Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/28

Rh really a child in age, but already almost a woman in personality and imagination. Untrained in intercourse with her peers in age, she felt and exaggerated her own superiority to those with whom her school-life first brought her in contact. This superiority she felt impelled to assert and maintain. So long as she could queen it over the other pupils she was content. The first serious wounding of her self-love aroused in her a vengeful malignity, which grew with its own exercise. Unable as she found herself to command her little public by offices which had seemed to her acts of condescension, she determined to rule through the evil principle of discord. In a fortunate moment she was prrested in this course by an exposure whose consequences showed her the reflection of her own misconduct in the minds of those around her. Extreme in all things, her self-reproach took the form of helpless despair, which yet, at the touch of true affection, gave way before the courageous determination to retrieve past error by future good desert.

The excellence of Margaret's judgment and the generosity of her heart appear in the effect which this fortunate failure had upon her maturer life. The pride of her personality had been overthrown. She had learned that she could need the indulgence and forgiveness of others, and had also learned that her fellow pupils, lightly esteemed by her up to that time, were capable of magnanimous forgiveness and generous rehabilitation. In the tender strength of her young mind, those impressions were so received that they were never afterwards effaced. The esteem of Margaret for her own sex, then rare in women of her order, and the great charity with which she ever regarded the offences of others, perhaps referred back