadth and richness of culture manifested in her allusions or quotations, her easy comprehension of new views, her just discrimination, and, above all, her truthfulness.  “Truth at all cost,” was plainly her ruling maxim.  This it was that made her criticism so trenchant, her contempt of pretence so quick and stern, her speech so naked in frankness, her gaze so searching, her whole attitude so alert.  Her estimates of men, books, manners, events, art, duty, destiny, were moulded after a grand ideal; and she was a severe judge from the very loftiness of her standard.  Her stately deportment, border though it might on arrogance, but expressed high-heartedness.  Her independence, even if haughty and rash, was the natural action of a self-centred will, that waited only fit occasion to prove itself heroic.  Her earnestness to read the hidden history of others was the gauge of her own emotion.  The enthusiasm that made her speech so affluent, when measured by the average scale, was the unconscious overflow of a poetic temperament.  And the ardor of her friends’ affection proved the faithfulness of her love.  Thus gradually the mist melted away, till I caught a glimpse of her real self.  We were one evening talking of American literature,—­she contrasting its boyish crudity, half boastful, half timid, with the tempered, manly equipoise of thorough-bred European writers, and I asserting that in its mingled practicality and aspiration might be read bright auguries; when, betrayed by sympathy, she laid bare her secret hope of what Woman might be and do, as an author, in our Republic.  The sketch was an outline only, and dashed off with a few swift strokes, but therein appeared her own portrait, and we were strangers no more.

It was through the medium of others, however, that at this time I best learned to appreciate Margaret’s nobleness of nature and principle.  My most intimate friend in the Theological School, James Freeman Clarke, was her constant companion in exploring the rich gardens of German literature; and from his descriptions I formed a vivid image of her industry, comprehensiveness, buoyancy, patience, and came to honor her intelligent interest in high problems of science, her aspirations after spiritual greatness, her fine aesthetic taste,