’And ye, friends, and lovers, who see, through all the films of human nature, in those you love, a divine energy, worthy of creatures who have their being in very God, ye, too, are “mad” to think they can walk in the dust, and yet shake it from their feet when they come upon the green.  These are no winged Mercuries, no silver-sandalled Madonnas.  Listen to “the world’s” truth and soberness, and we will show you that your heart would be as well placed in a hospital, as in these air-born palaces.

’And thou, priest, seek thy God among the people, and not in the shrine.  The light need not penetrate thine own soul.  Thou canst catch the true inspiration from the eyes of thy auditors.  Not the Soul of the World, not the ever-flowing voice of nature, but the articulate accents of practical utility, should find thy ear ever ready.  Keep always among men, and consider what they like; for in the silence of thine own breast will be heard the voices that make men “mad.”  Why shouldst thou judge of the consciousness of others by thine own?  May not thine own soul have been made morbid, by retiring too much within?  If Jesus of Nazareth had not fasted and prayed so much alone, the devil could never have tempted him; if he had observed the public mind more patiently and carefully, he would have waited till the time was ripe, and the minds of men prepared for what he had to say.  He would thus have escaped the ignominious death, which so prematurely cut short his “usefulness.”  Jewry would thus, gently, soberly, and without disturbance, have been led to a better course.

’"Children of this generation!”—­ye Festuses and Agrippas!—­ye are wiser, we grant, than “the children of light;” yet we advise you to commend to a higher tribunal those whom much learning, or much love, has made “mad.”  For if they stay here, almost will they persuade even you!’

Amidst these meetings of the Transcendentalists it was, that, after years of separation, I again found Margaret.  Of this body she was member by grace of nature.  Her romantic freshness of heart, her craving for the truth, her self-trust, had prepared her from childhood to be a pioneer in prairie-land; and her discipline in German schools had given definite form and tendency to her idealism.  Her critical yet aspiring intellect filled her with longing for germs of positive affirmation in place of the chaff of thrice-sifted negation; while her aesthetic instinct responded in accord to the praise of Beauty as the beloved heir of Good and Truth, whose right it is to reign.  On the other hand, strong common-sense saved her from becoming visionary, while she was too well-read as a scholar to be caught by conceits, and had been too sternly tried by sorrow to fall into fanciful effeminacy.  It was a pleasing surprise to see how this friend of earlier days was acknowledged as a peer of the realm, in this new world of thought.  Men,—­her superiors in years, fame and social