Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/141

126 She has observed, too, the features of kindred between the character of the ancient Roman and that of the Briton of to-day.

She remarks upon the reaction which was felt in her time against the revolutionary opposition to the mother country. This reaction, she feels, may be carried too far.

“What suits Great Britain, with her insular position and consequent need to concentrate and intensify her life, her limited monarchy and spirit of trade, does not suit a mixed race, continually enriched with new blood from other stocks the most unlike that of our first descent, with ample field and verge enough to range in and leave every impulse free, and abundant opportunity to develop a genius wide and full as our rivers, luxuriant and impassioned as our vast prairies, rooted in strength as the rocks on which the Puritan fathers landed.”

Margaret anticipates for this Western hemisphere the rise and development of such a genius, but says that this cannot come until the fusion of races shall be more advanced, nor "until this nation shall attain sufficient moral and intellectual dignity to prize moral and intellectual no less highly than political freedom."

She finds the earnest of this greater time in the movements already leading to social reforms, and in the “stern sincerity" of elect individuals, but thinks that the influences at work “must go deeper before we can have poets."

At the time of her writing (1844–45) she considers literature as in a "dim and struggling state," with "pecuniary results exceedingly pitiful. The state of things gets worse and worse, as loss and less is offered for works demanding great devotion of time and labour,