Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/71

56 In the newness of its birth and origin, it needed nurs- ing fathers and nursing mothers, but was fed mostly, so far as concerns the general public, with neglect and ridicule.

Margaret, besides labouring with great diligence in her editorship, contributed to its pages many papers on her favourite points of study, such as Goethe, Beethoven, Romaic poetry, John Stirling, etc. Of the Dial Mr. Emerson says: "Good or bad, it cost a good deal of precious labour from those who served it, and from Margaret most of all.” As there were no funds behind the enterprise, contributors were not paid for their work, and Margaret's modest salary of two hundred dollars per annum was discontinued after the first year.

The magazine lived four years. In England and Scotland it achieved a succès d'estime, and a republication of it in these days is about to make tardy amends for the general indifference which allowed its career to terminate so strictly.

Copics of the original work, now a literary curiosity, can here and there be borrowed from individuals who have grown old in the service of human progress. A look into the carefully preserved volumes shows its the changes which time has wrought in the four decades of years which have elapsed since the appearance of the last number.

A melancholy touches as we glance hither and thither among its pages. How bright are the morning hours marked on this Dial! How merged now in the evening twilight and darkness! Here is Ralph Waldo Emerson, with life's meridian still before him, Here are printed some of his earliest lectures and some of the most admired of his poems. Here are the grace-