Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/242

Rh silliness consists in making them out of clothes, equipage, and servile imitation of foreign manners, instead of the genuine elegance and distinction that can only be produced by genuine culture. . . . . Our merchant shall be a real nobleman, whose noble manners spring from a noble mind; his fashions from a sincere, intelligent love of the beautiful."

Margaret's Poor Man" is an industrious artisan, not too poor to be sure of daily bread, cleanliness, and reasonable comfort. His advantages will be in the harder training and deeper experience which his circumstances will involve. Suffering privation in his own person, he will, she thinks, feel for the sufferings others. Having no adventitious aids to bring him into prominence, there will be small chance for him to escape a well-tempered modesty." He must learn enough to convince himself that mental growth and refinement are not secured by one set of employments, or lost through another. "Mahomet was not a wealthy merchant: profound philosophers have ripened on the benches, not of the lawyers, but of the shoemakers. It did not hurt Milton to be a schoolmaster, nor Shakespeare to do the errands of a London play-house. Yes, 'the mind is its own place'; and if it will keep that place, all doors will be opened from it." This ideal poor man must be "religious, wise, dignified, and humble, grasping at nothing, claiming all; willing to wait, never willing to give up; servile to none, the servant of all,— esteeming it the glory of a man to serve." Such a type of character, she tells us, is rare, but not unattainable.

The poems in this volume may be termed fugitive pieces, rhymes twined and dropped in the