Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/33

18 as a creature of unconumon gifts. A devourer of books she had been from the start; but books alone could not content this ardent mind, at once so critical and so creative. She must also have life at first hand, and feed her intelligence from its deepest source. Hence the long story of her friendships, so many and various, yet so earnest and efficient.

What the chosen associates of this wonderful woman have made public concerning the interest of her con- versation and the value of her influence tasks to the utmost the believing powers of a time in which the demon of self-interest seems to unfold himself out of most of the metamorphic flowers of society. Margaret and her friends might truly have said, “Our kingdom is not of this world,"--at least, according to what this world calls kingly. But what imperial power had this self-poised soul, which could so widely (pen its doors and so closely shut them, which could lead in its train the brightest and purest intelligences, and "bind the sweet influences " of starry souls in the garland of its happy hours! And here we may say, her kingdom was not all of this world; for the kingdom of noble thought and affection is in this world and beyond it, and the real and ideal are at peace within its bounds.

In the divided task of Margaret's biography it was given to James Freeman Clarke to speak of that early summer of her life in which, these tender and intimate relations had their first and most fervent unfolding. The Harvard student of that day was probably a personage very unlike the present revered pastor of the Church of the disciples. Yet we must believe that the one was graciously foreshadowed in the other, and