Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/120

Rh writing, it would seem that Emerson had a larger circle of readers in England than in his own country. She accounts for this on the ground that "our people, heated by a partisan spirit, necessarily occupied in these first stages by bringing out the material resources of the land, not generally prepared by early training for the enjoyment of books that require attention and reflection, arc still more injured by a large majority of writers and speakers who lend all their efforts to flatter corrupt tastes and mental indolence." She permits us, however, to “hail as an auspicious omen the influence Emerson has obtained” in New England, which she recognizes as deep-rooted, and, over the younger part of the community, far greater than that of any other person. She is glad to introduce Robert Browning as the author of Bells and Ponegranates to the American public. Mrs. Browning was then Miss Barrett, in regard of whom Margaret rejoices that her task is "mainly to express a cordial-admiration!” and says that she “cannot hesitate to rank her, in vigour and nobleness of conception, depth of spiritual experience, and command of classic allusion, above any female writer the world has yet known." In those poems of hers which emulate Milton and Dante "her success is far below what we find in the poems of feeling and experience; for she has the vision of a great poet, but little in proportion of his classic power."

Margaret has much to say concerning George Sand, and under various heads. In her work on Woman, "she gives the rationale of her strange and anomalous appearance, and is at once very just and very tender in her judgments.

George Sand was then in the full bloom of her repu-